True, but you the thermal engine brings the power (more or less) directly to the drive train while the power plant needs to transport it over (long) wires (=losses), doing some low-high-low-voltage magic along the road (= losses), stuffing it into batteries (= losses) and out again once you actually start using it (= losses).
That said, having less centralised production by means of solar panels on everyone's roof and/or local wind-turbines might offset quite a bit of supra.
I'm not a fan the ICE, or at least not of what it runs on most of the time. But I think very few people truly appreciate the amount of energy stored in a liter of fuel. (**) That said, I'm hoping that by the time my current car needs replacing there will be decent EV's at affordable prices, and just like cheap PV-cells are just around the corner, I'm not holding my breath on this oen either =( Currently options seem to be either small and with limited capacity (C-Zero, Leaf,...) or (very) expensive and by the looks of it not really aimed at family usage (eg. Tesla Roadster). I'm actually hoping that by then there will be a viable Prius plug-in but I guess they'll suffer the same technical hurdles as all the others; they simply have my sympathy for sticking with the concept (and development costs) of hybrids over the years even when they weren't "hip" yet. Currently I'm keeping an eye on the Fluence ZE which is here and now and looks practical enough but 160km on a charge isn't quite there yet IMHO. Oh well, I've got at least 3-4 more years before I need to start looking around, I hope =)
As for the TFA, IMHO, regardless of what we will come up with to produce our electricity, the main hurdle remains storage. There are plenty of ways to get "free" energy converted into what we need, but often time it's neither where nor when we want it... inventing/building a sustainable method to store it -preferably in a distributed pattern- would cut out the 'when' problem and solve 85% if the issues. All that from my armchair-engineer-masters off course.
(**: if you think about it, people go all happy-greeny for replacing an 80 Watt bulb with a 17 Watt 'energy saver' but then go out and buy a pick-up truck with a 250.000 Watt engine in it !?! I'll agree you won't be using that power all the time, but assuming the thing would put out electricity it would be able to deliver over a 1000 Amps @ 220V ! That's quite a few households.)
Funny but true : yes that's what some people ARE afraid off. In theory, judging on your consumption they might be able to deduce when you're most likely not at home and that would then be the best time to break in.
Personally I think most thugs have much more sophisticated methods to scout their targets.
(similar panic has struck us poor Belgians now too as Google Street View for Belgium went live yesterday...oh man, the reactions...)
AFAIK a hash is just a (smallish) number calculated on a (largish) set of data. By sheer definition a single hash will match multiple distinct sets. How does encrypting a data-set affect the possibility of match with a different set ?
That's only true if you have internet-access on the machine you're installing on. I'll agree that seems trivial these days, but reality has shown me otherwise on a couple of occasions (**) and at those times I was very happy the ISO contained all the stuff I planned installing. (mind that I usually only burn the 'alternative' cd's, I've never really understood why I would first boot into a LiveCD to start the setup from there...)
(** missing drivers in most cases, and simply no networking-card in another one)
That way the parents profit or lose. It might not be bad to have the parents try to get the best out of their children by stimulating the former financially, but I doubt it will have the right effect. Parents already get to see their children's scores and if they are the slightest interested in how their children are doing they'll probably know quite well even before they come home with their scorecard; no need to duplicate it by means of a variable meals-bill.
Like I said before, we both learned to 'use the system against itself'. IMHO it might be that making good grades more attractive isn't always going to result in "better educated people" coming out of the education system, but at least there IS a possibility that it will. Regardless how you look at the problem, for most people "doing good at school" is mostly a matter of motivation. There is a LOT more (immediate) 'reward' in being good at sports or hanging out with the cool crowd than there is at being good at history so to speak. Additionally, it's a lot more fun to hang out with friends than to sit hunched over your books after hours. Somehow, if making being good at something school-wise could be made 'fun' and 'rewarding', I'm sure we could 'save' quite a big percentage of those that are now failing their education and couldn't care less, but WILL regret doing so afterwards in real life. If by doing so some others are enjoying the perks too while in fact missing the point, well, too bad for them. And yes that would have included you and me. As far as I understand we both got our feet brought back to the ground at a certain point in time anyhow, hence it wouldn't have made much of a difference whether the bespoken system would have been put in place or not... That said, I do am wondering if for me it wouldn't have worked out to get better grades and maybe pick up some the things for the long run : I always did like to learn new things, just never the things they fed me at school =) That said, I'm way too biased now due to 14 years of 'real life'... (man, I'm getting old =)
LOL, I'm sure it might work in theory and from the point of view of the puberty/hormones-gone-wild students. However, I doubt any teacher would like to notice she's now getting the 'brutes' assigned ever since she passed 40 and that new brunette assistant got hired... It's probably bad enough already to (politically) have to fight for your job in a (mostly) male hierarchy, let alone having to 'win' the students over too... doesn't sound healthy at all if you think about it.
