Batteries involve a trade off between stable/safe and easy to extract energy. It is almost necessary for batteries (in general) to be easy to extract energy from and therefore somewhat unsafe as long as the energy density is low, which decreases the unstability. For example:
While it may be true that fat is both less dangerous (though some might argue) and denser than Li-Ion, it is a lot easier to convert the energy in a Li-Ion battery into electricity so that it is in a form usable by a computer. The only way to safely extract energy from fat is to oxidize (burn) it.
If you want to straight up burn the fat, you're never going to market it as a laptop battery. So in order to control the oxidation one needs oxidation enzymes at a controlled level and to do this you need some sort of feedback system so that the number of enzymes will change in order to produce the correct output voltage, requiring either a biological system or yet another eletrical system in order to control the enzyme production. Enzyme production is tricky too, because you need to recycle the old enzymes that fall apart since there is no where to dispose of them. It might be easier if you had a fat tank and then oxidized the fat elsewhere, but you still need to take care of having a decent level of enzymes since they naturally break down.
Oh, and you somehow need to use these enzymes to get eletrical energy, so I recommend something like eletron transport, requiring a membrane with pumps and carrier molecules and so on. Maybe this isn't the easiest way, because it sure isn't easy, or someone would have done it by now. But it actually might be worth it for huge batteries, like cars or something.
Adding might be kinda weird, but dividing is actually much easier in base-12 than in base-10. For example, base-12 can be easily divided into 2,3,4, and 6 while base-10 can only be divided into 2 and 5. Now, if only we could all grow another finger and then revise our number system and have a superior metric system.
But in the meantime, I will be using cgs/mks/etc for work (Physics) and English for driving, cooking, and so on. Before I start using some form of metric for everyday activities, companies need to sell goods with metric measurements. Until that happens it's not going to change.
While it is true that more results could mean worse filtering, that is a separate test entirely.
I tend to think that ordering is more important than filtering down to a small number of results, since having lots of results returned doesn't hurt if the search engine can order well so that what you want is most likely to be in the top 10-25. This is especially true when there will be at most a couple of results where I'd rather have the search engine try at the ordering and have me do most of the filtering because no search engine is as good as a person at really figuring out what people want, yet.
So the first time I clicked on each of those links the page never changed from "Loading..." underneath the search bar. Eventually they did when I reloaded the page but while these are interesting sites, Google is still much faster. Unless of course, its only the/. effect.
The first two pages have relatively normal search results pages, while the third uses a fancy overlay box thing that is horribly slow and unreliable. The first time I tried searching for linux it just made a box asking "Web News RSS" with no results for either.
They loop pretty at first IMO, but if you try to use them, they're ugly. I guess this means that M$ paid for a decent artist or I've lowered my expectations so much that it looks ok now.
If scientists notified the public every time there is a possibility of there being Planet X somewhere there would be 100 announcements each day and then 100 retractments a couple hours later 99% of the time. The computers that look for objects spit out these 100 objects each day and a person looks at most of them and says that they are just minor camera issues or some small asteroid or comet most of the time. Most of this would not interest the public at all.
Furthermore, I attend Caltech, have taken Planetary Science class from Mike Brown, and my girlfriend is doing Astrophysics research into searching for more planets and she told me that someone looked up telescope records to figure out where Mike Brown has been looking when so that they can reconstruct the orbit and find the object. It doesn't sound that improbable, and I can't imagine someone here at Caltech in the Planetary Science or Astrophysics Departments making it up.
Now that I've written this, I checked his site at the bottom and it confirms what I said is possible, though maybe no one bothered to actually try it.
Check out this picture from Mike Brown's website. He's the one who discovered Sedna and has a bit of useful information on that site.
I feel that Pluto should officially be considered a planetoid at least officially. But I don't especially care what they teach in Elementary School. By the time we start looking for smaller planets around other stars we'll come up with some definition of a planet and a planetoid and maybe Pluto will be grandfathered in, but it would probably just be easier to start saying now that it's a planet and not a planetoid.
So there is. It must be at least kinda new since I haven't really used them for anything in a while and so that's what I get for commenting before double checking. Thanks!
One feature I would really like to see in Google Maps is a scale bar like the one that MSN Virtual Earth has in the lower right corner in blue so that I can see how far apart things are. Maybe it's just me.
The whole fact that the MS satillite images show dirt roads and label them freeways is not especially useful or convincing so I'll still be using Google Maps for a while.
