The problem is that the CPU die (the actual area that needs to be cooled) is small. So you have to be able to remove heat from that small area very effectively. Running a liquid across that small area is a lot more effective than trying to dissipate that heat into a block of metal that is cooled with a fan, and likewise is more effective than heatpipes. Plus, you have the other advantage that you more effectively can dump the heat outside the case, rather than the typical ATX setup where the heat is dumped into the case.
With that said, I don't think we're anywhere near a limit with air cooling. Heatpipes are pretty effective devices, and the heatsinks made for the enthusiast/overclocking crowd have shown that 150W+ CPUs can still be effectively cooled using just air. A lot of the large-but-quiet CPU coolers out there likewise could dissipate a lot of heat if a high airflow fan was fitted on them. Granted, a computer with a 250-300W CPU might start getting kind of loud under load, but I don't see why it would have to be liquid cooled.
How does this work then? The customer has to redeem their buy-one-get-one coupon at some point. In order to get the discount, the customer would have to present the coupon to the merchant, right?
The only way I can see where the merchant would not know would be a rebate type of system as opposed to a coupon, where the customer would purchase two pizzas (presumably having to use the bank's card to do so) for full price, then the bank gives a rebate for the cost of one of the pizzas back to the customer. (later, the merchant would have to pay the bank based upon the number of rebates given out) However, I see nothing to TFA to indicate that's how it works.
Even so, I could still see a system where the merchant could figure out who's using the coupon by making the deal only work a certain way. For example the coupon could be only good for two large pepperoni and mushroom pizzas with two 2-liter bottles of Sprite (to paraphrase a rather odd deal I actually saw the other day). Now, there's no guarantee someone who ordered that specific combination is using the coupon/rebate, but I would say the chances would be pretty good.
Spoken like someone who has never used one of those crappy SSDs. I have, and those drives can cause the current application and even the OS to appear to freeze from anywhere from a fraction of a second to several seconds for even a trivial write. Sure, they can be fast at other times, but in the end I'll take the slower, but more consistent performance of a hard drive than something that infuriatingly locks the computer up at random times.
Try looking at the Resource Monitor. You'll see the the blue line (activity) shoot to 100% while the green line (I/O speed) drop to zero. Or at least that's what my SSD did before I ditched it and went back to spinning rust.
If we let GM and Chrysler fail, it's not like their factories would have disappeared in a puff of smoke. The useful assets would have been purchased by other companies and put to use. We'd still have domestic auto manufacturing, just not run by incompetent, failed companies like GM.
It's still a matter of getting used to it. Every car I have driven with an analog speedometer has had the gauge set up differently so the same angle of the needle on one car could be a very different speed in another car. So if you're not used to the car you'll have to actually look at the gauge and read the the numbers to see how fast you're going until you get used to that car's layout.
Neither does VGA. It's an analog signal, and picture I've seen from some long cable set ups for a projector can be pretty terrible. But on the upside, at least you get a picture.
The zipper merge sounds great in theory, but all it takes is one person to screw it up and you're back to stop-and-take-your-turn merging, which is slow as hell and just gets worse as the traffic piles up behind the merge point. At least if you get everyone in a line, if something happens the whole line can get moving again a lot easier. I've been caught in some pretty epic traffic jams in the middle of nowhere thanks to the state encouraging people to do the zipper merge thing.
Retail stores like Wal-mart have it easier, as they only have to worry about the tax code where the store is located, not where each of their customers are located. Still, it seems to me like a solvable problem.
It's not really too surprising to me, as Windows dates back to when mice on PCs was fairly uncommon. On the other hand, the Macintosh has always had a mouse, and Gnome/KDE development has pretty much taken place after a mouse became standard equipment. Though it is somewhat surprising that Microsoft has seemingly gone to the trouble of making sure pretty much every shortcut I learned 20 years ago in Windows 3.0 to get around still worked in every version since then.
Actually, it's not the first time they changed it. In Windows 95 the shut down dialog box always came up with "Shutdown" selected. Starting with Windows 98 it came up remembering the last thing you had selected. So in Windows 95 I learned [Winkey][U][Enter] to turn off the computer, and to this day I still do that out of habit occasionally. Usually with a goddammit shortly afterwards when the computer sleeps or restarts or does something I didn't intend.
Incidentally, you can also break this functionality by adding something to the first level of the start menu that starts with the letter U.
Also, since no one has seemed to mention it, another way shut down Vista/7 is to use Ctrl-Alt-Del and tab over to the power button/menu thing. Similar thing also works on XP.
I don't think Apple has ever been big on the numpad as arrows concept. While their older keyboards have num lock, the legends for keys on the numpad only have the numbers printed on them, so it's not obvious what's going to happen when you use them with numlock off, unless you're familiar with PC keyboards. It's not surprising to me that they would totally drop num lock at some point.
