i7 is MUCH faster per core and overall than earlier CPU generations. If you have the budget to think about a RAM disk, you probably want plenty of CPU power as well. The benchmarks I looked at showed that even SSDs lift the hard disk bottleneck enough that the new bottleneck is your CPU. Especially with a RAM disk, your CPU is going to be the bottleneck...it might be able to read or write from the 'disk' at thousands of megabytes/second, but it has to process data as well.
Anyways, it's hard to get enough RAM on a motherboard, especially if you use i7. You have to buy the server version of the i7 chip and so on. You do want more than 24gb...I was looking into 48gb....because I wanted to copy over my entire system disk into RAM, so that everything would be instant. Alas, after looking at benchmarks and comparing it to the alternative of a mere $229 for an 80 GB Intel SSD, I ditched the idea.
Well, it's the least shitty 64 bit OS available that will play mainstream games and allow you to run most software written for desktop PCs over the last 30 years.
RTFA. The author found that Nvidia drivers will break on his test machine. Given that Nvidia makes about half the graphics cards, and the point of a Windows box is to play games, that's a show stopper. I would do the same thing if I were Microsoft.
Look at it this way : if Microsoft DIDN'T put a limit of 4 gigs, they would have to support that hacked together mess called PAE for consumers. This way, as computers commonly sold start to come with more and more memory, people will naturally migrate to 64 bit and the device driver writers will be forced to comply. That's where the real problem lies : lack of 64 bit driver support is the only reason that everyone isn't using 64 bit windows already.
Still a hack. The performance benefits from that aren't great. Already, certain games (like Supreme Commander) need more than 3 gigabytes of RAM. Second, a lot of virtual memory only can cache things that your hard disk has read recently. It won't let you cache a file that hasn't been accessed since you booted. An Intel SSD would offer you a far better performance boost for your buck, since with an SSD all files on the device can be accessed rapidly with low latency.
Even a RAM disk offers only limited benefits over an SSD, and is not cost effective. I looked into RAM disks, and found that in order to get a decent amount of RAM onto a motherboard, you have to sacrifice processor speed and pay a LOT more. RAID 0 Intel SSDs coupled with a high end processor and a modest amount of RAM (8-12 gigs) gives more performance for the same cost. And you need a 64-bit version of Windows to make it all work. Personally, I still use 64-bit XP, but my next machine will be a Windows 7 box.
What it boils down to is : it's possible for 32-bit windows to use more than 4 gigs of memory. Microsoft doesn't allow this for the consumer licensed versions of Windows. While the article makes various allegations that Microsoft is doing this to be bad, the author found out that many device drivers intended for 32 bit windows will break if PAE is enabled. In addition, PAE is an ugly hack, and it still won't let a single thread access more than 3 gigs of RAM. These days, single applications like games and video editing software can easily use more than 3 gigs of RAM.
Long story short : Get, and use 64-bit Windows for Windows machines with a lot of RAM. Since 64-bit XP is poorly supported, and Vista is dog-shit, then that means you should be using 64-bit Windows 7.
A laser launch system would cost about 5 billion dollars. Cheaper than Orion or Constellation, and a heck of a lot better bargain in the long run. That's what NASA should be developing. Compared to their main expenses, a few million tossed out to university PhDs who have no ability to actually build their ideas is chicken feed.
All these gigantic federal government agencies commonly put on displays like this to look good in public and to make the next budget request go smoother. Truth is, any aerospace project run by the government costs so many resources that it's kind of irrelevent whether it's environmentally friendly or not. If you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something, your actions cause the labor of thousands of people, all of whom will burn up all kinds of resources to get the job done. It doesn't really matter what the resulting rocket burns - the pollution from all the machinery and coal power plants and pickup trucks and countless other things is far greater.
The government needs to do what private industry can't : research a cost effective vehicle for accessing space. Whether that be an elevator, a bank of lasers, a gigantic railgun, or a factory in Russia mass producing simple rockets, we need something drastically better than the current crap. Until something is done about the stupendous costs of rockets, it's pointless to even discuss trips to far off planets and other big manned expeditions.
I'm guessing that the reason google redacted the text of it's complaint is because it's clearly going to get what it wants. Google has no need to badmouth them in public. AT&T and Apple colluding to prevent competition looks really bad. It would have been much smarter for AT&T or apple to introduce enough latency and jitter into the data link to effectively block VoIP apps via inherent technical limitations.