How about open source compatibility? You know, something like SSH, Apache, X11, xterm/bash/shell scripting, and so on?
How about Expose and Dashboard and a fast utility to find files? How about "Smart Folders" that store your searches (not as seemingly useless once you start using them). How about Applescript/Automator? How about Rendezvous/Bonjour? How about tabbed browsing?
Sure you can download third party programs to get some of this stuff but many of these things are in modern operating systems out of the box. Having to download third party applications that might contain spyware/adware is ridiculous. These options should come on the computer as they are all part of the general computer experience and should not require hacks to get them to work instead of being part of the OS.
M$ is just waiting until Mac OS X comes out on x86, then it'll be easier for them to copy things over to Windows OS X.
First of all, lots of people still use 2000, though mainly companies and tech-friendly-people who don't especially care for XP but still want to use Windows. I would not be surprised if either these companies or tech-friendly-people switched to firefox when it becomes clear that there is a free way to catch up to the positive aspects of XP that are introduced in IE 7. For example, when managers at companies get used to using tabs in IE7 at home and want tabs at work I can almost guarantee you that when they ask the IT department how they can use tabs the word "firefox" will be mentioned.
While I agree that it's not a good plan to use a 5 year old poorly supported operating system, who wants to upgrade to a 4 year old operating system that will be abandoned as soon as M$ wants you to upgrade again (shortly after Longhorn Vista Windows is released)? That's just stupid.
I am running RAID 5 on my desktop server right here. It has a P4 3 year old Gigabyte motherboard. It's not hotswappable because it's not enterprise level (and I don't plan on having to hotswap all of the time, only when shit happens) but it gives me the RAID 5 that I like to use as a backup using software based RAID on Ubuntu Linux. After the install, it it would be just as easy for Grandma to use as if it were not RAIDed and I am certain any/.er could figure out the install for most any Linux distro.
I suppose I should clarify. Yes there are teams that chose small vehicles but there are plenty of other teams who chose large SUVs (a certain H2 comes to mind) and still have little seating space. I'd be damned impressed if you managed to have 4-5 seats in your Ford Ranger after installing a bunch of computers and onboard sensors.
Anyway, its more of an aside, because by the time the military gets around to implementing this technology, someone will come up with an elegant way of arranging all of the components so that you can fit the people in easily.
The Caltech Team is reasonably close to various people at JPL and as such they were all set to give us their code, but DARPA told us we couldn't use it (no big surprise there). It's not really a big deal since it's a better learning experience for our team to develop the code themselves.
On a separate note, I believe that our vehicle is the only one that can fit a reasonable number of people inside, comfortably, with seatbelts (6 I think).
A couple of corrections:
Two Teams Compete for Best Robot Car in DARPA Challenge I would just like to point out that the headline is off by over an order of magnitude! We here at Caltech and many other people at many other schools are also competing to have the best robot car too!
The vehicles are given no more than 10 hours to complete the 176-mile route, which will be kept secret until the beginning of the race. The map is given to each of the teams several (3?) hours prior to the start of the race. One result of this subtle difference is that teams can program a general path into the vehicle and have it deviate from it only as necessary instead of just popping the DVD into the computer and having the computer do everything.
Something that people should keep in mind is that many schools are using the program as a learning experience and solely out to win the competition, but provide their students with not only a limited budget, but make them do things themselves even when it might be cheaper and undoubtedly easier to simply buy premade parts elsewhere. The use to the military will not be the machines that are built with all sorts of fancy equipment and sensors that Tom's Hardware liked to talk about, but the algorithms and techniques that are used to guide the vehicles.
If you don't care, don't read and don't post. Very easy, very simple.
And how do you propose that I find out if I care before I read and conclude that I don't care?
There are a large number of articles on topics that I don't really care about (not just this one), but I would say that it's reasonable to complain (by posting) when something maybe seems interesting enough to RTFA and then is total crap or it if seems like total crap and lives up to expectations.
To (at least pretend to) be a bit more constructive than the grandparent, if we had a system by which articles could be moderated, we might not get posts like this since people could mod stories "-1, WHO THE FUCK CARES?"
Re:Education Sucks in the US? That's news to me!
on
Improving Education?
·
· Score: 1
Alright, I attend one of the best schools for Math/Science/Engineering. I feel like I managed OK in the public school system. Why just ok? Because everything was a battle with the school: I wanted to (God forbid) take an AP science class, an AP language class, and an AP math class and they were all only offered the same two periods. Our school district wanted to ban every club that wasn't strictly academic (and did for a while). I, eventually, took the highest classes that my high school had to offer, despite conselors recommending the more standard courses. Did high school prepare me to college? No. Did it even try? Not at all.
