The key difference between devices like this one and the Audiotron is that they rely on having the mp3's stored in another location. This means that you never run out of capacity (when you do, you jsut upgrade the hard drive in your PC).
As the previous poster said, this is a home audio device, not a portable player, so it's a different approach and a different feature set. Better in absolute terms? I dunno, maybe. Better for the home-audio environment it was designed for? Almost certainly.
I see. Did a bit of digging on my own. So the key point here is preventing the cells from accumulating on the bottom of a vessel and thereby forming unnatural multi-cell structures. You can't erase the acceleration on each individual cell (which is probably negligable anyway) but you can mitigate the collective effects, so the cells are "more micro-gravity like" in their conglomorate behavior.
Still not convinced that cells in a rotating bio-reactor are a good model for cells in an in vivo micro-gravitational environment, but at least "modeled micro-graviity" makes sense now!
OK, sure, Vomit Comet and all that, got it. But if you're going to assay the virulence of microorganisms, it stands to reason that you have to have them in micro-gravity for at least one round of cell division, and hopefully many more than that. Dropping the petri dish a few meters isn't going to give you that kind of time in a micro gravitational climate. Heck, even if you commision the aforementioned V.C. and send the micro-beasties on a 10-day sinusoidal roller-coaster ride, you're really assaying for virulence in constantly cycling gravitational conditions, not in micro gravity.
Main Entry: virulent Pronunciation: -l&nt Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Latin virulentus, from viruspoison Date: 14th century 1 a : marked by a rapid, severe, and malignant course b : able to overcome bodily defensive mechanisms 2 : extremely poisonous or venomous 3 : full of malice : MALIGNANT 4 : objectionably harsh or strong - virulently adverb
Virulent, as applied to bacteria, refers to its propensity to a) multiply quickly b) infect a host efficiently and c) cause deleterious effects. It has nothing to do with that other "virulentas"-derived word, "virus" beyond sounding the same and sharing an etymological root.
There is no ambiguity or incorrectness in referring to a bacteria (or bacterial disease) as "virulent." It is, in fact, a very specific and technically correct term. (eg, one can and must talk about virulent vs benign strains of E. coli).
All that being said, you are dead right that the mean lay understanding of basic bio is woeful, though I would suggest that perhaps we need a Feynman, not an Asimov, but beggars can't be choosers, right?
More than one previous poster has pointed out that OSX and Linux users are natural allies, and that the two systems have more similarities than differences, but I would put an even finer point on it:
OSX and Linux can help each other by breaking the monoculture. There have been a few stories recently about the Linux user base being set to overtake that of OSX in the next few years. These stories are invariably followed by choruses of "Apple is dying." but consider: An (corporate) IT environment which welcomes Linux on the desktop and in the server room is a) more likely to consider alternate platforms and b) an extremely friendly environment (from a protocol standpoint) in which to deploy OSX boxes.
Unlike MS OSes, which expend a great deal of their energies in locking out other platforms, both Linux and OSX are commited to open standards; they are playing by the same rules and will always play well together. A world with (let's say) 85% Windows 10% Linux and 5% OSX on the desktop is a world where more attention and emaphasis will be given to open standards, where OSX will have less resistance to grow its share in many different market spaces, and (perhaps most importantly) a world where the barrier to entry for some theoretical new-and-better OS is much lower.
To look at this another way: As PCs become more commoditized, and as they move more toward being plug-in-and-use appliances, the OS must fade further and further into the background; it must become transperant to the user. The day will come when end users neither know nor care what OS they are using (some would argue that's always been true;) Sony will ship a slickified custom linux with their Vaios, geared toward the multi-media heavy tasks that their product is aimed at, other companies will ship machines with stripped down, extremely easy to use "big-button" interfaces for grandma to check email and look at pictures of the grandkids. If we can just break the MS lock on the market, there will be plenty of room for a rich ecosystem of OSes to survive. If they are all commited to open standards, there is no reason why a plethora of OSes (as opposed to just one or a few) cannot both survive in the market and be easily managed by IT pros.
The future is not a world where Linux (or MacOSX) has replaced windows on the desktop, but rather one where we have a burgeoning number of choices, and can pick amongst many tools to get the job done right. (I hope....)
The point, however, is that it gives you a basis to compare any G5 system to any P4 system, and get a rough idea of how they will perform relative to each other MHz for MHz.
Sinced the stated goal of the benchmarking was to be able to gauge G5 performance relative to G4 and P4 performance in fluid-dynamic-number-crunching, this seems a reasonable unit to use. One can easily use it to do cost/performance analyses on current or future configurations of Macs and PCs.
More than that, you can have multiple Audiotrons around the house playing different tracks from the same library. Better still, your library need not be on a single machine, so your have your music on your machine, your S.O. on another, and the kids on yet a third, but to the Audiotron spread throughout your home, it's one big happy library.
This is basically a refinement of the suggestion of an amp in each room with some sort of simple/slow/old machine acting as a basic interface and player, only the a-tron is your interface machine. This works well because the atron sports a scroll wheel and large LED display so getting to music is easy. Plus, it looks like a stereo component and is fanless.
Combine this a Phillips Pronto remote or three and you've got a full house, highly configureable sound supersystem. Heck, you can even change tracks on all the a-trons in the house from a web browser.
Anyway, maybe you can tell I like my audiotron. To me, it's clearly the best solution.