Well, one way to think about is for hibernation you need to read and write the entire contents of the ram from and to the disk. On a modern machine that's probably going to be 4GB of data or more. On the other hand, compare how much data does the computer have to read from the disk to cold boot the OS - I don't know exact numbers but I'd guess less than a gigabyte even for Vista. So if you want your system to come out of hibernation faster, try pulling some ram:)
I'd give it about 3-4 years before you can't purchase a new Mac that can run FCP 7, either because they've switched architectures again, or the new mac won't be able to boot the older version of OS X that FCP 7 requires to run.
I've not had a problem with the red LED ones. They are extremely easy to read, and the red doesn't screw with your nightvision. Now, I have seen some with the red LEDs replaced with green or blue LEDs. The green ones are okay, but the blue ones were pretty hard to read, both because your eye has a harder time focusing on blue light, and because the damn thing was as bright as a night light.
The big problem with backlit LCDs is the viewing angle. If you have to look up to see the alarm clock while in bed, like if the alarm clock is on your headboard, then the LCD is pretty much completely unreadable. That and the color of the backlight, as most are green/blue and I'd prefer red or orange.
The reason you don't see the 110/230 switch anymore on computers is because most computer power supplies in the past few years are auto switching. I don't know what's with the 230V-only sticker on the back of yours - you might want to open the case up and read the sticker on the side of the power supply itself. I could see a 230 V only model being slightly cheaper to make (to support 110 V you need to be able to handle twice the current on the input side) but I doubt it would be worthwhile to do special runs. Pretty much everything computer I have is 100-240V, from the computers themselves to the monitors (both LCD and CRT), to speakers and printers and laptops.
Now other stuff is pretty hit and miss. DVD player is 120V 60Hz only, but thanks to region-locking it was only intended to be sold in North America anyway. Similar thing with my CRT TV, which is NTSC only.
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The problem is that the CPU die (the actual area that needs to be cooled) is small. So you have to be able to remove heat from that small area very effectively. Running a liquid across that small area is a lot more effective than trying to dissipate that heat into a block of metal that is cooled with a fan, and likewise is more effective than heatpipes. Plus, you have the other advantage that you more effectively can dump the heat outside the case, rather than the typical ATX setup where the heat is dumped into the case.
With that said, I don't think we're anywhere near a limit with air cooling. Heatpipes are pretty effective devices, and the heatsinks made for the enthusiast/overclocking crowd have shown that 150W+ CPUs can still be effectively cooled using just air. A lot of the large-but-quiet CPU coolers out there likewise could dissipate a lot of heat if a high airflow fan was fitted on them. Granted, a computer with a 250-300W CPU might start getting kind of loud under load, but I don't see why it would have to be liquid cooled.
How does this work then? The customer has to redeem their buy-one-get-one coupon at some point. In order to get the discount, the customer would have to present the coupon to the merchant, right?
The only way I can see where the merchant would not know would be a rebate type of system as opposed to a coupon, where the customer would purchase two pizzas (presumably having to use the bank's card to do so) for full price, then the bank gives a rebate for the cost of one of the pizzas back to the customer. (later, the merchant would have to pay the bank based upon the number of rebates given out) However, I see nothing to TFA to indicate that's how it works.
Even so, I could still see a system where the merchant could figure out who's using the coupon by making the deal only work a certain way. For example the coupon could be only good for two large pepperoni and mushroom pizzas with two 2-liter bottles of Sprite (to paraphrase a rather odd deal I actually saw the other day). Now, there's no guarantee someone who ordered that specific combination is using the coupon/rebate, but I would say the chances would be pretty good.
I'm fairly confident you'll be able to use the latest Firefox on PPC for quite a while, provided you wipe OSX and install Linux.
Spoken like someone who has never used one of those crappy SSDs. I have, and those drives can cause the current application and even the OS to appear to freeze from anywhere from a fraction of a second to several seconds for even a trivial write. Sure, they can be fast at other times, but in the end I'll take the slower, but more consistent performance of a hard drive than something that infuriatingly locks the computer up at random times.
Try looking at the Resource Monitor. You'll see the the blue line (activity) shoot to 100% while the green line (I/O speed) drop to zero. Or at least that's what my SSD did before I ditched it and went back to spinning rust.
That's probably because any affordable 37" computer monitor would be a television (and 1080p at best).
No, it's perfectly legal to download Wikipedia.
But the power going out *is* a crisis. The battery on my laptop only lasts so long...