I can ask anyone around here about the condition of our public school system and unless they were home schooled, went to a magnet school, or are from some other country they always say that something serious should be improved. Ask some people from overseas about their education system, you'll get interesting answers. I've talked to a lot of very succesful students here, and I think you are the outlier. You should realize that just because you're happy with your education, doesn't mean that most other people are too and that the vocal people you hear are in the minority.
My parents learned the lesson and are sending my younger brothers to magnet schools (which are not nearby mind you) to get a decent education. I succeeded because of my parents and in spite of the public school system, and I know a number of people who say the same thing. Now I wonder how successful I would be if I could say that I succeeded because of my parents AND my public school education.
You made a minor mistake in your E=mc^2 math. The mass you use should take both the antimatter and the matter into account because any given matter-antimatter reaction involves the conversion of matter and antimatter into pure energy. This results in 10 kg being converted into energy, or about 10^18 Joules or 125 megatons.
And in case you were wondering if the other poster that claimed bad math was right or not, he's wrong. The correct units are J=kg*(m/s)^2 like parent used.
Does this mean that the http://slsahdot.org/ domain is being given to slashdot too? I really hate accidentally ending up there when I try to type in slashdot. Finally I can simply get redirected to http://slashdot.org/ and not need to be humiliated. Somehow, I don't really expect OSDN to bother with this.
It would be appreciated by all if you did not call the Mormons Protestant. I will start by saying that no one considers them Protestant: Christians by and large consider them to be non-Christians (and therefore non-Protestant); they consider themselves a unique denominational class and neither Protestant, Catholic, Coptic, nor Orthodox.
I hope you noticed that I was neutral in the above paragraph: I pulled their claim to be non-Protestant off of their own website and I'm trying to be informative and not trying to start a flamewar.
I'm sorry you dislike it when people, usually citizens of the United States (notice I am being politically correct here too and not using the term Americans which one might argue includes Canadians, Mexicans, and Latin Americans), use the term "Indians" to refer to the people who were native to the land when Columbus arrived. I even agree with you that people should use the term "Native Americans" more often because it minimizes genuine confusion. If I had to speculate, the reason the term is still used is because that is what people are taught in Kindergarten and because it is much more fun to play games with Indians and Pilgrims than it is to play games with "Native Americans" and "Immigrants Predominantly Fleeing Religious Persecution in Europe" since they sure weren't actually on a pilgrimage anywhere. Sadly, this probably isn't going to change, but if you wanted to be productive you could make polite comments about the inherent confusion in using the term "Indians" to refer to Native Americans that would at worst be ignored rather than moderated -1, Offtopic but more likely at least encourage the use of the term "Native Americans" in/. submissions.
That being said, and in hope that maybe this comment won't be moderated totally offtopic, I found both articles very interesting and I suggest that anyone who hasn't read them to do so. Research like this will help many people with rare genetic disorders and I sincerely hope it can continue for many years. Now go ahead and moderate me offtopic anyway.
Use distributed computing to use all of the computer cycles that you already have.
Buy new rackmount computers which will cost additional money up front for the hardware and then they have their electricity and cooling costs.
Spend absolutely no money and get no more computing power.
Note that the solution in this article is obviously not free due to electricity and other support costs, but it is undoubtedly cheaper than buying your own cluster and then paying for electricity and the support costs.
Where is the innovation? Sure, they added some of the features you listed, but let's go over things:
The ps and kill commands have existed in Unix for a while. While implemented, this feature is not innovative.
Let me break this one down: you can have multiple user accounts but if you're a home user and want to accomplish anything without a fulltime sysadmin you need to have administrator privledges and getting any sort of common userspace thing going in a group of computers is a pain in the ass.
OK, there is a web browser built in - but if you want to use it safely you need to change lots of preferences.
Sorry but fixing an broken innovation doesn't count as innovating.
I was under the impression that you could organize the Start Menu in Windows 95 but either way, you could organize a start menu thing in DOS.
There is a more informative sidebar in explorer and while I'm not sure that it's innovative, it might be.
Switch User is slightly innovative: Unix has had this feature for a while for non-GUI sessions but it's good to see it extended into GUIs.
I fricken hate system tray icons that are hidden! I want to look and see everything that is there dangit.
