You want to use antimatter as an energy source? Find a source of antimatter first.
You can't drill for the stuff in the Anti-Middle East or anything, you know.
Before the guys at Hangar 18 can make their weapons with 23 times the energy of a space shuttle fuel tank, they're going to have to figure out how to produce and store large amounts of antimatter. That's the research that you should be doing first for any purpose, destructive or constructive.
That's being pretty generous -- The power supply of that 'average gamer system' would have to be running at peak capacity 100% of the time to use that kind of power.
A large screen CRT monitor uses somewhere around 50-70W when active, and 1-2W in sleep mode. LCD displays use less power, but they're not what the average gamer uses.
Steady state usage for the computer itself is more like 200W than 500 -- The 500W capacity on your average gamer's power supply is equal parts peak capacity for boot-up and lies told by marketing, and you would have to be playing Doom 3 all day long, every day to keep that up for the entire month. Even if you disabled power management and just let it idle all night long it would still use less than 100W.
Using these numbers, and assuming that your average gamer is playing twelve hours a day and in class or sleeping the other twelve, we're looking at an average power consumption of 175W for a total of fourty-two cents per day or $13 a month at your rates.
Finagle is the one who would be pissing on your broadband connection. Murphy is the guy who somehow manages to install a Windows 2000 service pack on his XP box.
The two laws have similar wording, but the meaning is very different.
You can get a quiet or even silent PC using off the shelf parts, if you look for them.
CPUs like the Pentium III can be underclocked and underpowered to the point that they work just fine without a fan. The VIA C3 is a Socket 370 / P-III compatable processor designed for low power and fanless operation. Check out the mini-itx motherboards for examples of these in operation.
Most video cards don't need a fan at all, although passively cooled cards can still heat up the interior of your case. It's doubtful that you really need the absolute latest and most powerfull leaf-blower video card on your home server.
Hard drives and power supplies are the other big sources of noise. Hard drives noise is noticable because it comes and goes, while power supplies need to push all the heat that those passively cooled components have been producing out of the case. A well made drive seated on noise absorbing padding, rather than bolted directly onto a steel frame, can be reduced to a low, cricket-like chirping noise while large, slower case fans can take a lot of the load off of the PSU without raising noise levels significantly. Take a look around Silent PC Review for more on this topic, or just look for a retailer in your area who carries quiet PC parts.
I have been slowly replacing all the computers around my home with silent parts over the last few years, and the difference is stunning. Just last week I needed to replace a power supply and used a spare that I had sitting on a shelf -- It sounded like a jet engine compared to everything around it. If that's the kind of noise that's coming out of your server, then I understand your frustration. You don't need to turn to rare, high tech prototypes from military labs to quiet down your PC -- All you need now is to shop around a bit.
Well that all depends on what your definition of "spam" is. And what your definition of "is" is, for that matter.
Here at Microsoft, we define "spam" as "a non-paying customer". We have implemented innovative new "spam filters" which discard legitimate email which would otherwise have been delivered to freeloaders, but that wasn't as effective at driving away the dead weight as we had hoped. The next step is to raise the fees on all of our free accounts and see how that will positively impact our revenue stream.
If he did bleed, would the blood effects be rendered better on an ATI or nVidia card? Would there be realistic physics when he fell down? And would you need to switch from the knife to the flashlight before you could get the answers to these questions?
"No way dude, that game cons red to your computer."
Now the only problem is how to get more RAM and a better video card by smacking rats over the head with your keyboard, but that's something for the engineers to figure out.
The business of television has nothing at all to do with making you happy. As a television viewer you are not the customer, you are the product and your TV habit is being sold to advertisers.
Don't make the mistake of assuming that what you want to see has any relation to what they want to show you. If a TV network figures out how to sell seven times as much advertising by airing seven different channels, even if they have to sell it at a sixth the normal rate, they will do it.
If expensive, well-written dramas with high production values can be replaced with cheap crap filmed last weekend by two guys with a camcorder, it will happen. Maybe the network will lose viewers, but so what? As long as the loss in advertising income brought on by lower ratings is smaller than the savings in production costs then _putting crap on the air is a good business move_.
It may not seem like a good thing to you, but you have to understand that _they don't care about you_. It's all about money, and money doesn't care about your happiness.
