Actually, I wonder if getting two fans to be locked into an alternate phase (both at the exact same RPM) that they can both cancel eachother out...
Only to each side of the computer (I guess). To the front and back, the fans would have to be exactly the right distance apart (some multiple of the wavelength).
Those fan mufflers look like a crappy stock exhaust system. I'll wait for the tuned-pipe models to get maximum seat-of-the-pants oomph from my overclocked AMD K6-200 gaming monster.
Even the latest generation 10000 RPM drives are pretty darn quiet. A far cry from the monster-truck-falling-into-a-giant-hamburger-grind er-sounding full-height SCSI drives from the early 1990's.
I've read that mounting hard drives on rubber bushings can reduce the performance of the drive. It seems that with the whole drive bouncing around that the read heads take longer to position themselves accurately when doing a seek. Of course, this is only one source of information, so YMMV.
alien species would be so alien we wouldn't be able to communicate with them without considerable intelligence and effort.
Well, it probably depends on the age of the planet the aliens come from. If we encounter a planet 1 billion years older than Earth, then, of course, we can't expect anything familiar. If a planet is approximately the same age as the Earth or younger, I'd expect the odds of recognizing the life there are much higher. Language is certainly always going to be a very high barrier, but, if we are lucky enough to encounter bipedal primate-like aliens (making Star Trek prophetic, to the elation of Trekkies everywhere), then there's probably enough common ground to begin learning their language.
Is it trying to improve ratings by becoming something like the "hoax investigation" channel?
Sci Fi's UFO "documentaries" are generally better than some of the other ones, IMO. They dispense with just enough of the fuzzy blob UFO footage and show just enough "seen by dozens" footage to make the show much more entertaining. As far as Fox News goes, all we can expect from them is "When Aliens Attack XXVIII, Ripley Returns From Hell...Again."
I'd argue that learning about the possibilities of real ET life is much more important than passing time watching fake IT life. Of course, the fake stuff has literary value, but perhaps Heinlein, Herbert, or Asimov could keep people occupied, also.
Heat is another area of comparison; the UltraSPARC runs cold by today's standards.
Absolutely true, which is a one advantage of SPARC and PPC chips that x86 fan-boys overlook a lot. Sun specs the 400MHz UltraSPARC II at a maximum of 19 watts. The UltraSPARC IIIi looks to be at 50 to 60 watts, and the UltraSPARC III Cu is, IIRC, in the 70 to 80 watt range.
Compare to 100 watts and up for Intel's latest and greatest.
Nearly all Sun workstations use the case fans to cool the CPUs, where there is no fan at all on the CPUs themselves. This is true for all the Ultra workstations later than the Ultra 1 and is true for the Blade 1000/2000 workstations. I'm slightly disappointed to see fans on the CPUs of the newer USIIIi machines, unless, of course, they've found an ultra-reliable CPU-fan supplier.
A person may be threatened, cajoled or bribed into NOT throwing it away.
I was thinking that the person wasn't intended to keep the reciept, but that the receipt bin is the modern equivalent to the ballot box. This is the paper trail for legal challenges and recounts.
Keep in mind that this is a 650Mhz native-64-bit RISC CPU; it can hold its own against PIIIs and Athlons.
This is only true for PIIIs under about 1GHz. I figured one time that the 400MHz UltraSPARC II CPUs compare to a 750MHz PIII in FP performance and to about a 450MHz PIII in integer (Spec95 numbers). Certainly a good general-purpose CPU with ECC RAM, etc., but not a computational powerhouse by modern standards.
The Opteron is going to be a definite "if you can't beat'em join'em" CPU from Sun's point of view. I honestly hope that Opteron cleans Itanics clock, and the CPU landscape over the next few years is Opteron vs. IBM POWER vs. UltraSPARC, which, incidentally, is what people have been predicting for years (x86, PPC, and SPARC will be the only ISAs that remain after everyone else fizzles out).
Do you trust someone to pick out the perfect melon or bunch of grapes? How about noticing that the store brand is on sale this week and altering a purchase decision in real time?
Groceries are one market where identically-labeled items are not always equivalent among themselves, and the purchasing decisions are very subjective and not set until the customer walks out the door...and even that isn't always enough.
Internet-enabled refrigerators are nothing more than a solution looking for a problem. The purpose of a refrigerator: keep stuff cold and some other stuff frozen. Compressors are reliable and last decades. Why screw it up with Windows CE and an LCD touch-screen that breaks the first time the door gets slammed by accident?
Just harness the high-voltage arcs that result from putting Bill Gates, Scott McNealy, ESR, and RMS into a room together. Cloning technology will soon be to the point where everyone can have an ideology reactor in their own home! Place your order today!