Innovation does not mean copying features or fixing previous features. It means coming up with new features. Things that I think of as features: Expose, trackpads, Alt-Tab, the mouse, a GUI, user switching, preemptive multi-tasking, the keyboard (as opposed to punch cards), and integrated circuits.
Windows has improved a heck of a lot in the 6 years after Windows 95 came out, but not through innovation.
Slashdot Mirror
Batteries involve a trade off between stable/safe and easy to extract energy. It is almost necessary for batteries (in general) to be easy to extract energy from and therefore somewhat unsafe as long as the energy density is low, which decreases the unstability. For example:
While it may be true that fat is both less dangerous (though some might argue) and denser than Li-Ion, it is a lot easier to convert the energy in a Li-Ion battery into electricity so that it is in a form usable by a computer. The only way to safely extract energy from fat is to oxidize (burn) it.
If you want to straight up burn the fat, you're never going to market it as a laptop battery. So in order to control the oxidation one needs oxidation enzymes at a controlled level and to do this you need some sort of feedback system so that the number of enzymes will change in order to produce the correct output voltage, requiring either a biological system or yet another eletrical system in order to control the enzyme production. Enzyme production is tricky too, because you need to recycle the old enzymes that fall apart since there is no where to dispose of them. It might be easier if you had a fat tank and then oxidized the fat elsewhere, but you still need to take care of having a decent level of enzymes since they naturally break down.
Oh, and you somehow need to use these enzymes to get eletrical energy, so I recommend something like eletron transport, requiring a membrane with pumps and carrier molecules and so on. Maybe this isn't the easiest way, because it sure isn't easy, or someone would have done it by now. But it actually might be worth it for huge batteries, like cars or something.
Adding might be kinda weird, but dividing is actually much easier in base-12 than in base-10. For example, base-12 can be easily divided into 2,3,4, and 6 while base-10 can only be divided into 2 and 5. Now, if only we could all grow another finger and then revise our number system and have a superior metric system.
But in the meantime, I will be using cgs/mks/etc for work (Physics) and English for driving, cooking, and so on. Before I start using some form of metric for everyday activities, companies need to sell goods with metric measurements. Until that happens it's not going to change.
While it is true that more results could mean worse filtering, that is a separate test entirely.
I tend to think that ordering is more important than filtering down to a small number of results, since having lots of results returned doesn't hurt if the search engine can order well so that what you want is most likely to be in the top 10-25. This is especially true when there will be at most a couple of results where I'd rather have the search engine try at the ordering and have me do most of the filtering because no search engine is as good as a person at really figuring out what people want, yet.
So the first time I clicked on each of those links the page never changed from "Loading..." underneath the search bar. Eventually they did when I reloaded the page but while these are interesting sites, Google is still much faster. Unless of course, its only the /. effect.
The first two pages have relatively normal search results pages, while the third uses a fancy overlay box thing that is horribly slow and unreliable. The first time I tried searching for linux it just made a box asking "Web News RSS" with no results for either.
They loop pretty at first IMO, but if you try to use them, they're ugly. I guess this means that M$ paid for a decent artist or I've lowered my expectations so much that it looks ok now.
If scientists notified the public every time there is a possibility of there being Planet X somewhere there would be 100 announcements each day and then 100 retractments a couple hours later 99% of the time. The computers that look for objects spit out these 100 objects each day and a person looks at most of them and says that they are just minor camera issues or some small asteroid or comet most of the time. Most of this would not interest the public at all.
Furthermore, I attend Caltech, have taken Planetary Science class from Mike Brown, and my girlfriend is doing Astrophysics research into searching for more planets and she told me that someone looked up telescope records to figure out where Mike Brown has been looking when so that they can reconstruct the orbit and find the object. It doesn't sound that improbable, and I can't imagine someone here at Caltech in the Planetary Science or Astrophysics Departments making it up.
Now that I've written this, I checked his site at the bottom and it confirms what I said is possible, though maybe no one bothered to actually try it.
I suggest you check out this page at the bottom about "Why is it called Sedna?"
Check out this picture from Mike Brown's website. He's the one who discovered Sedna and has a bit of useful information on that site.
I feel that Pluto should officially be considered a planetoid at least officially. But I don't especially care what they teach in Elementary School. By the time we start looking for smaller planets around other stars we'll come up with some definition of a planet and a planetoid and maybe Pluto will be grandfathered in, but it would probably just be easier to start saying now that it's a planet and not a planetoid.
