Well yeah, but... $1000/mo for a one bedroom in a "safe" neighborhood is a great deal compared to SF or NYC. This jives with the anecdotal evidence I've heard about living in LA; rent is hella cheap (as The Dude would put it). Certainly kids are expensive, but isn't that rent (along with everything else) split with a spouse?
Video boards are REALLY, REALLY GOOD at getting an image moving in one direction - from computer, to vid board, to monitor.
Isn't this just a driver limitation? Does the AGP bus have a unidirectionality built into it?
There is some serious interest in utilizing graphics hardware for non-graphical computation. The GPU would be treated like a co-processor. It would function in relation to the CPU in a manner analogous to the way MMX, SSE, and Altivec, relate to standard instructions. This site is a kind of focal point for people researching the notion.
More than anything else it seems that the whole flap over this issue has been sort of a 'last straw' that's pushed the alternative projects to critical mass and discouraged distro makers from using Xfree86.
Exactly.
There are a few more political flashpoints that are bound to be crossed too. I would be surprised to find that XFree86 will continue to play much of a role in FOSS X11 software. X.org's tree is in Fedora core test 2. I read hints from a poster here on/. (for what it's worth) that Debian is already thinking about what to change in packaging/namespace if and when they switch to fdo's autotool'd X. If the fat lady isn't already singing, she will once nVidia releases a driver that acknowledges anything X.org specific.
I have to disagree with your interpretation of the claim being made. From the article: "Minato's motors consume just 20 percent or less of the power of conventional motors with the same torque and horse power." and after a discussion of electric bills for manufacturers: "Minato is about to introduce a motor which saves 80 percent, putting it into an entirely new class: The $80,000 running cost will drop to just $16,000."
They clearly intend the 80% figure to apply to the energy used to make things move. Put another way, they claim to have made a five fold improvement in the output of a device that already uses nearly everything you put into it.
This isn't a wonderful motor. It's a scam, as the article says: "...it is feasible to attach a generator to the motor and produce more electric power than was put into the device. and amazingly enough given the grandparent's point about efficiency greater than %100, "Minato says that average efficiency on his motors is about 330 percent."
Nothing can use %80 less power for a given amount of output if it's already got more than %20 efficiency. That's why these perpetual motion and free energy jokes keep popping up. Either the numbers are grossly mistated or this thing would be better described as "about %20 'motor' and around %80 'battery' or 'compressed spring' or 'water behind a dam' etc...
Electric motors are already "too good" at turning current into motion to allow for an improvement of this magnitude. If the advertised numbers are correct then this thing works by turning magnets into something that isn't a magnet anymore.
Could you explain this? It's far too counter-intuitive for me to take on faith.
The modern internal combustion engine is one of the most efficent forms of power generation we have.
Well -- to be pendantic, since I know what you mean to say -- the internal combustion engines we're talking about replacing aren't being used to generate power. They're being used to transform stored energy into kinetic energy. Regardless, this statement struck me as being so counter to "conventional wisdom" (I mean come on now, you might as well claim that incandescent light bulbs are efficient at turning electricity into light) that I immediately went here.
Within the first ten links the best figure I could find was %52 -- for a 90,000HP diesel marine engine. Everything else reaffirmed what I had already believed before I hit that statement in your post. Internal combustion engines can expect between %15 and %35 efficiency. The vast majority of the (chemical) energy (I mean, we're not gonna nuke the stuff right?) stored in gasoline is spent heating the engine block and the exhaust. It isn't anywhere near the efficiency of an electric motor and I think Carnot might have a proof that can show it never will be. Even if such an engine were possible we can't make gasoline out of polution by cranking a drive shaft so regenerative braking is lost with the contemporary vehicle.
If you own a LEV (low emmissions vehicle) in Los Angles the air coming out the exhaust is cleaner then the air that went into the engine.
Wow! So on those smog alert days asthmatics should hook a gas mask up to a tail pipe! (I mean on a running car of course.)
If you want EVs to happen. Invent a box roughly 1ftx1ftx2ft that holds as much energy as a gasoline tank the same size and weighs the same or less.
Well, that's what every would-be Edison is shooting for aren't they? No one takes the notion of using batteries in an EV seriously. That's why GM was trying to make that mini gasoline cracker that would allow us to treat octane like liquid hydrogen.