You can greatly improve your credit score in a few years, and get a wallet full of high limit cards, without more than a modest income. It isn't hard, and you don't have to pay much in interest. Just apply for good quality, low interest cards (it helps to have a bank like USAA which really offers nice deals), about 4 of them total. The reason is that up to 4 separate credit accounts will raise your credit score. Don't actually use them much.
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THEM SET TO AUTO-PAY. It can take a while for banks to really trust you with credit, and the one sure way to screw it up is to miss a payment.
Hate to quibble, but at the end of GI Joe, Cobra Commander does fix himself. He no longer needs his breath mask, because he programmed his nanobots to repair his lungs. That's one way that Storm Shadow could have survived the movie as well. (because Cobra Commander has that remote control that lets him control the nanobots in every one of his soldiers. He could theoretically have sent a signal out ordering them to heal damage on any of his troops right before he was captured)
Unless you've got a lot of money, you need various forms of credit in case of an emergency. What if you suddenly need to pay a $50,000 medical bill because you suffered an injury the insurance won't cover? Or a legal bill? For even the upper middle class with a few hundred K in assets, it's not convenient to come up with that kind of money on the spot. You usually have to sell some stocks or other securities, or get a second mortgage, etc. A few high limit credit cards in your wallet can make the problem a lot more managable.
Insurance of all types looks at credit ratings. Cell phone companies.
A key one is EMPLOYERS. Yep, your credit score can determine whether they even offer you a job. Unfair, but some do it.
Banks also care.
Bottom line : your credit score matters a ton, and you should do what you can to protect and optimize it. The formula is complex, but you should have exactly 4 high limit credit cards with very little utilization. You should keep those 4 cards for as long as possible, never canceling them. Maybe have them set to be paid in full automatically at the end of each month, and occasionally purchase something using the cards. You should get a form of long term consumer debt (like a mortgage) and pay that as well. Usually, even if you can afford to buy a house cash, a mortgage can give you tax benefits that are worth it, and you can secure the mortgage with some securities to lower the interest rate.
The real problem is that even if you get the debt collectors to stop dunning you, there will still be that negative entry on your credit report. You have to then manually fight each negative entry, which costs time and money.
Do you actually own a pack of n-vision bulbs or not? Not all CFLs are created equal. I'm pretty sensitive to flicker (I can always see a CRT flickering) and yet these don't seem to flicker. The light might have a large blue component on a spectrograph, but if I look over at the bulb right next to me I can't see that - I see a much softer, warmer light just like the light coming from the glowing filament bulb it is emulating.
It is FUD : right now, the power companies have to spend a bunch of money buying equipment (capital) that just sits there 90% of the time. If a bunch of people plugged their cars in at night, that equipment and those lines would be better utilized, and the power company would get a better return on their investment. Yes, more coal would be burned...but there would be more of a market for wind power, nuclear, etc. All the power company people say it's no big deal : that infrastructure can take the demand. Yes, of course, if the central power fails, you better have some kind of backup or your car isn't going to be recharged.
A 40 year old fridge might not have the best insulation.
The popular science article had judges who were not allowed to see which bulb was producing which light look at a series of samples. They looked at color patterns, faces, text, etc and decided which light was easiest to read by and so forth. This was an objective test.
Maybe. Although Satellite phones were what we used in the National Guard during the Hurricane Katrina evacuation. And, actually, cell phones did still work...but only if they were T-mobile. Point is, we're comparing the pros and cons of ripping out the copper and putting in fiber and doing phone with VoIP versus leaving the copper in the way.
VoIP is a big improvement. The call quality is as good or better than the old land lines 99% of the time. Yes, the internet isn't as reliable as the old land lines were...but it's still good enough. If an emergency happens, that what what a cell phone is for : VoIP isn't meant to be your only phone, it's a significantly cheaper supplement to a cell phone. Also, you can make long distance calls via VoIP far more cheaply than any other method.
Hybrid cars are still an experimental technology. They aren't quite to the break even point over a new conventional gas burning sedan, I agree. (well, sort of : actually last year the hybrid fever raised resale value on priuses so much that they were the lowest cost to own new car out there)
Plugin electrics : that's just FUD. The power company execs all say that they have plenty of capacity, because at night the current electric grid has a oversupply of capacity. The grid has to be able to handle peak loads on hot summer days, and so the power companies have to rate their lines and buy enough generators to supply that enormous load. Most new power generation added today is wind...which blows just as much at night (when the electric cars are recharging) as it does during the day.
A 40 year old fridge is unlikely to be very energy efficient, and might gobble it's replacement cost in electricity every few years. The thing about those made in china appliances that last only 3 years is that they tend to be vastly cheaper, so much so that the short lifespan is still a cost effective proposition.