The things you describe somehow only seem to work for people who like to "annoy the institution". I'm sure we need our rebels, and in a way I was one too although I never crossed the line where I could get caught for doing something "disturbing" (or even close to it)... I rather was the kid that kept asking the wrong (read: right) questions. Being observant and critical (and vocal about it) got me in the spotlight probably more than I had anticipated at times, but without exception it always had a positive effect on the relationship between me and my teachers and bought me a lot of credit. (**)
Getting away with things easier because you have good grades might be considered a perk, and I agree that it probably worked like that in my time too. Then again I don't think making 'a-social behaviour' unpunished because of good grades is what most people in charge for education have in mind.
For me it worked out OK, for the guy in my class who "jokingly" put a a vending machine out of order not His good grades didn't help him at all and frankly, I can't feel bad about that.
'**: In all honesty, I *once* had trouble with a professor and the reason for that is still stupefying (but not relevant). What is relevant though is that when deliberation came by he got vetoed by the other teachers for trying to make me to do that year over again.)
First thing I'd do is check which line is the longest and then adapt my grades accordingly... 'humiliation' be damned, functionality above everything I say !
All joking apart, how would you manage to give perks to those who do well but _without_ anyone being able to notice that others are not getting said perks and thus by simple logic must be 'dumb' (your words) ?
BTW, I'm not sure everyone with non-top scores are 'dumb'. Frankly, I'm pretty sure I was a big under-achiever at school (15 years ago) simply because there was no good reason (IMHO) to do any better. If I managed "sufficient" grades at the end of the year, all was good. Had there been some kind of system where getting 80% got you this and 90% got you that (**) I might have considered working for those numbers. At the time I considered getting 70% by doing close to nothing was more than enough and still had sufficient margin for unexpected "setbacks".
PS: I do feel different now, being sorry not to have paid more attention to some courses as I can see the practical use of them NOW. But back then... I don't know, Explaining a 17-year old that some course might be very useful "once he grows up" works only for a minority of the students I guess; I sure wasn't one of them. At the time, school was life and I spent 18-ish years learning how to 'game' the system. (= you get grades for how you score on your tests, not really on what you learn (***))
(**: and I don't mean a silly Latin phrase like 'Cum Laude' or something...) (***: disclaimer : I did NOT cheat (or in each case extremely minimal =) nor endorse cheating, however, at a point I was extremely good at speed-reading a dozens of pages right before class started, scored great on the test but by the love of gord was completely unable to remember what it was about the day after... let alone years after... I did have great scores on such courses but I simply haven't learned much from them.)
Replying to myself as I can't quite choose whom of the other people to reply to.
Seems I must have misinterpreted the statement above... apologies.
"I don't buy the culturally biased bullshit about the tests."
Frankly, I'm still not 100% sure how to interpret that sentence, probably part of its meaning gets lost in translation somewhere..( you don't happen to speak Dutch ? =)
That said, I think all who replied to my post all more or less agree on the fact that IQ tests simply are not capable of measuring intelligence objectively... IMHO these tests are VERY biased towards those that have been in contact with the way these tests work and/or what they use for testing. In my experience they are mostly geared towards logic and insights but rely on 3D thinking and basic mathematics to work with. If you're familiar with the latter, and you've gone through a system where tests and quizzes are everyday stuff you're bound to score higher than anyone who didn't. (**) Whether you're part of that group has IMHO nothing to do with race or genetics directly but rather with 'chances' and yes culture. One culture simply doesn't push (willingly,circumstantially or forcedly) towards that goal as the next one.
(** In all honesty I've never had much "respect" for IQ-test results in the first place, they're way overrated. Although I always scored high on them I find myself lacking severely on things like language and creative arts & crafts... maybe I'm good at solving things, I'd give an arm and a leg to be able to re-play some tune I just heard or simply be able to captivate an audience over some random subject. IMHO IQ-scores don't correlate to "being smarter" in general and it surely does not come close to "being better". )
Probably a bad analogy, but I think Shakespeare would have scored below Newton, yet the former gets quoted quite more often, that should count for something too, not ? =)
Don't get me wrong, but if you say "I don't buy the culturally biased bullshit about the tests." and then add "black kids learn to under-perform."; isn't that kind of contradicting yourself ?