That's because you're watching HDTV. The DTV standards that I have seen don't require that programs be broadcast at that high quality.
With the same bandwidth as you were using to watch CSI (Roughly 15-20 Mbps) you could instead be seeing seven different reality shows at the same time, all broadcast at lower resolutions with higher compression.
Guess which strategy makes more money for the broadcasters?
The DTV standard allows them to subdivide the signals, so they get to pump you the Vikings losing AND the Redskins losing AND the Red Sox losing at the same quality as you already had.
I see that you're an optimist. In my experience digital TV pictures are actually worse quality than traditional broadcast TV. Because the entire image is MPEG-2 encoded, even a tiny bit of interference can cause the screen to freeze or display brightly coloured artifacts. Because the signal is being squeezed into the absolute minimum possible bandwidth the overall quality comes out as being slightly below what I would expect from a bootleg VCD.
The worst part of digital TV isn't even the picture quality, it's channel surfing. With the current technology you just can't do it. If you try to page through traditional broadcast or cable channels it's easy -- *click* *click* *click* and you see three different channels. With digital TV there is a delay of at least a second after selecting a new channel while the decoder pores over the data stream trying to piece together an image. *click* *click* *click* turns into *click*......... *click*......... *click*... *swear*
While it would be technically possible to overcome these problems by upping the bandwidth allocated to each individual station, the money to be made by packing as many extra channels as possible into the available spectrum will always be too much to ignore. If you expect the same quality as you get today from digital TV, you're going to be disappointed.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, kids these days. What's next, a story about Soviet Russia which ends with the words "First post!"?
...where's my Skittle-brau?
...he has just been carried off by aliens.
After yesterday I was starting to think that at least news about space wouldn't be sad.
Does my ability to count up to nine disqualify me from being a Slashdot editor?
Whatever will I do with myself now?
You want to use antimatter as an energy source? Find a source of antimatter first.
You can't drill for the stuff in the Anti-Middle East or anything, you know.
Before the guys at Hangar 18 can make their weapons with 23 times the energy of a space shuttle fuel tank, they're going to have to figure out how to produce and store large amounts of antimatter. That's the research that you should be doing first for any purpose, destructive or constructive.
That's being pretty generous -- The power supply of that 'average gamer system' would have to be running at peak capacity 100% of the time to use that kind of power.
A large screen CRT monitor uses somewhere around 50-70W when active, and 1-2W in sleep mode. LCD displays use less power, but they're not what the average gamer uses.
Steady state usage for the computer itself is more like 200W than 500 -- The 500W capacity on your average gamer's power supply is equal parts peak capacity for boot-up and lies told by marketing, and you would have to be playing Doom 3 all day long, every day to keep that up for the entire month. Even if you disabled power management and just let it idle all night long it would still use less than 100W.
Using these numbers, and assuming that your average gamer is playing twelve hours a day and in class or sleeping the other twelve, we're looking at an average power consumption of 175W for a total of fourty-two cents per day or $13 a month at your rates.
The back of the envelope rests, your honour.
And promoted by crackheads, crackheads, crackheads.
Why do you have a problem with those two things belonging to one person?
Having spent a lot of time around University computing labs, I have no problem with the idea that programmers can have breasts.
Theirs are just hairier than the usual kind.
Perhaps a new section for "In Soviet Russia" jokes and "First Post" posts. We could call it "Insensitive Clod".
Yes, most people would be more concerned about copyright than copywriting.
Is a person who makes copies a copywright?
Finagle is the one who would be pissing on your broadband connection. Murphy is the guy who somehow manages to install a Windows 2000 service pack on his XP box.
The two laws have similar wording, but the meaning is very different.
Old school? You mean, like M.U.L.E.?
Is there anything that Kevin Smith has not been named as a possible director for? I'm still waiting for his Green Lantern movie.
If by "new" you mean "twenty five years old, and in common use when Universal sued Sony over it in 1979", then yes it is a new word.
Absolute worst case scenario: The new Star Wars opens.
CPUs like the Pentium III can be underclocked and underpowered to the point that they work just fine without a fan. The VIA C3 is a Socket 370 / P-III compatable processor designed for low power and fanless operation. Check out the mini-itx motherboards for examples of these in operation.