I bought some of the ones listed in this article : I bought about 35 of them for about $50. They will pay for themselves and then some within a year. Also, the bulbs will last a lot longer...supposed to be good for 9 years at 4 hours usage per day.
In the article, it's stated that the load on the google file system has grown orders of magnitude greater than it was ever intended to handle. And one of the algorithm changes is that the chunks in the new file system are 1 megabyte in size rather than 64 megabytes. This is to reduce latency, which makes logical sense...but dividing a gigantic database into pieces that are 64 time smaller doesn't make intuitive sense...
The Tesla uses electricity for both. It sounds inefficient, but compared to the power draw for moving the vehicle, it's a drop in the bucket.
Best part is, you'll be able to sit in your Volt in the parking lot and nap with the A/C or the heat running, and yet the engine can be off until it needs to start in order to charge the batteries back up. (which would probably be many hours later if you started with full batteries)
That isn't the ONLY solution to the problem, you know. Moving a whole ##$#ing planet isn't easy. We could, you know, make really thin giant mirrors and put them into low earth orbit to reflect away some of the excess light. That could pretty much be done using technology available within 10 years of developement from today. (we'd have to develop a mass means of launching lots of stuff into orbit, using lasers or a linear accelerator, but other than that we have the technology)
If true, our existence is quite incredible. Life on earth is thought to have taken between 2 and 3 billion years to evolve to the current biosphere extant today. Obviously, that means it took the process of evolution all this time to design creatures as complex as humans, as well as the other sophisticated life on this planet.
More than likely, humans will develop technology that will allow humans (or more likely, human creations) to spread beyond this star to the broader universe beyond. Yet, had evolution been a mere billion years too slow, or had random accidents meant that intelligent life was never evolved, then this would have never happened.
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i7 is MUCH faster per core and overall than earlier CPU generations. If you have the budget to think about a RAM disk, you probably want plenty of CPU power as well. The benchmarks I looked at showed that even SSDs lift the hard disk bottleneck enough that the new bottleneck is your CPU. Especially with a RAM disk, your CPU is going to be the bottleneck...it might be able to read or write from the 'disk' at thousands of megabytes/second, but it has to process data as well.
Anyways, it's hard to get enough RAM on a motherboard, especially if you use i7. You have to buy the server version of the i7 chip and so on. You do want more than 24gb...I was looking into 48gb....because I wanted to copy over my entire system disk into RAM, so that everything would be instant. Alas, after looking at benchmarks and comparing it to the alternative of a mere $229 for an 80 GB Intel SSD, I ditched the idea.
Aye. Linux is no utopia, though. Truth is, Windows works pretty darn well so long as you cater to it's "special needs" properly.
Well, it's the least shitty 64 bit OS available that will play mainstream games and allow you to run most software written for desktop PCs over the last 30 years.
RTFA. The author found that Nvidia drivers will break on his test machine. Given that Nvidia makes about half the graphics cards, and the point of a Windows box is to play games, that's a show stopper. I would do the same thing if I were Microsoft.
Look at it this way : if Microsoft DIDN'T put a limit of 4 gigs, they would have to support that hacked together mess called PAE for consumers. This way, as computers commonly sold start to come with more and more memory, people will naturally migrate to 64 bit and the device driver writers will be forced to comply. That's where the real problem lies : lack of 64 bit driver support is the only reason that everyone isn't using 64 bit windows already.
Still a hack. The performance benefits from that aren't great. Already, certain games (like Supreme Commander) need more than 3 gigabytes of RAM. Second, a lot of virtual memory only can cache things that your hard disk has read recently. It won't let you cache a file that hasn't been accessed since you booted. An Intel SSD would offer you a far better performance boost for your buck, since with an SSD all files on the device can be accessed rapidly with low latency.
Even a RAM disk offers only limited benefits over an SSD, and is not cost effective. I looked into RAM disks, and found that in order to get a decent amount of RAM onto a motherboard, you have to sacrifice processor speed and pay a LOT more. RAID 0 Intel SSDs coupled with a high end processor and a modest amount of RAM (8-12 gigs) gives more performance for the same cost. And you need a 64-bit version of Windows to make it all work. Personally, I still use 64-bit XP, but my next machine will be a Windows 7 box.
I skimmed the article.