Personally I'm convinced that *on average* IQ (**) is pretty much equal amongst all people, regardless of their genetic inheritance but that culture (nurture if you like to make the time-line a bit shorter) is a major driver on whether people will score good on these tests.
(**: if there is such a thing... IMHO most of these tests are unreliable as THE TESTS are culturally biased too... )
I beg to differ, although I will agree that it depends a lot on your usage profile.
Personally I find that that things like booting and launching apps is REMARKABLY faster than most people sitting around me having 'ordinary' drives. (eg Outlook & VS2010 open up in a fraction of the time it takes the others). That said, yes, 4Gb is kind of 'low'. When I ('m forced to) use Word for a couple of days, *that* will start up much faster after a couple of days, but then after a week Excel will be slower to start and vice versa...
Frankly, I find the software mentioned in the article much more looking like what eBoostr did, but then for both read & write. I liked eboostr before I got my XT, but then again I always had this nagging feeling : how can you be sure the cache is always uptodate ? I'm having this very same feeling with this OCZ thing.
They should have hooked it up hardware-wize IMHO : mobo SSD HDD, doing it via software is just wrong.
Wow! You're saying that if you fly from say Brussels to Cairo, you make sure you have the maps of all countries your plane will "traverse" in case the plane would crash ? Now, that is preparation indeed !
Care to explain how "the Bitcoin community would benefit from your participation in their system" works ? AFAIK, the problems tossed at the mining-clients are just "random exercises in calculation", whether someone manages to find the result or not doesn't mean anything; it merely helps to decide who has a bigger chance to win the next set of coins. IMHO, adding your (stolen or not) supercomputer to the herd does not help the community at all, they rather don't have the competition. What it does do is waste (lots) of energy and/or effort that could be spent elsewhere more wisely. (**)
(**: and with "more wisely" I would refer to folding@home, or those Mersenne numbers, or I dunno, simply letting the CPU's idle as to avoid the excess load.)
Your comments sound rather/extreme/ to me. If you could, you'd spend your time on nothing but the things you like, but since you can't, you go for the "whatever it takes" approach hoping that one day you'll be able to do whatever you like.
Yes, you're right, *IF* I'd win the lottery I would likely give up my (current) job too and spend my times on other things that have peaked my interest over the years but were out of reach due to time/money restraints.
However, since most people realize upfront it's quite unlikely they'll win the lottery they look for a way to still do those things they find interesting, even if it is in a restricted way. And if those things "coincidently" can be combined with making money then I think at the end of the line they (we) 're better off.
It's all great to plan ahead and give up "your best years" right now spending the biggest part of your active time on things you don't like simply to make as much money as possible so you can do whatever you want during your (early) retirement. I sincerely hope it never happens, but if you're diagnosed with cancer in 10 years time (more likely than winning the lottery btw) you'll feel VERY cheated by life...
And when they board it and find the wrecked instruments, they can unsolder the chip with large GPS lettering on it, put it into their own TomTom unit and then check what galaxy the aliens came from !
Puh, CD's are soo previous decade... get yourself a 2Gb USB stick or something and boot from that.
In fact, http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download explains quite well how to get the OS running from an USB stick. In my experience this is quite a bit faster but also allows for some actual storage (see "persistence"), double-win ! =)
From what I've read/understood from it, the actual device isn't much more than a keyboard & screen and some very basic little software. The actual validating & "calculating" happens in the chip embedded in the card itself. Hence the re-usability I guess. I even doubt they would deny that the readers are inter-swappable, although they'll probably insist that the one bearing their logo looks much nicer =)
Not sure how that works in other banks, but I believe my bank (AXA) did a decent job at preventing most of what you said, if not all. * First I have to enter the number of the *card* (not the account!) (this is stored in a cookie if I ask for it, luckily) * Then I have to copy a (random) number from the screen (https:\\) to the *non-connected* card-reader, press OK on it, enter my PIN and then copy the generated response into the field on the screen and submit => if everything matches up (typos are easy to make, even with only 8 digits) I get to my account * I can send money to other accounts by filing in digital versions of the (now obsolete?) paper forms. It allows for some automation as I can store account-numbers in some kind of Address Book. Mind, that each time I want to add/save a new account-number to the Address Book, I have to use my (offline!) card-reader, enter my PIN , copy the last 8 numbers from the account-code, press OK, copy a (random) number from the screen, enter OK and then copy the response to the screen and submit. If everything matches up, I can then use that account-code from my Address Book without having to go through this (rather lengthy) procedure again. * Once I've *prepared* all my transactions, I have to sign "the envelope" by using the (offline) card-reader again, entering my PIN, copying a (probably not so random) number from the screen and then typing in the response again into the field onscreen and submit. Again, if everything adds up, the transaction is accepted.