So there is. It must be at least kinda new since I haven't really used them for anything in a while and so that's what I get for commenting before double checking. Thanks!
One feature I would really like to see in Google Maps is a scale bar like the one that MSN Virtual Earth has in the lower right corner in blue so that I can see how far apart things are. Maybe it's just me.
The whole fact that the MS satillite images show dirt roads and label them freeways is not especially useful or convincing so I'll still be using Google Maps for a while.
Konfabulator is awesome, if MicroSoft had released it, it would cost $69.95 in the form of an OS update.
That's nothing. If Apple released it, said OS update would cost $129. Oh, wait a sec...
How about open source compatibility? You know, something like SSH, Apache, X11, xterm/bash/shell scripting, and so on?
How about Expose and Dashboard and a fast utility to find files? How about "Smart Folders" that store your searches (not as seemingly useless once you start using them). How about Applescript/Automator? How about Rendezvous/Bonjour? How about tabbed browsing?
Sure you can download third party programs to get some of this stuff but many of these things are in modern operating systems out of the box. Having to download third party applications that might contain spyware/adware is ridiculous. These options should come on the computer as they are all part of the general computer experience and should not require hacks to get them to work instead of being part of the OS.
M$ is just waiting until Mac OS X comes out on x86, then it'll be easier for them to copy things over to Windows OS X.
First of all, lots of people still use 2000, though mainly companies and tech-friendly-people who don't especially care for XP but still want to use Windows. I would not be surprised if either these companies or tech-friendly-people switched to firefox when it becomes clear that there is a free way to catch up to the positive aspects of XP that are introduced in IE 7. For example, when managers at companies get used to using tabs in IE7 at home and want tabs at work I can almost guarantee you that when they ask the IT department how they can use tabs the word "firefox" will be mentioned.
While I agree that it's not a good plan to use a 5 year old poorly supported operating system, who wants to upgrade to a 4 year old operating system that will be abandoned as soon as M$ wants you to upgrade again (shortly after Longhorn Vista Windows is released)? That's just stupid.
I am running RAID 5 on my desktop server right here. It has a P4 3 year old Gigabyte motherboard. It's not hotswappable because it's not enterprise level (and I don't plan on having to hotswap all of the time, only when shit happens) but it gives me the RAID 5 that I like to use as a backup using software based RAID on Ubuntu Linux. After the install, it it would be just as easy for Grandma to use as if it were not RAIDed and I am certain any /.er could figure out the install for most any Linux distro.
Can I have your money now?
.-- - ..-.
How about some legible Morse Code please?
I suppose I should clarify. Yes there are teams that chose small vehicles but there are plenty of other teams who chose large SUVs (a certain H2 comes to mind) and still have little seating space. I'd be damned impressed if you managed to have 4-5 seats in your Ford Ranger after installing a bunch of computers and onboard sensors.
Anyway, its more of an aside, because by the time the military gets around to implementing this technology, someone will come up with an elegant way of arranging all of the components so that you can fit the people in easily.
The Caltech Team is reasonably close to various people at JPL and as such they were all set to give us their code, but DARPA told us we couldn't use it (no big surprise there). It's not really a big deal since it's a better learning experience for our team to develop the code themselves.
On a separate note, I believe that our vehicle is the only one that can fit a reasonable number of people inside, comfortably, with seatbelts (6 I think).
A couple of corrections:
Two Teams Compete for Best Robot Car in DARPA Challenge
I would just like to point out that the headline is off by over an order of magnitude! We here at Caltech and many other people at many other schools are also competing to have the best robot car too!
The vehicles are given no more than 10 hours to complete the 176-mile route, which will be kept secret until the beginning of the race.
The map is given to each of the teams several (3?) hours prior to the start of the race. One result of this subtle difference is that teams can program a general path into the vehicle and have it deviate from it only as necessary instead of just popping the DVD into the computer and having the computer do everything.
Something that people should keep in mind is that many schools are using the program as a learning experience and solely out to win the competition, but provide their students with not only a limited budget, but make them do things themselves even when it might be cheaper and undoubtedly easier to simply buy premade parts elsewhere. The use to the military will not be the machines that are built with all sorts of fancy equipment and sensors that Tom's Hardware liked to talk about, but the algorithms and techniques that are used to guide the vehicles.
Scott
If you don't care, don't read and don't post. Very easy, very simple.
And how do you propose that I find out if I care before I read and conclude that I don't care?