Most video cards don't need a fan at all, although passively cooled cards can still heat up the interior of your case. It's doubtful that you really need the absolute latest and most powerfull leaf-blower video card on your home server.
Hard drives and power supplies are the other big sources of noise. Hard drives noise is noticable because it comes and goes, while power supplies need to push all the heat that those passively cooled components have been producing out of the case. A well made drive seated on noise absorbing padding, rather than bolted directly onto a steel frame, can be reduced to a low, cricket-like chirping noise while large, slower case fans can take a lot of the load off of the PSU without raising noise levels significantly. Take a look around Silent PC Review for more on this topic, or just look for a retailer in your area who carries quiet PC parts.
I have been slowly replacing all the computers around my home with silent parts over the last few years, and the difference is stunning. Just last week I needed to replace a power supply and used a spare that I had sitting on a shelf -- It sounded like a jet engine compared to everything around it. If that's the kind of noise that's coming out of your server, then I understand your frustration. You don't need to turn to rare, high tech prototypes from military labs to quiet down your PC -- All you need now is to shop around a bit.
Yes, we all know they spelled Laura Secord's last name wrong. Thank you. Now move along.
Here at Microsoft, we define "spam" as "a non-paying customer". We have implemented innovative new "spam filters" which discard legitimate email which would otherwise have been delivered to freeloaders, but that wasn't as effective at driving away the dead weight as we had hoped. The next step is to raise the fees on all of our free accounts and see how that will positively impact our revenue stream.
If he did bleed, would the blood effects be rendered better on an ATI or nVidia card? Would there be realistic physics when he fell down? And would you need to switch from the knife to the flashlight before you could get the answers to these questions?
Inquiring minds want to know.
It's a "Bling Drive" now.
It puts buying decisions into a familiar context.
"Wow, Doom 4 is out!"
"No way dude, that game cons red to your computer."
Now the only problem is how to get more RAM and a better video card by smacking rats over the head with your keyboard, but that's something for the engineers to figure out.
The business of television has nothing at all to do with making you happy. As a television viewer you are not the customer, you are the product and your TV habit is being sold to advertisers.
Don't make the mistake of assuming that what you want to see has any relation to what they want to show you. If a TV network figures out how to sell seven times as much advertising by airing seven different channels, even if they have to sell it at a sixth the normal rate, they will do it.
If expensive, well-written dramas with high production values can be replaced with cheap crap filmed last weekend by two guys with a camcorder, it will happen. Maybe the network will lose viewers, but so what? As long as the loss in advertising income brought on by lower ratings is smaller than the savings in production costs then _putting crap on the air is a good business move_.
It may not seem like a good thing to you, but you have to understand that _they don't care about you_. It's all about money, and money doesn't care about your happiness.
Sure, there are some similarities to Dune, but as we all know _everything_ in Star Wars was ripped off from Spaceballs.
That's because you're watching HDTV. The DTV standards that I have seen don't require that programs be broadcast at that high quality.
With the same bandwidth as you were using to watch CSI (Roughly 15-20 Mbps) you could instead be seeing seven different reality shows at the same time, all broadcast at lower resolutions with higher compression.
Guess which strategy makes more money for the broadcasters?
The DTV standard allows them to subdivide the signals, so they get to pump you the Vikings losing AND the Redskins losing AND the Red Sox losing at the same quality as you already had.
... ... ... *click* ... ... ... *click* ... *swear*
I see that you're an optimist. In my experience digital TV pictures are actually worse quality than traditional broadcast TV. Because the entire image is MPEG-2 encoded, even a tiny bit of interference can cause the screen to freeze or display brightly coloured artifacts. Because the signal is being squeezed into the absolute minimum possible bandwidth the overall quality comes out as being slightly below what I would expect from a bootleg VCD.
The worst part of digital TV isn't even the picture quality, it's channel surfing. With the current technology you just can't do it. If you try to page through traditional broadcast or cable channels it's easy -- *click* *click* *click* and you see three different channels. With digital TV there is a delay of at least a second after selecting a new channel while the decoder pores over the data stream trying to piece together an image. *click* *click* *click* turns into *click*
While it would be technically possible to overcome these problems by upping the bandwidth allocated to each individual station, the money to be made by packing as many extra channels as possible into the available spectrum will always be too much to ignore. If you expect the same quality as you get today from digital TV, you're going to be disappointed.