Even when you have full control of my computer, there is no way you could do this without my help, or at least without my card and the associated PIN. (The card-readers are 'standard issue' and can be used cross-banks (I only tested this on different belgian banks, it might be a EU thing but I wouldn't hold my breath)). A man-in-the-middle attack is not impossible but probably isn't too easy either due to the https protocol being used but even when they would be able to manage that, the sequence of operations requires from them to somehow trick me into allowing transactions on their account-code. It's doubt-full they would be able to find an account-number that matches up the last 8 digits with an account-number which I coincidently want to make a transaction to and that's not part of my Address Book yet. Again, I agree it's not entirely impossible, but IMHO they've gone through sufficient hoops to avoid me being robbed blind simply because I prefer to use home-banking. Additionally, I believe there are also limits to the amount of money I can transfer over the course of 24 hours... sadly those limits are probably well above the amount of money found on my accounts =)
I read about quite a bit of issues on Apple hardware (MBP) with the drive (freezes, bouncing ball, etc)... Personally I experienced none of that on my Dell laptop (running Win7). although I had the same HDD-BIOS version when I initially installed the drive. As things just work I'm hesitant to upgrade (I'm at SD23) because it seems they've rather stripped options like powermgmt out of the drive than actually fixed the issue. Hence causing higher power-consumption in order to get it working on MacBooks, bit strange way to handle things as I'd expect the non-Apple user-base to be the bigger one...=/
I *may* have been lucky in that my Dell BIOS already had Acoustic DIsk Management (or something) disabled which also seems to be related to the issues. There's a google spreadsheat on the Seagate forums that clearly shows the issue is almost entirely on MBP.
Anyway, I sure hope the *concept* didn't get too much bad credit due to these issues as I'm pretty sure this is the way to go until SSD becomes "as cheap" as normal harddisks, even for big capacities.
My take on the OCZ PCIe board here : it might benefit from the enhanced throughput as it avoids the SATA conversions, but unless you're a super-I/O consumer (random IO that is), I doubt you'll notice it much. That aside, pc's usually only have so many PCIe slots, but sport plenty of SATA ports !
PS : building said PCIe board into my laptop would be quite a challenge too =) PS: yes, downgrading the BIOS is an option apparently, but still, why fix what isn't broken ? =)
I beg to differ. I've been using one since september last year and it beats the crap out of the standard HDD. In my team we're all having pretty much the same machine with the same software installed. Because I do a lot of database stuff and also like to have my music collection and some games to carry around I got fed up with the limited capacity of the standard drive and out of frustration bought my own 500Gb Momentus XT. The thing boots *much* faster than all the other machines around me. Outlook takes seconds to start, it takes about a minute for my neighbour. Same for Visual studio.
There's plenty of Youtube vids around that show the impact of the Momentus XT and I can only confirm them. more cache might have been better, but 4Gb sure does a great job !
I honestly hope that when I need an x-ray they won't bother checking the amount of radiation I've received in the recent past. It's not like x-rays are a recreational occupation... (yeah, yeah, it's the internet, I'm sure there's some x-rated x-ray stuff out there, don't bother replying).
IMHO these guidelines are mostly for people *working* with radiation for professional purposes, not for patients. But I'll agree that not upping the rate would indeed make it "impossible" for e.g. radiologists to work in an area that has naturally high background radiation as their "badge" would "colour red" after a couple of months even when they did their utmost best to shield themselves from the machinery they work with.
Seems I hadn't thought it through all the way... thx for clarifying.
In the European country where I live the background radiation is about 3mSv/year because of high levels of uranium and radon in the ground. Because of this the recommended max doseage is set to 4mSv/year.
After rereading this a couple of times I really have to ask for confirmation :
So : * "by convention", 1 mSv/year is considered "safe" * the location you live in outputs about 3 times that value (natural source)
But, because we "know" where it comes from, and because it's "natural" radiation, it doesn't count as being harmfull and the safety limit is upped to those 3 mSv/year PLUS the "by convention" 1 mSv/year ??
??? What kind of logic is that ???
Shouldn't they just put the limit to 3 mSv/year for all people living in that area ? (it's kind of non-practical to remove all background radiation) + pay extra attention to potential effects due to already having 3 times the 'conventional' limit to live with ?
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True, but you the thermal engine brings the power (more or less) directly to the drive train while the power plant needs to transport it over (long) wires (=losses), doing some low-high-low-voltage magic along the road (= losses), stuffing it into batteries (= losses) and out again once you actually start using it (= losses).