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Yeah, I just phrased it poorly. I meant to say: the difference between (other devices) and (Squeezebox and Audiotron).
I actually am a happy Audiotron owner and plug it shamelessly every chance I get.
The key difference between devices like this one and the Audiotron is that they rely on having the mp3's stored in another location. This means that you never run out of capacity (when you do, you jsut upgrade the hard drive in your PC).
As the previous poster said, this is a home audio device, not a portable player, so it's a different approach and a different feature set. Better in absolute terms? I dunno, maybe. Better for the home-audio environment it was designed for? Almost certainly.
Still not convinced that cells in a rotating bio-reactor are a good model for cells in an in vivo micro-gravitational environment, but at least "modeled micro-graviity" makes sense now!
OK, sure, Vomit Comet and all that, got it. But if you're going to assay the virulence of microorganisms, it stands to reason that you have to have them in micro-gravity for at least one round of cell division, and hopefully many more than that.
Dropping the petri dish a few meters isn't going to give you that kind of time in a micro gravitational climate. Heck, even if you commision the aforementioned V.C. and send the micro-beasties on a 10-day sinusoidal roller-coaster ride, you're really assaying for virulence in constantly cycling gravitational conditions, not in micro gravity.
What am I missing?
I can't help myself....
From m-w.com:
Main Entry: virulent
Pronunciation: -l&nt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin virulentus, from viruspoison
Date: 14th century
1 a : marked by a rapid, severe, and malignant course b : able to overcome bodily defensive mechanisms
2 : extremely poisonous or venomous
3 : full of malice : MALIGNANT
4 : objectionably harsh or strong
- virulently adverb
Virulent, as applied to bacteria, refers to its propensity to a) multiply quickly b) infect a host efficiently and c) cause deleterious effects. It has nothing to do with that other "virulentas"-derived word, "virus" beyond sounding the same and sharing an etymological root.
There is no ambiguity or incorrectness in referring to a bacteria (or bacterial disease) as "virulent." It is, in fact, a very specific and technically correct term. (eg, one can and must talk about virulent vs benign strains of E. coli).
All that being said, you are dead right that the mean lay understanding of basic bio is woeful, though I would suggest that perhaps we need a Feynman, not an Asimov, but beggars can't be choosers, right?
Anyone care to enlighten me as to what "Modeled Microgravity" is exactly? How do you simulate u-G?
Just wondering...
More than one previous poster has pointed out that OSX and Linux users are natural allies, and that the two systems have more similarities than differences, but I would put an even finer point on it:
;) Sony will ship a slickified custom linux with their Vaios, geared toward the multi-media heavy tasks that their product is aimed at, other companies will ship machines with stripped down, extremely easy to use "big-button" interfaces for grandma to check email and look at pictures of the grandkids. If we can just break the MS lock on the market, there will be plenty of room for a rich ecosystem of OSes to survive. If they are all commited to open standards, there is no reason why a plethora of OSes (as opposed to just one or a few) cannot both survive in the market and be easily managed by IT pros.
OSX and Linux can help each other by breaking the monoculture. There have been a few stories recently about the Linux user base being set to overtake that of OSX in the next few years. These stories are invariably followed by choruses of "Apple is dying." but consider: An (corporate) IT environment which welcomes Linux on the desktop and in the server room is a) more likely to consider alternate platforms and b) an extremely friendly environment (from a protocol standpoint) in which to deploy OSX boxes.
Unlike MS OSes, which expend a great deal of their energies in locking out other platforms, both Linux and OSX are commited to open standards; they are playing by the same rules and will always play well together. A world with (let's say) 85% Windows 10% Linux and 5% OSX on the desktop is a world where more attention and emaphasis will be given to open standards, where OSX will have less resistance to grow its share in many different market spaces, and (perhaps most importantly) a world where the barrier to entry for some theoretical new-and-better OS is much lower.
To look at this another way: As PCs become more commoditized, and as they move more toward being plug-in-and-use appliances, the OS must fade further and further into the background; it must become transperant to the user. The day will come when end users neither know nor care what OS they are using (some would argue that's always been true
The future is not a world where Linux (or MacOSX) has replaced windows on the desktop, but rather one where we have a burgeoning number of choices, and can pick amongst many tools to get the job done right. (I hope....)
-alex
The point, however, is that it gives you a basis to compare any G5 system to any P4 system, and get a rough idea of how they will perform relative to each other MHz for MHz.
Sinced the stated goal of the benchmarking was to be able to gauge G5 performance relative to G4 and P4 performance in fluid-dynamic-number-crunching, this seems a reasonable unit to use. One can easily use it to do cost/performance analyses on current or future configurations of Macs and PCs.
More than that, you can have multiple Audiotrons around the house playing different tracks from the same library. Better still, your library need not be on a single machine, so your have your music on your machine, your S.O. on another, and the kids on yet a third, but to the Audiotron spread throughout your home, it's one big happy library.
This is basically a refinement of the suggestion of an amp in each room with some sort of simple/slow/old machine acting as a basic interface and player, only the a-tron is your interface machine. This works well because the atron sports a scroll wheel and large LED display so getting to music is easy. Plus, it looks like a stereo component and is fanless.
Combine this a Phillips Pronto remote or three and you've got a full house, highly configureable sound supersystem. Heck, you can even change tracks on all the a-trons in the house from a web browser.
Anyway, maybe you can tell I like my audiotron. To me, it's clearly the best solution.
Here's the atron site