If we let GM and Chrysler fail, it's not like their factories would have disappeared in a puff of smoke. The useful assets would have been purchased by other companies and put to use. We'd still have domestic auto manufacturing, just not run by incompetent, failed companies like GM.
It's still a matter of getting used to it. Every car I have driven with an analog speedometer has had the gauge set up differently so the same angle of the needle on one car could be a very different speed in another car. So if you're not used to the car you'll have to actually look at the gauge and read the the numbers to see how fast you're going until you get used to that car's layout.
Enterprise is also the name of one of the Space Shuttles.
Broken window fallacy.
Neither does VGA. It's an analog signal, and picture I've seen from some long cable set ups for a projector can be pretty terrible. But on the upside, at least you get a picture.
The zipper merge sounds great in theory, but all it takes is one person to screw it up and you're back to stop-and-take-your-turn merging, which is slow as hell and just gets worse as the traffic piles up behind the merge point. At least if you get everyone in a line, if something happens the whole line can get moving again a lot easier. I've been caught in some pretty epic traffic jams in the middle of nowhere thanks to the state encouraging people to do the zipper merge thing.
Retail stores like Wal-mart have it easier, as they only have to worry about the tax code where the store is located, not where each of their customers are located. Still, it seems to me like a solvable problem.
They block some, but they aren't going to be perfect. There's gaps between them, and of course they spread apart to allow the luggage through.
Cessna 172: $40,000 (used)
Fuel: $672
Not having to deal with the TSA: Priceless
(Not that I can afford that, just saying)
It's not really too surprising to me, as Windows dates back to when mice on PCs was fairly uncommon. On the other hand, the Macintosh has always had a mouse, and Gnome/KDE development has pretty much taken place after a mouse became standard equipment. Though it is somewhat surprising that Microsoft has seemingly gone to the trouble of making sure pretty much every shortcut I learned 20 years ago in Windows 3.0 to get around still worked in every version since then.
Actually, it's not the first time they changed it. In Windows 95 the shut down dialog box always came up with "Shutdown" selected. Starting with Windows 98 it came up remembering the last thing you had selected. So in Windows 95 I learned [Winkey][U][Enter] to turn off the computer, and to this day I still do that out of habit occasionally. Usually with a goddammit shortly afterwards when the computer sleeps or restarts or does something I didn't intend.
Incidentally, you can also break this functionality by adding something to the first level of the start menu that starts with the letter U.
Also, since no one has seemed to mention it, another way shut down Vista/7 is to use Ctrl-Alt-Del and tab over to the power button/menu thing. Similar thing also works on XP.
I don't think Apple has ever been big on the numpad as arrows concept. While their older keyboards have num lock, the legends for keys on the numpad only have the numbers printed on them, so it's not obvious what's going to happen when you use them with numlock off, unless you're familiar with PC keyboards. It's not surprising to me that they would totally drop num lock at some point.
Well, one way to think about is for hibernation you need to read and write the entire contents of the ram from and to the disk. On a modern machine that's probably going to be 4GB of data or more. On the other hand, compare how much data does the computer have to read from the disk to cold boot the OS - I don't know exact numbers but I'd guess less than a gigabyte even for Vista. So if you want your system to come out of hibernation faster, try pulling some ram :)
Perhaps because your company may get a reputation for trying to pull dirty tricks on people?
I'd give it about 3-4 years before you can't purchase a new Mac that can run FCP 7, either because they've switched architectures again, or the new mac won't be able to boot the older version of OS X that FCP 7 requires to run.
I've not had a problem with the red LED ones. They are extremely easy to read, and the red doesn't screw with your nightvision. Now, I have seen some with the red LEDs replaced with green or blue LEDs. The green ones are okay, but the blue ones were pretty hard to read, both because your eye has a harder time focusing on blue light, and because the damn thing was as bright as a night light.
The big problem with backlit LCDs is the viewing angle. If you have to look up to see the alarm clock while in bed, like if the alarm clock is on your headboard, then the LCD is pretty much completely unreadable. That and the color of the backlight, as most are green/blue and I'd prefer red or orange.
The reason you don't see the 110/230 switch anymore on computers is because most computer power supplies in the past few years are auto switching. I don't know what's with the 230V-only sticker on the back of yours - you might want to open the case up and read the sticker on the side of the power supply itself. I could see a 230 V only model being slightly cheaper to make (to support 110 V you need to be able to handle twice the current on the input side) but I doubt it would be worthwhile to do special runs. Pretty much everything computer I have is 100-240V, from the computers themselves to the monitors (both LCD and CRT), to speakers and printers and laptops.
Now other stuff is pretty hit and miss. DVD player is 120V 60Hz only, but thanks to region-locking it was only intended to be sold in North America anyway. Similar thing with my CRT TV, which is NTSC only.