That said, having less centralised production by means of solar panels on everyone's roof and/or local wind-turbines might offset quite a bit of supra.
I'm not a fan the ICE, or at least not of what it runs on most of the time. But I think very few people truly appreciate the amount of energy stored in a liter of fuel. (**) That said, I'm hoping that by the time my current car needs replacing there will be decent EV's at affordable prices, and just like cheap PV-cells are just around the corner, I'm not holding my breath on this oen either =( Currently options seem to be either small and with limited capacity (C-Zero, Leaf, ...) or (very) expensive and by the looks of it not really aimed at family usage (eg. Tesla Roadster). I'm actually hoping that by then there will be a viable Prius plug-in but I guess they'll suffer the same technical hurdles as all the others; they simply have my sympathy for sticking with the concept (and development costs) of hybrids over the years even when they weren't "hip" yet.
Currently I'm keeping an eye on the Fluence ZE which is here and now and looks practical enough but 160km on a charge isn't quite there yet IMHO. Oh well, I've got at least 3-4 more years before I need to start looking around, I hope =)
As for the TFA, IMHO, regardless of what we will come up with to produce our electricity, the main hurdle remains storage. There are plenty of ways to get "free" energy converted into what we need, but often time it's neither where nor when we want it... inventing/building a sustainable method to store it -preferably in a distributed pattern- would cut out the 'when' problem and solve 85% if the issues. All that from my armchair-engineer-masters off course.
(**: if you think about it, people go all happy-greeny for replacing an 80 Watt bulb with a 17 Watt 'energy saver' but then go out and buy a pick-up truck with a 250.000 Watt engine in it !?! I'll agree you won't be using that power all the time, but assuming the thing would put out electricity it would be able to deliver over a 1000 Amps @ 220V ! That's quite a few households.)
Funny but true : yes that's what some people ARE afraid off.
In theory, judging on your consumption they might be able to deduce when you're most likely not at home and that would then be the best time to break in.
Personally I think most thugs have much more sophisticated methods to scout their targets.
(similar panic has struck us poor Belgians now too as Google Street View for Belgium went live yesterday...oh man, the reactions ...)
Care to explain how that would be ?
AFAIK a hash is just a (smallish) number calculated on a (largish) set of data. By sheer definition a single hash will match multiple distinct sets.
How does encrypting a data-set affect the possibility of match with a different set ?
That's only true if you have internet-access on the machine you're installing on.
I'll agree that seems trivial these days, but reality has shown me otherwise on a couple of occasions (**) and at those times I was very happy the ISO contained all the stuff I planned installing.
(mind that I usually only burn the 'alternative' cd's, I've never really understood why I would first boot into a LiveCD to start the setup from there...)
(** missing drivers in most cases, and simply no networking-card in another one)
That way the parents profit or lose. It might not be bad to have the parents try to get the best out of their children by stimulating the former financially, but I doubt it will have the right effect. Parents already get to see their children's scores and if they are the slightest interested in how their children are doing they'll probably know quite well even before they come home with their scorecard; no need to duplicate it by means of a variable meals-bill.
Like I said before, we both learned to 'use the system against itself'. IMHO it might be that making good grades more attractive isn't always going to result in "better educated people" coming out of the education system, but at least there IS a possibility that it will. Regardless how you look at the problem, for most people "doing good at school" is mostly a matter of motivation. There is a LOT more (immediate) 'reward' in being good at sports or hanging out with the cool crowd than there is at being good at history so to speak. Additionally, it's a lot more fun to hang out with friends than to sit hunched over your books after hours. Somehow, if making being good at something school-wise could be made 'fun' and 'rewarding', I'm sure we could 'save' quite a big percentage of those that are now failing their education and couldn't care less, but WILL regret doing so afterwards in real life. ... (man, I'm getting old =)
If by doing so some others are enjoying the perks too while in fact missing the point, well, too bad for them. And yes that would have included you and me. As far as I understand we both got our feet brought back to the ground at a certain point in time anyhow, hence it wouldn't have made much of a difference whether the bespoken system would have been put in place or not... That said, I do am wondering if for me it wouldn't have worked out to get better grades and maybe pick up some the things for the long run : I always did like to learn new things, just never the things they fed me at school =) That said, I'm way too biased now due to 14 years of 'real life'
LOL, I'm sure it might work in theory and from the point of view of the puberty/hormones-gone-wild students.