I think that ultimatly you just want to point out that electric cars as they stand aren't a panacea, but you sound really intent on shooting the fundamental concept down.
You might be interested in what these guys have done. This is a cool page on their corporate web site. They can make a 25 pound 12"x4" motor deliver 100 ft-lbs @ 3800 rpm. It isn't an enhancement of conventional design. It's a new arrangement of the magnetic relation between the rotor and the stator. IIRC, the rotor gets twisted like a particle in a cyclotron instead of pushed/pulled like two kids spinning up a schoolyard merry-go-round.
...this new motor design will make battery-powered cars a reality..
Wouldn't this motor work by demagnetizing itself? The article is/.'d right now so I can only presume, but if this thing is running on %20 of the amps that would drive a conventional electric motor -- which can easily be %80 efficient -- then the missing energy has got to come from somewhere. I'd guess it's what's been bound up in the permanent magnets in the first place. That makes these motors the pragmatic equivalent of an "electric rubber-band".
...you still have to assume someone's talking about Windows, rather than unsupported drivers tossed out for the Linux crowd to complain about.
No he doesn't. That assumption isn't "stupid" at all because this is one site on the entire Internet. Believe it or not, a lot of the posters on this forum chime in here instead of elsewhere because it a nexus of the "pro-Linux" community. Since they actually use that OS thats what they're referring to when they pipe up. Honestly now bud, are you asking us to specifically note that we're referring to a non-Windows platform here?
Uhh, well if they work for you great, but counter arguments about the quality of their Linux drivers are easy to make. In addition to distributing their drivers in rpm format, ATi saw fit to skip an actual Makefile and use an easily breakable shell script to build the kernel module. They require the sources for this module to be installed under/lib/modules. These sources include patches which may applied while building depending on the kernel in question since they couldn't be bothered to #ifdef a few things in reference to the contents of version.h. They have no bundled documentation enumerating the Options available in the Device section of XF86Config-4. The binary-only driver utilities segfault rather than exit with an error code.
I had a 9600XT to play around with and very much wanted to become an ATi fan. I like the fact that the DRI project can support ATi hardware. I think RV3xx is a great chip. But ATi's driver packaging seems like a mess to me.
Its about time. Gainward made a dual DVI GF4, but the only NV3x card offering that was (IIRC) a 5700 or 5800 Ultra -- the wierd one just before the 5900 series.
There is one small board parallel to the main pcb. It is fastened to a plate that sits at the top of the mini and connects to the main board with a kind of socket connector. Here's the clearer photo.
The jack actually looks pretty solid to me. The point about the cost wasn't so much about adding "mere" pennies or whatnot to Apple's cost, but about charging an extra $5 to those who can afford $250+ for a neet-o walkman.
Its a misnomer to say that Linux has fonts. The window manager have them and to put it bluntly they suck. You are in denial if you don't notice this.
I first installed Linux back when XFree86 was at 3.x and yes, the fonts sucked royally. I ended up Windows-free for about a year and a half until I took shine to MOHAA and started dual booting with W2K. I also used to have OSX on my laptop. Fonts on Linux look better to me than either of the two consumer OS platforms. I'm not "in denial".
DirectX is much more than just a 3-D gaming API. It has other features that make games easier to develop for.
DirectX doesn't offer anything that can't be found on a *nix platform. Few games make it to Linux because the market is small. Battlefield 1942 came out nearly two years ago. A Mac client was just announced. Games for Linux are more likely to exist because of developer appreciation for the platform alone. They aren't being held back by distain for the difficulty of going without DX.
Sorry, its just too complicated to make it run correctly (across window managers).
If musicians want to get paid, then they should perform music for a fee. Until the 20th century, this was the customary way of getting paid for it.
Until the 20th century live performance was the only way people could enjoy it. You make it sound like you're calling bullshit on a scam that's gone on for 100 years. If recordings had no value, they never would have been priced beyond the cost of the physical media in the first place. In any event, musicians were paid for writing their music down as well, or even just writing it period.
Jesus buddy, would it kill ya' to admit that fifty cents is pretty skinflintish? If you can't do that could you at least drop the moralizing, disrespectful tone? Who are you to tell musicians that their recordings should be worth next to nothing and that they should expect to pay the rent by hawking T-shirts. Why should they have to consider income from a CD a gratuity?