The V120 is better if you need front-accessible drives. Just keep in mind that these things have 650MHz CPUs. Perfectly reasonable and low-power for general purpose work, just don't build a render farm out of them.
Agreed. There are already enough reasons to avoid Texas; this one is simply the icing on the cake.
I don't mean to offend Texans, by any means...it's just that you now have GWB as a mascot. I suppose this is balanced by Renee Zellweger, but even that might not be enough.
The problem is that the devices went without supervision
It is unlikely that this would happen, if several thousand people were dependent on the device. It wouldn't be hard to hire two or five people to give the device a bath and check its temperature occasionally.
I say again - a state-mandated market share for operating systems - what the fucking fuck fuck?
I agree. The marketplace is slowly--but surely--coming around. StarOffice/OpenOffice.org, MacOS X, Lindows, Sun Java Desktop, et. al. are all rising competition to Windows, yet they all interoperate on standard communications protocols. Simply, Microsoft doesn't have a chance, as their cash cows are becoming obselete.
That General is a complete idiot, the media knows it, and are having a field day with it. What journalist wouldn't want to make a headline about "General: my god is bigger than your god. Thbhbhthth!"
And I guess giving everybody healthcare runs contrary to those goals?
Yes, because national healthcare is fundamentally tyrannical in nature (excessive taxation, government-selected choices, inequality of application based on politically motivated criteria, likely free ride for politicians, etc.). National health care violates the Fourth Amendment, also, at a minimum (the government already has your health history...no warrant needed).
National healthcare creates an imbalance of power between the people and their government that is fundamentally incompatible with the intents of the founders of this country.
"what if I get a virus and it sends my Quicken files?"
Don't worry, the next generation of viruses will simply use a local root exploit in Windows to do whatever they want, anyway. Passport will not stop this. Palladium will not stop this.
to stop things ending up on InternalMemos.com
So, InternalMemos gets an envelope with Polaroids in them, and someone types them up. Nothing short of Matrix implants will stop this.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I wonder if getting two fans to be locked into an alternate phase (both at the exact same RPM) that they can both cancel eachother out...
Only to each side of the computer (I guess). To the front and back, the fans would have to be exactly the right distance apart (some multiple of the wavelength).
Those fan mufflers look like a crappy stock exhaust system. I'll wait for the tuned-pipe models to get maximum seat-of-the-pants oomph from my overclocked AMD K6-200 gaming monster.
Even the latest generation 10000 RPM drives are pretty darn quiet. A far cry from the monster-truck-falling-into-a-giant-hamburger-grin
I've read that mounting hard drives on rubber bushings can reduce the performance of the drive. It seems that with the whole drive bouncing around that the read heads take longer to position themselves accurately when doing a seek. Of course, this is only one source of information, so YMMV.
alien species would be so alien we wouldn't be able to communicate with them without considerable intelligence and effort.
Well, it probably depends on the age of the planet the aliens come from. If we encounter a planet 1 billion years older than Earth, then, of course, we can't expect anything familiar. If a planet is approximately the same age as the Earth or younger, I'd expect the odds of recognizing the life there are much higher. Language is certainly always going to be a very high barrier, but, if we are lucky enough to encounter bipedal primate-like aliens (making Star Trek prophetic, to the elation of Trekkies everywhere), then there's probably enough common ground to begin learning their language.
Hmm, 30watt Opteron 240s will be sampling soon.
Is this a troll? AMD's own documentation says the Opteron's dissipation is on the order of 80 watts.
Is it trying to improve ratings by becoming something like the "hoax investigation" channel?
Sci Fi's UFO "documentaries" are generally better than some of the other ones, IMO. They dispense with just enough of the fuzzy blob UFO footage and show just enough "seen by dozens" footage to make the show much more entertaining. As far as Fox News goes, all we can expect from them is "When Aliens Attack XXVIII, Ripley Returns From Hell...Again."
fake IT life
Geez, that typo just hit a little too close to home (sigh).
I'd argue that learning about the possibilities of real ET life is much more important than passing time watching fake IT life. Of course, the fake stuff has literary value, but perhaps Heinlein, Herbert, or Asimov could keep people occupied, also.
BTW, I just saw this at Ace's Hardware: "The current 1.2 GHz 0.13 UltraSPARC III dissipates a peak of 53W." Not too bad.
Heat is another area of comparison; the UltraSPARC runs cold by today's standards.
Absolutely true, which is a one advantage of SPARC and PPC chips that x86 fan-boys overlook a lot. Sun specs the 400MHz UltraSPARC II at a maximum of 19 watts. The UltraSPARC IIIi looks to be at 50 to 60 watts, and the UltraSPARC III Cu is, IIRC, in the 70 to 80 watt range.