However, I doubt any teacher would like to notice she's now getting the 'brutes' assigned ever since she passed 40 and that new brunette assistant got hired... It's probably bad enough already to (politically) have to fight for your job in a (mostly) male hierarchy, let alone having to 'win' the students over too... doesn't sound healthy at all if you think about it.
The things you describe somehow only seem to work for people who like to "annoy the institution". I'm sure we need our rebels, and in a way I was one too although I never crossed the line where I could get caught for doing something "disturbing" (or even close to it)... I rather was the kid that kept asking the wrong (read: right) questions.
Being observant and critical (and vocal about it) got me in the spotlight probably more than I had anticipated at times, but without exception it always had a positive effect on the relationship between me and my teachers and bought me a lot of credit. (**)
Getting away with things easier because you have good grades might be considered a perk, and I agree that it probably worked like that in my time too. Then again I don't think making 'a-social behaviour' unpunished because of good grades is what most people in charge for education have in mind.
For me it worked out OK, for the guy in my class who "jokingly" put a a vending machine out of order not His good grades didn't help him at all and frankly, I can't feel bad about that.
'**: In all honesty, I *once* had trouble with a professor and the reason for that is still stupefying (but not relevant). What is relevant though is that when deliberation came by he got vetoed by the other teachers for trying to make me to do that year over again.)
First thing I'd do is check which line is the longest and then adapt my grades accordingly... 'humiliation' be damned, functionality above everything I say !
All joking apart, how would you manage to give perks to those who do well but _without_ anyone being able to notice that others are not getting said perks and thus by simple logic must be 'dumb' (your words) ?
BTW, I'm not sure everyone with non-top scores are 'dumb'. Frankly, I'm pretty sure I was a big under-achiever at school (15 years ago) simply because there was no good reason (IMHO) to do any better. If I managed "sufficient" grades at the end of the year, all was good. Had there been some kind of system where getting 80% got you this and 90% got you that (**) I might have considered working for those numbers. At the time I considered getting 70% by doing close to nothing was more than enough and still had sufficient margin for unexpected "setbacks".
PS: I do feel different now, being sorry not to have paid more attention to some courses as I can see the practical use of them NOW. But back then... I don't know, Explaining a 17-year old that some course might be very useful "once he grows up" works only for a minority of the students I guess; I sure wasn't one of them. At the time, school was life and I spent 18-ish years learning how to 'game' the system. (= you get grades for how you score on your tests, not really on what you learn (***))
(**: and I don't mean a silly Latin phrase like 'Cum Laude' or something...)
(***: disclaimer : I did NOT cheat (or in each case extremely minimal =) nor endorse cheating, however, at a point I was extremely good at speed-reading a dozens of pages right before class started, scored great on the test but by the love of gord was completely unable to remember what it was about the day after... let alone years after... I did have great scores on such courses but I simply haven't learned much from them.)
Replying to myself as I can't quite choose whom of the other people to reply to.
Seems I must have misinterpreted the statement above... apologies.
"I don't buy the culturally biased bullshit about the tests."
Frankly, I'm still not 100% sure how to interpret that sentence, probably part of its meaning gets lost in translation somewhere ..( you don't happen to speak Dutch ? =)
That said, I think all who replied to my post all more or less agree on the fact that IQ tests simply are not capable of measuring intelligence objectively... IMHO these tests are VERY biased towards those that have been in contact with the way these tests work and/or what they use for testing. In my experience they are mostly geared towards logic and insights but rely on 3D thinking and basic mathematics to work with. If you're familiar with the latter, and you've gone through a system where tests and quizzes are everyday stuff you're bound to score higher than anyone who didn't. (**) Whether you're part of that group has IMHO nothing to do with race or genetics directly but rather with 'chances' and yes culture. One culture simply doesn't push (willingly ,circumstantially or forcedly) towards that goal as the next one.
(** In all honesty I've never had much "respect" for IQ-test results in the first place, they're way overrated. Although I always scored high on them I find myself lacking severely on things like language and creative arts & crafts... maybe I'm good at solving things, I'd give an arm and a leg to be able to re-play some tune I just heard or simply be able to captivate an audience over some random subject. IMHO IQ-scores don't correlate to "being smarter" in general and it surely does not come close to "being better". )
Probably a bad analogy, but I think Shakespeare would have scored below Newton, yet the former gets quoted quite more often, that should count for something too, not ? =)
Don't get me wrong, but if you say
"I don't buy the culturally biased bullshit about the tests." and then add "black kids learn to under-perform."; isn't that kind of contradicting yourself ?
Personally I'm convinced that *on average* IQ (**) is pretty much equal amongst all people, regardless of their genetic inheritance but that culture (nurture if you like to make the time-line a bit shorter) is a major driver on whether people will score good on these tests.