This topic gets harped on here ad nauseum. It can't seem to be breached without/. experts telling us all about the evils of the status quo and the Brave New World that awaits musicians with the "proper" attitude. It's really getting old.
First, solder is quite adequate to hold a headphone jack in place.
The problem here has nothing to do with the headphone jack. It has to do with not using a ribbon cable between two circuit boards.
you can't just introduce extra assembly stages in a mass-produced design without incurring significant cost.
Is it really possible that adding a drop of epoxy (if the headphone jack were the problem in the first place) could make or break a product this expensive?
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I thought it seemed pretty obvious that Clay believes our troops are relishing the lockdown of Falluja.
I would think that the first plausible explanation is simply that this product would appeal most to those already utilizing Linux in renderfarms.
Priceless.
(Sorry bud, but we both know it had to be said.)
Well yeah, but... $1000/mo for a one bedroom in a "safe" neighborhood is a great deal compared to SF or NYC. This jives with the anecdotal evidence I've heard about living in LA; rent is hella cheap (as The Dude would put it). Certainly kids are expensive, but isn't that rent (along with everything else) split with a spouse?
Isn't this just a driver limitation? Does the AGP bus have a unidirectionality built into it?
There is some serious interest in utilizing graphics hardware for non-graphical computation. The GPU would be treated like a co-processor. It would function in relation to the CPU in a manner analogous to the way MMX, SSE, and Altivec, relate to standard instructions. This site is a kind of focal point for people researching the notion.
Exactly.
There are a few more political flashpoints that are bound to be crossed too. I would be surprised to find that XFree86 will continue to play much of a role in FOSS X11 software. X.org's tree is in Fedora core test 2. I read hints from a poster here on /. (for what it's worth) that Debian is already thinking about what to change in packaging/namespace if and when they switch to fdo's autotool'd X. If the fat lady isn't already singing, she will once nVidia releases a driver that acknowledges anything X.org specific.
4.3.99.902 was the last GPL compatible snapshot. They've got some headroom to work with when it comes to syncing.
They clearly intend the 80% figure to apply to the energy used to make things move. Put another way, they claim to have made a five fold improvement in the output of a device that already uses nearly everything you put into it.
This isn't a wonderful motor. It's a scam, as the article says: "...it is feasible to attach a generator to the motor and produce more electric power than was put into the device. and amazingly enough given the grandparent's point about efficiency greater than %100, "Minato says that average efficiency on his motors is about 330 percent."
Nothing can use %80 less power for a given amount of output if it's already got more than %20 efficiency. That's why these perpetual motion and free energy jokes keep popping up. Either the numbers are grossly mistated or this thing would be better described as "about %20 'motor' and around %80 'battery' or 'compressed spring' or 'water behind a dam' etc...
Cool.
Electric motors are already "too good" at turning current into motion to allow for an improvement of this magnitude. If the advertised numbers are correct then this thing works by turning magnets into something that isn't a magnet anymore.
Chuckle... Yeah, poor choice of adjectives; maybe "spun" or, uh... "rotated"?
Could you explain this? It's far too counter-intuitive for me to take on faith.
The modern internal combustion engine is one of the most efficent forms of power generation we have.
Well -- to be pendantic, since I know what you mean to say -- the internal combustion engines we're talking about replacing aren't being used to generate power. They're being used to transform stored energy into kinetic energy. Regardless, this statement struck me as being so counter to "conventional wisdom" (I mean come on now, you might as well claim that incandescent light bulbs are efficient at turning electricity into light) that I immediately went here. Within the first ten links the best figure I could find was %52 -- for a 90,000HP diesel marine engine. Everything else reaffirmed what I had already believed before I hit that statement in your post. Internal combustion engines can expect between %15 and %35 efficiency. The vast majority of the (chemical) energy (I mean, we're not gonna nuke the stuff right?) stored in gasoline is spent heating the engine block and the exhaust. It isn't anywhere near the efficiency of an electric motor and I think Carnot might have a proof that can show it never will be. Even if such an engine were possible we can't make gasoline out of polution by cranking a drive shaft so regenerative braking is lost with the contemporary vehicle.
If you own a LEV (low emmissions vehicle) in Los Angles the air coming out the exhaust is cleaner then the air that went into the engine.