Compare to 100 watts and up for Intel's latest and greatest.
Nearly all Sun workstations use the case fans to cool the CPUs, where there is no fan at all on the CPUs themselves. This is true for all the Ultra workstations later than the Ultra 1 and is true for the Blade 1000/2000 workstations. I'm slightly disappointed to see fans on the CPUs of the newer USIIIi machines, unless, of course, they've found an ultra-reliable CPU-fan supplier.
A person may be threatened, cajoled or bribed into NOT throwing it away.
I was thinking that the person wasn't intended to keep the reciept, but that the receipt bin is the modern equivalent to the ballot box. This is the paper trail for legal challenges and recounts.
Keep in mind that this is a 650Mhz native-64-bit RISC CPU; it can hold its own against PIIIs and Athlons.
This is only true for PIIIs under about 1GHz. I figured one time that the 400MHz UltraSPARC II CPUs compare to a 750MHz PIII in FP performance and to about a 450MHz PIII in integer (Spec95 numbers). Certainly a good general-purpose CPU with ECC RAM, etc., but not a computational powerhouse by modern standards.
The Opteron is going to be a definite "if you can't beat'em join'em" CPU from Sun's point of view. I honestly hope that Opteron cleans Itanics clock, and the CPU landscape over the next few years is Opteron vs. IBM POWER vs. UltraSPARC, which, incidentally, is what people have been predicting for years (x86, PPC, and SPARC will be the only ISAs that remain after everyone else fizzles out).
buy groceries online
Do you trust someone to pick out the perfect melon or bunch of grapes? How about noticing that the store brand is on sale this week and altering a purchase decision in real time?
Groceries are one market where identically-labeled items are not always equivalent among themselves, and the purchasing decisions are very subjective and not set until the customer walks out the door...and even that isn't always enough.
Internet-enabled refrigerators are nothing more than a solution looking for a problem. The purpose of a refrigerator: keep stuff cold and some other stuff frozen. Compressors are reliable and last decades. Why screw it up with Windows CE and an LCD touch-screen that breaks the first time the door gets slammed by accident?
Just harness the high-voltage arcs that result from putting Bill Gates, Scott McNealy, ESR, and RMS into a room together. Cloning technology will soon be to the point where everyone can have an ideology reactor in their own home! Place your order today!
SunFire V100
The V120 is better if you need front-accessible drives. Just keep in mind that these things have 650MHz CPUs. Perfectly reasonable and low-power for general purpose work, just don't build a render farm out of them.
wireless link as a secure channel to any database
... uh, um, which ISP is this, again?
Uh, er,
Agreed. There are already enough reasons to avoid Texas; this one is simply the icing on the cake.
I don't mean to offend Texans, by any means...it's just that you now have GWB as a mascot. I suppose this is balanced by Renee Zellweger, but even that might not be enough.
The problem is that the devices went without supervision
It is unlikely that this would happen, if several thousand people were dependent on the device. It wouldn't be hard to hire two or five people to give the device a bath and check its temperature occasionally.
I say again - a state-mandated market share for operating systems - what the fucking fuck fuck?
I agree. The marketplace is slowly--but surely--coming around. StarOffice/OpenOffice.org, MacOS X, Lindows, Sun Java Desktop, et. al. are all rising competition to Windows, yet they all interoperate on standard communications protocols. Simply, Microsoft doesn't have a chance, as their cash cows are becoming obselete.
A US General believes Bush was elected by God.
That General is a complete idiot, the media knows it, and are having a field day with it. What journalist wouldn't want to make a headline about "General: my god is bigger than your god. Thbhbhthth!"
simply access the "My Government" folder[*]
* accessing the "My Government" folder incurs a per-access tax of $0.05. You are required by law to submit quarterly payments to the IRS.
And I guess giving everybody healthcare runs contrary to those goals?
Yes, because national healthcare is fundamentally tyrannical in nature (excessive taxation, government-selected choices, inequality of application based on politically motivated criteria, likely free ride for politicians, etc.). National health care violates the Fourth Amendment, also, at a minimum (the government already has your health history...no warrant needed).
National healthcare creates an imbalance of power between the people and their government that is fundamentally incompatible with the intents of the founders of this country.
I'm sure there are corporations out there that will.
I wonder if those corporations will also be baffled at the sudden increase of HR costs (i.e., employee turnover).
"what if I get a virus and it sends my Quicken files?"
Don't worry, the next generation of viruses will simply use a local root exploit in Windows to do whatever they want, anyway. Passport will not stop this. Palladium will not stop this.
to stop things ending up on InternalMemos.com
So, InternalMemos gets an envelope with Polaroids in them, and someone types them up. Nothing short of Matrix implants will stop this.