There are a large number of articles on topics that I don't really care about (not just this one), but I would say that it's reasonable to complain (by posting) when something maybe seems interesting enough to RTFA and then is total crap or it if seems like total crap and lives up to expectations.
To (at least pretend to) be a bit more constructive than the grandparent, if we had a system by which articles could be moderated, we might not get posts like this since people could mod stories "-1, WHO THE FUCK CARES?"
Alright, I attend one of the best schools for Math/Science/Engineering. I feel like I managed OK in the public school system. Why just ok? Because everything was a battle with the school: I wanted to (God forbid) take an AP science class, an AP language class, and an AP math class and they were all only offered the same two periods. Our school district wanted to ban every club that wasn't strictly academic (and did for a while). I, eventually, took the highest classes that my high school had to offer, despite conselors recommending the more standard courses. Did high school prepare me to college? No. Did it even try? Not at all.
I can ask anyone around here about the condition of our public school system and unless they were home schooled, went to a magnet school, or are from some other country they always say that something serious should be improved. Ask some people from overseas about their education system, you'll get interesting answers. I've talked to a lot of very succesful students here, and I think you are the outlier. You should realize that just because you're happy with your education, doesn't mean that most other people are too and that the vocal people you hear are in the minority.
My parents learned the lesson and are sending my younger brothers to magnet schools (which are not nearby mind you) to get a decent education. I succeeded because of my parents and in spite of the public school system, and I know a number of people who say the same thing. Now I wonder how successful I would be if I could say that I succeeded because of my parents AND my public school education.
You made a minor mistake in your E=mc^2 math. The mass you use should take both the antimatter and the matter into account because any given matter-antimatter reaction involves the conversion of matter and antimatter into pure energy. This results in 10 kg being converted into energy, or about 10^18 Joules or 125 megatons.
And in case you were wondering if the other poster that claimed bad math was right or not, he's wrong. The correct units are J=kg*(m/s)^2 like parent used.
Does this mean that the http://slsahdot.org/ domain is being given to slashdot too? I really hate accidentally ending up there when I try to type in slashdot. Finally I can simply get redirected to http://slashdot.org/ and not need to be humiliated. Somehow, I don't really expect OSDN to bother with this.
It would be appreciated by all if you did not call the Mormons Protestant. I will start by saying that no one considers them Protestant: Christians by and large consider them to be non-Christians (and therefore non-Protestant); they consider themselves a unique denominational class and neither Protestant, Catholic, Coptic, nor Orthodox.
I hope you noticed that I was neutral in the above paragraph: I pulled their claim to be non-Protestant off of their own website and I'm trying to be informative and not trying to start a flamewar.
I'm sorry you dislike it when people, usually citizens of the United States (notice I am being politically correct here too and not using the term Americans which one might argue includes Canadians, Mexicans, and Latin Americans), use the term "Indians" to refer to the people who were native to the land when Columbus arrived. I even agree with you that people should use the term "Native Americans" more often because it minimizes genuine confusion. If I had to speculate, the reason the term is still used is because that is what people are taught in Kindergarten and because it is much more fun to play games with Indians and Pilgrims than it is to play games with "Native Americans" and "Immigrants Predominantly Fleeing Religious Persecution in Europe" since they sure weren't actually on a pilgrimage anywhere. Sadly, this probably isn't going to change, but if you wanted to be productive you could make polite comments about the inherent confusion in using the term "Indians" to refer to Native Americans that would at worst be ignored rather than moderated -1, Offtopic but more likely at least encourage the use of the term "Native Americans" in /. submissions.
That being said, and in hope that maybe this comment won't be moderated totally offtopic, I found both articles very interesting and I suggest that anyone who hasn't read them to do so. Research like this will help many people with rare genetic disorders and I sincerely hope it can continue for many years. Now go ahead and moderate me offtopic anyway.
Your choices are:
Note that the solution in this article is obviously not free due to electricity and other support costs, but it is undoubtedly cheaper than buying your own cluster and then paying for electricity and the support costs.
Where is the innovation? Sure, they added some of the features you listed, but let's go over things:
Innovation does not mean copying features or fixing previous features. It means coming up with new features. Things that I think of as features: Expose, trackpads, Alt-Tab, the mouse, a GUI, user switching, preemptive multi-tasking, the keyboard (as opposed to punch cards), and integrated circuits.
Windows has improved a heck of a lot in the 6 years after Windows 95 came out, but not through innovation.