(**: if there is such a thing... IMHO most of these tests are unreliable as THE TESTS are culturally biased too... )
I beg to differ, although I will agree that it depends a lot on your usage profile.
Personally I find that that things like booting and launching apps is REMARKABLY faster than most people sitting around me having 'ordinary' drives.
(eg Outlook & VS2010 open up in a fraction of the time it takes the others). That said, yes, 4Gb is kind of 'low'. When I ('m forced to) use Word for a couple of days, *that* will start up much faster after a couple of days, but then after a week Excel will be slower to start and vice versa...
Frankly, I find the software mentioned in the article much more looking like what eBoostr did, but then for both read & write. I liked eboostr before I got my XT, but then again I always had this nagging feeling : how can you be sure the cache is always uptodate ? I'm having this very same feeling with this OCZ thing.
They should have hooked it up hardware-wize IMHO : mobo SSD HDD, doing it via software is just wrong.
Wow! You're saying that if you fly from say Brussels to Cairo, you make sure you have the maps of all countries your plane will "traverse" in case the plane would crash ? Now, that is preparation indeed !
On boarding I once got a leaflet telling me I couldn't use my laserprinter while flying.... real story, should have kept & scanned the thing.
Care to explain how "the Bitcoin community would benefit from your participation in their system" works ?
AFAIK, the problems tossed at the mining-clients are just "random exercises in calculation", whether someone manages to find the result or not doesn't mean anything; it merely helps to decide who has a bigger chance to win the next set of coins.
IMHO, adding your (stolen or not) supercomputer to the herd does not help the community at all, they rather don't have the competition. What it does do is waste (lots) of energy and/or effort that could be spent elsewhere more wisely. (**)
(**: and with "more wisely" I would refer to folding@home, or those Mersenne numbers, or I dunno, simply letting the CPU's idle as to avoid the excess load.)
Your comments sound rather /extreme/ to me. If you could, you'd spend your time on nothing but the things you like, but since you can't, you go for the "whatever it takes" approach hoping that one day you'll be able to do whatever you like.
Yes, you're right, *IF* I'd win the lottery I would likely give up my (current) job too and spend my times on other things that have peaked my interest over the years but were out of reach due to time/money restraints.
However, since most people realize upfront it's quite unlikely they'll win the lottery they look for a way to still do those things they find interesting, even if it is in a restricted way. And if those things "coincidently" can be combined with making money then I think at the end of the line they (we) 're better off.
It's all great to plan ahead and give up "your best years" right now spending the biggest part of your active time on things you don't like simply to make as much money as possible so you can do whatever you want during your (early) retirement. I sincerely hope it never happens, but if you're diagnosed with cancer in 10 years time (more likely than winning the lottery btw) you'll feel VERY cheated by life ...
IMHO, it's all about balance.
And when they board it and find the wrecked instruments, they can unsolder the chip with large GPS lettering on it, put it into their own TomTom unit and then check what galaxy the aliens came from !
Puh, CD's are soo previous decade ... get yourself a 2Gb USB stick or something and boot from that.
In fact, http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download explains quite well how to get the OS running from an USB stick. In my experience this is quite a bit faster but also allows for some actual storage (see "persistence"), double-win ! =)
From what I've read/understood from it, the actual device isn't much more than a keyboard & screen and some very basic little software. The actual validating & "calculating" happens in the chip embedded in the card itself. Hence the re-usability I guess.
I even doubt they would deny that the readers are inter-swappable, although they'll probably insist that the one bearing their logo looks much nicer =)
Not sure how that works in other banks, but I believe my bank (AXA) did a decent job at preventing most of what you said, if not all.
* First I have to enter the number of the *card* (not the account!) (this is stored in a cookie if I ask for it, luckily)
* Then I have to copy a (random) number from the screen (https:\\) to the *non-connected* card-reader, press OK on it, enter my PIN and then copy the generated response into the field on the screen and submit
=> if everything matches up (typos are easy to make, even with only 8 digits) I get to my account
* I can send money to other accounts by filing in digital versions of the (now obsolete?) paper forms. It allows for some automation as I can store account-numbers in some kind of Address Book. Mind, that each time I want to add/save a new account-number to the Address Book, I have to use my (offline!) card-reader, enter my PIN , copy the last 8 numbers from the account-code, press OK, copy a (random) number from the screen, enter OK and then copy the response to the screen and submit. If everything matches up, I can then use that account-code from my Address Book without having to go through this (rather lengthy) procedure again.