What it boils down to is : it's possible for 32-bit windows to use more than 4 gigs of memory. Microsoft doesn't allow this for the consumer licensed versions of Windows. While the article makes various allegations that Microsoft is doing this to be bad, the author found out that many device drivers intended for 32 bit windows will break if PAE is enabled. In addition, PAE is an ugly hack, and it still won't let a single thread access more than 3 gigs of RAM. These days, single applications like games and video editing software can easily use more than 3 gigs of RAM.
Long story short : Get, and use 64-bit Windows for Windows machines with a lot of RAM. Since 64-bit XP is poorly supported, and Vista is dog-shit, then that means you should be using 64-bit Windows 7.
A laser launch system would cost about 5 billion dollars. Cheaper than Orion or Constellation, and a heck of a lot better bargain in the long run. That's what NASA should be developing. Compared to their main expenses, a few million tossed out to university PhDs who have no ability to actually build their ideas is chicken feed.
All these gigantic federal government agencies commonly put on displays like this to look good in public and to make the next budget request go smoother. Truth is, any aerospace project run by the government costs so many resources that it's kind of irrelevent whether it's environmentally friendly or not. If you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something, your actions cause the labor of thousands of people, all of whom will burn up all kinds of resources to get the job done. It doesn't really matter what the resulting rocket burns - the pollution from all the machinery and coal power plants and pickup trucks and countless other things is far greater.
The government needs to do what private industry can't : research a cost effective vehicle for accessing space. Whether that be an elevator, a bank of lasers, a gigantic railgun, or a factory in Russia mass producing simple rockets, we need something drastically better than the current crap. Until something is done about the stupendous costs of rockets, it's pointless to even discuss trips to far off planets and other big manned expeditions.
I'm guessing that the reason google redacted the text of it's complaint is because it's clearly going to get what it wants. Google has no need to badmouth them in public. AT&T and Apple colluding to prevent competition looks really bad. It would have been much smarter for AT&T or apple to introduce enough latency and jitter into the data link to effectively block VoIP apps via inherent technical limitations.
Well, he healed Destro's third degree burns...
True, he covered the skin with a metal mask, but at least he healed what would otherwise be a serious illness.
You can greatly improve your credit score in a few years, and get a wallet full of high limit cards, without more than a modest income. It isn't hard, and you don't have to pay much in interest. Just apply for good quality, low interest cards (it helps to have a bank like USAA which really offers nice deals), about 4 of them total. The reason is that up to 4 separate credit accounts will raise your credit score. Don't actually use them much.
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THEM SET TO AUTO-PAY. It can take a while for banks to really trust you with credit, and the one sure way to screw it up is to miss a payment.
Not true. The formula actually doesn't factor that in.
Hate to quibble, but at the end of GI Joe, Cobra Commander does fix himself. He no longer needs his breath mask, because he programmed his nanobots to repair his lungs. That's one way that Storm Shadow could have survived the movie as well. (because Cobra Commander has that remote control that lets him control the nanobots in every one of his soldiers. He could theoretically have sent a signal out ordering them to heal damage on any of his troops right before he was captured)
Lots of things.
Unless you've got a lot of money, you need various forms of credit in case of an emergency. What if you suddenly need to pay a $50,000 medical bill because you suffered an injury the insurance won't cover? Or a legal bill? For even the upper middle class with a few hundred K in assets, it's not convenient to come up with that kind of money on the spot. You usually have to sell some stocks or other securities, or get a second mortgage, etc. A few high limit credit cards in your wallet can make the problem a lot more managable.
Insurance of all types looks at credit ratings. Cell phone companies.
A key one is EMPLOYERS. Yep, your credit score can determine whether they even offer you a job. Unfair, but some do it.
Banks also care.
Bottom line : your credit score matters a ton, and you should do what you can to protect and optimize it. The formula is complex, but you should have exactly 4 high limit credit cards with very little utilization. You should keep those 4 cards for as long as possible, never canceling them. Maybe have them set to be paid in full automatically at the end of each month, and occasionally purchase something using the cards. You should get a form of long term consumer debt (like a mortgage) and pay that as well. Usually, even if you can afford to buy a house cash, a mortgage can give you tax benefits that are worth it, and you can secure the mortgage with some securities to lower the interest rate.
The real problem is that even if you get the debt collectors to stop dunning you, there will still be that negative entry on your credit report. You have to then manually fight each negative entry, which costs time and money.
Do you actually own a pack of n-vision bulbs or not? Not all CFLs are created equal. I'm pretty sensitive to flicker (I can always see a CRT flickering) and yet these don't seem to flicker. The light might have a large blue component on a spectrograph, but if I look over at the bulb right next to me I can't see that - I see a much softer, warmer light just like the light coming from the glowing filament bulb it is emulating.