Wow! So on those smog alert days asthmatics should hook a gas mask up to a tail pipe! (I mean on a running car of course.)
If you want EVs to happen. Invent a box roughly 1ftx1ftx2ft that holds as much energy as a gasoline tank the same size and weighs the same or less.
Well, that's what every would-be Edison is shooting for aren't they? No one takes the notion of using batteries in an EV seriously. That's why GM was trying to make that mini gasoline cracker that would allow us to treat octane like liquid hydrogen.
I think that ultimatly you just want to point out that electric cars as they stand aren't a panacea, but you sound really intent on shooting the fundamental concept down.
You might be interested in what these guys have done. This is a cool page on their corporate web site. They can make a 25 pound 12"x4" motor deliver 100 ft-lbs @ 3800 rpm. It isn't an enhancement of conventional design. It's a new arrangement of the magnetic relation between the rotor and the stator. IIRC, the rotor gets twisted like a particle in a cyclotron instead of pushed/pulled like two kids spinning up a schoolyard merry-go-round.
Wouldn't this motor work by demagnetizing itself? The article is /.'d right now so I can only presume, but if this thing is running on %20 of the amps that would drive a conventional electric motor -- which can easily be %80 efficient -- then the missing energy has got to come from somewhere. I'd guess it's what's been bound up in the permanent magnets in the first place. That makes these motors the pragmatic equivalent of an "electric rubber-band".
No he doesn't. That assumption isn't "stupid" at all because this is one site on the entire Internet. Believe it or not, a lot of the posters on this forum chime in here instead of elsewhere because it a nexus of the "pro-Linux" community. Since they actually use that OS thats what they're referring to when they pipe up. Honestly now bud, are you asking us to specifically note that we're referring to a non-Windows platform here?
I had a 9600XT to play around with and very much wanted to become an ATi fan. I like the fact that the DRI project can support ATi hardware. I think RV3xx is a great chip. But ATi's driver packaging seems like a mess to me.
Its about time. Gainward made a dual DVI GF4, but the only NV3x card offering that was (IIRC) a 5700 or 5800 Ultra -- the wierd one just before the 5900 series.
The jack actually looks pretty solid to me. The point about the cost wasn't so much about adding "mere" pennies or whatnot to Apple's cost, but about charging an extra $5 to those who can afford $250+ for a neet-o walkman.
Is a DX->GL wrapper library possible?
I first installed Linux back when XFree86 was at 3.x and yes, the fonts sucked royally. I ended up Windows-free for about a year and a half until I took shine to MOHAA and started dual booting with W2K. I also used to have OSX on my laptop. Fonts on Linux look better to me than either of the two consumer OS platforms. I'm not "in denial".
DirectX is much more than just a 3-D gaming API. It has other features that make games easier to develop for.
DirectX doesn't offer anything that can't be found on a *nix platform. Few games make it to Linux because the market is small. Battlefield 1942 came out nearly two years ago. A Mac client was just announced. Games for Linux are more likely to exist because of developer appreciation for the platform alone. They aren't being held back by distain for the difficulty of going without DX.
Sorry, its just too complicated to make it run correctly (across window managers).
Window managers aren't toolkits.
Until the 20th century live performance was the only way people could enjoy it. You make it sound like you're calling bullshit on a scam that's gone on for 100 years. If recordings had no value, they never would have been priced beyond the cost of the physical media in the first place. In any event, musicians were paid for writing their music down as well, or even just writing it period.
Jesus buddy, would it kill ya' to admit that fifty cents is pretty skinflintish? If you can't do that could you at least drop the moralizing, disrespectful tone? Who are you to tell musicians that their recordings should be worth next to nothing and that they should expect to pay the rent by hawking T-shirts. Why should they have to consider income from a CD a gratuity?
This topic gets harped on here ad nauseum. It can't seem to be breached without /. experts telling us all about the evils of the status quo and the Brave New World that awaits musicians with the "proper" attitude. It's really getting old.
Yes they are, because the problem isn't the headphone jack.
The problem here has nothing to do with the headphone jack. It has to do with not using a ribbon cable between two circuit boards.
you can't just introduce extra assembly stages in a mass-produced design without incurring significant cost.
Is it really possible that adding a drop of epoxy (if the headphone jack were the problem in the first place) could make or break a product this expensive?