* Once I've *prepared* all my transactions, I have to sign "the envelope" by using the (offline) card-reader again, entering my PIN, copying a (probably not so random) number from the screen and then typing in the response again into the field onscreen and submit. Again, if everything adds up, the transaction is accepted.
Even when you have full control of my computer, there is no way you could do this without my help, or at least without my card and the associated PIN. (The card-readers are 'standard issue' and can be used cross-banks (I only tested this on different belgian banks, it might be a EU thing but I wouldn't hold my breath)).
A man-in-the-middle attack is not impossible but probably isn't too easy either due to the https protocol being used but even when they would be able to manage that, the sequence of operations requires from them to somehow trick me into allowing transactions on their account-code. It's doubt-full they would be able to find an account-number that matches up the last 8 digits with an account-number which I coincidently want to make a transaction to and that's not part of my Address Book yet. Again, I agree it's not entirely impossible, but IMHO they've gone through sufficient hoops to avoid me being robbed blind simply because I prefer to use home-banking. Additionally, I believe there are also limits to the amount of money I can transfer over the course of 24 hours... sadly those limits are probably well above the amount of money found on my accounts =)
I read about quite a bit of issues on Apple hardware (MBP) with the drive (freezes, bouncing ball, etc)... Personally I experienced none of that on my Dell laptop (running Win7). although I had the same HDD-BIOS version when I initially installed the drive. As things just work I'm hesitant to upgrade (I'm at SD23) because it seems they've rather stripped options like powermgmt out of the drive than actually fixed the issue. Hence causing higher power-consumption in order to get it working on MacBooks, bit strange way to handle things as I'd expect the non-Apple user-base to be the bigger one ...=/
I *may* have been lucky in that my Dell BIOS already had Acoustic DIsk Management (or something) disabled which also seems to be related to the issues. There's a google spreadsheat on the Seagate forums that clearly shows the issue is almost entirely on MBP.
Anyway, I sure hope the *concept* didn't get too much bad credit due to these issues as I'm pretty sure this is the way to go until SSD becomes "as cheap" as normal harddisks, even for big capacities.
My take on the OCZ PCIe board here : it might benefit from the enhanced throughput as it avoids the SATA conversions, but unless you're a super-I/O consumer (random IO that is), I doubt you'll notice it much. That aside, pc's usually only have so many PCIe slots, but sport plenty of SATA ports !
PS : building said PCIe board into my laptop would be quite a challenge too =)
PS: yes, downgrading the BIOS is an option apparently, but still, why fix what isn't broken ? =)
I beg to differ.
I've been using one since september last year and it beats the crap out of the standard HDD. In my team we're all having pretty much the same machine with the same software installed. Because I do a lot of database stuff and also like to have my music collection and some games to carry around I got fed up with the limited capacity of the standard drive and out of frustration bought my own 500Gb Momentus XT. The thing boots *much* faster than all the other machines around me. Outlook takes seconds to start, it takes about a minute for my neighbour. Same for Visual studio.
There's plenty of Youtube vids around that show the impact of the Momentus XT and I can only confirm them. more cache might have been better, but 4Gb sure does a great job !
I honestly hope that when I need an x-ray they won't bother checking the amount of radiation I've received in the recent past. It's not like x-rays are a recreational occupation... (yeah, yeah, it's the internet, I'm sure there's some x-rated x-ray stuff out there, don't bother replying).
IMHO these guidelines are mostly for people *working* with radiation for professional purposes, not for patients.
But I'll agree that not upping the rate would indeed make it "impossible" for e.g. radiologists to work in an area that has naturally high background radiation as their "badge" would "colour red" after a couple of months even when they did their utmost best to shield themselves from the machinery they work with.
Seems I hadn't thought it through all the way... thx for clarifying.
In the European country where I live the background radiation is about 3mSv/year because of high levels of uranium and radon in the ground. Because of this the recommended max doseage is set to 4mSv/year.
After rereading this a couple of times I really have to ask for confirmation :
So :
* "by convention", 1 mSv/year is considered "safe"
* the location you live in outputs about 3 times that value (natural source)
But, because we "know" where it comes from, and because it's "natural" radiation, it doesn't count as being harmfull and the safety limit is upped to those 3 mSv/year PLUS the "by convention" 1 mSv/year ??
??? What kind of logic is that ???
Shouldn't they just put the limit to 3 mSv/year for all people living in that area ? (it's kind of non-practical to remove all background radiation) + pay extra attention to potential effects due to already having 3 times the 'conventional' limit to live with ?
You mean that I would have to remember like 2 passwords ???
Oh, come on, what is this ?? The middle ages ???