I'm telling you, buy some n-visions and find out for yourself. They don't flicker visibly, there's no bluish hue.
Land lines didn't work during Hurricane Katrina.
Agree about Priuses.
It is FUD : right now, the power companies have to spend a bunch of money buying equipment (capital) that just sits there 90% of the time. If a bunch of people plugged their cars in at night, that equipment and those lines would be better utilized, and the power company would get a better return on their investment. Yes, more coal would be burned...but there would be more of a market for wind power, nuclear, etc. All the power company people say it's no big deal : that infrastructure can take the demand. Yes, of course, if the central power fails, you better have some kind of backup or your car isn't going to be recharged.
A 40 year old fridge might not have the best insulation.
The popular science article had judges who were not allowed to see which bulb was producing which light look at a series of samples. They looked at color patterns, faces, text, etc and decided which light was easiest to read by and so forth. This was an objective test.
Maybe. Although Satellite phones were what we used in the National Guard during the Hurricane Katrina evacuation. And, actually, cell phones did still work...but only if they were T-mobile. Point is, we're comparing the pros and cons of ripping out the copper and putting in fiber and doing phone with VoIP versus leaving the copper in the way.
VoIP is a big improvement. The call quality is as good or better than the old land lines 99% of the time. Yes, the internet isn't as reliable as the old land lines were...but it's still good enough. If an emergency happens, that what what a cell phone is for : VoIP isn't meant to be your only phone, it's a significantly cheaper supplement to a cell phone. Also, you can make long distance calls via VoIP far more cheaply than any other method.
Hybrid cars are still an experimental technology. They aren't quite to the break even point over a new conventional gas burning sedan, I agree. (well, sort of : actually last year the hybrid fever raised resale value on priuses so much that they were the lowest cost to own new car out there)
Plugin electrics : that's just FUD. The power company execs all say that they have plenty of capacity, because at night the current electric grid has a oversupply of capacity. The grid has to be able to handle peak loads on hot summer days, and so the power companies have to rate their lines and buy enough generators to supply that enormous load. Most new power generation added today is wind...which blows just as much at night (when the electric cars are recharging) as it does during the day.
A 40 year old fridge is unlikely to be very energy efficient, and might gobble it's replacement cost in electricity every few years. The thing about those made in china appliances that last only 3 years is that they tend to be vastly cheaper, so much so that the short lifespan is still a cost effective proposition.
CFLs aren't shitty, they produce objectively better light than incandescents. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularmechanics.com%2Fhome_journal%2Fhome_improvement%2F4215199.html&ei=hcOEStC_FdmntgeXu9mvCg&usg=AFQjCNEjY3qC-6ZVp-acskW03uRIZwpnzg&sig2=iZpa8x7ziLyp_oLJXfbClw
I bought some of the ones listed in this article : I bought about 35 of them for about $50. They will pay for themselves and then some within a year. Also, the bulbs will last a lot longer...supposed to be good for 9 years at 4 hours usage per day.
lol. nice comment.
In the article, it's stated that the load on the google file system has grown orders of magnitude greater than it was ever intended to handle. And one of the algorithm changes is that the chunks in the new file system are 1 megabyte in size rather than 64 megabytes. This is to reduce latency, which makes logical sense...but dividing a gigantic database into pieces that are 64 time smaller doesn't make intuitive sense...
The Tesla uses electricity for both. It sounds inefficient, but compared to the power draw for moving the vehicle, it's a drop in the bucket.
Best part is, you'll be able to sit in your Volt in the parking lot and nap with the A/C or the heat running, and yet the engine can be off until it needs to start in order to charge the batteries back up. (which would probably be many hours later if you started with full batteries)
That isn't the ONLY solution to the problem, you know. Moving a whole ##$#ing planet isn't easy. We could, you know, make really thin giant mirrors and put them into low earth orbit to reflect away some of the excess light. That could pretty much be done using technology available within 10 years of developement from today. (we'd have to develop a mass means of launching lots of stuff into orbit, using lasers or a linear accelerator, but other than that we have the technology)
If true, our existence is quite incredible. Life on earth is thought to have taken between 2 and 3 billion years to evolve to the current biosphere extant today. Obviously, that means it took the process of evolution all this time to design creatures as complex as humans, as well as the other sophisticated life on this planet.
More than likely, humans will develop technology that will allow humans (or more likely, human creations) to spread beyond this star to the broader universe beyond. Yet, had evolution been a mere billion years too slow, or had random accidents meant that intelligent life was never evolved, then this would have never happened.