>>I eagerly await the broadband over power lines initiative
ARGH!
There are serious issues with BPL. It generates interference that compromises several amateur radio bands, and is likewise interfered with by the legal operation of numerous low-power transmitters. (This includes CB radio transmitters as well as ham radio transmitters.)
Visit http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/ for more information.
This implies that there needs to be some negative consequence of a power user's high usage of the Internet in order for it to be classified as an addiction.
But the overwhelming majority of power users I know gain significant benefit from their 'Net connection. Where is the negative consequence that should otherwise dissuade them from using the Internet?
I think that the "addicted" label just doesn't apply outside of a few special (and comparatively rare) cases. (Gambling, gaming, and pr0n, for example.)
Can you be addicted to information? Does that even make sense?
Ok - I agree that there are *some* people that are addicted to Internet gambling. And surely there are plenty more examples of 'Net surfers that could be identified as "addicted" to pr0n. (You know the type... "But, but, I *need* my 160 gigs of all-anal-animal-pr0n!")
But do these groups comprise 6 to 10% of the users? No way.
I think the article incorrectly identifies what I would call "power users" of the Internet as being addicted to it. But as you poinited out, most power users are just curious about things in general, and are using the 'Net to *learn* about new things. (However trivial the topic in question may seem.)
I honestly can't see how you could ever classify the quest for knowledge as an addiciton.
I've done quite a few displays for halloween using lasers. While it's a bit late to start purchasing the equipment, you can accomplish quite a lot with nothing more than a green laser pointer, a fog machine, and a few basic optical components.
The "time tunnel" effect is always a crowd pleaser. Drill a hole in a penny and press it onto the shaft of a small DC motor. (It needs to be almost, but not perfectly, perpendicular to the shaft.) Glue a small mirror (1" square or less) onto the penny. Turn on the motor and bounce the beam off the spinning mirror. Add some fog to the room and dim the lights, and you've got a very cool effect indeed. (Wrap a rubber band around the barrel of the laser pointer to keep it on, and tape it into position near the spinning mirror.)
Or you can build two spinning mirror assemblies and generate lissajous patterns. (Think: Spirograph)
Or use some hot glue to tack a tiny mirror onto your speaker's woofer. Bounce the laser off the mirror while you play loud music, and you'll get all sorts of wierd patterns.
Or lay a CD-ROM on your turntable (you do still have one, right?) with the reflective surface up, and bounce the laser off the disc. (The narrow tracks act like a diffraction grating, splitting a single beam into multiple beams.) Slowly rotate the turntable platter (especially with the disc slightly offset from center) to get more effects.
Have a look at my site for some idea of the types of effects you can produce.
Here are a few other sites that might give you more ideas:
>>>"Sure, that was the engine of thought behind stories such as WarGames and 9x109 names of god"
Don't forget "The Adolecence of P-1". While a bit dated compared to today's technology, back in the 70's it made for a great read.
Horny, brilliant, master-of-the-art-of-the-last-minute cram student at a decent sized college takes an interest in computers, then launches on a quest to write a probram that can break the storage protection on the hulking mainframe... He ends up writing a learning engine of sorts, and unleashes it on a banking network of big iron. He looses control of it almost immediately thereafter. 3 years later he's working as a drone at a large data center when all the big iron grinds to a halt and "Call Gregory" pops up on the sys console! Trouble ensues...
Back then the author glossed over the details of how the program learned. Today, though I'm sure the state of the art of AI has advanced quite a bit, I believe we're still a long way from anything electronic that approaches even basic mamalian intelligence.
Gotta agree; pointless... At least with old fashioned graffiti there was a slim chance that you could view something that was visually pleasing while you contemplated the fact that what you are looking at is basically an act of vandalism.
Now all you get is a word, or a link, that is still an act of valdalism. But there's really nothing to look at. You've got to go look up the actual content using your cell phone, and then it might be something really lame - or worse, a goatse link.
What's the point? How many people are going to take the creator's word that the relevent link will be pleasing/funny/informative/(insert adjective here)? Especially after the first penis-enlargement Grafedia works start showing up. (Hey spammers! Here's a new delivery method for you! Get your victims, er - customers, to actually come to you for a change!)
Why not buy a socketed motherboard instead? They you can just plug in another CPU of the same type/brand as you just fried? Really, how likely is it that if you're an Intel guy, that you're going to have an AMD CPU lying around? Or vice versa?
Granted, you might not be a rabid fan of either company and thus may have spares of both makes available... But again, why not just plug in another Athlon when you bake the first one vs plugging in a Pentium IV?
I don't see this motherboard being of much use to the hobbyists. More likely it's aimed at retailers.
A few years ago I built half a dozen computers based around the ECS K7S5A motherboard, and they all performed (and still are performing) flawlessly. In fact, it was my early success with the K7S5A that led me to try a few other ECS motherboards, mostly with disastrous results. I don't recommend ECS motherboards in general, but in the past I have suggested the K7S5A board to lots of people that were building an AMD system on a tight budget.
The only problem I experienced with the K7S5A was the incredibly tight AGP socket. You couldn't correctly seat the graphics card unless you set the case on it's side and pushed with both hands. I was always afraid that I was about to crack the motherboard... But once you got that sucker in there, everything was fine.
I had 4 or 5 people e-mail me from a discussion forum about the K7S5A. Seems they would boot the machine, hear 8 beeps, and then nothing. (blank screen, no disk activity) The problem was that the AGP card wasn't seated properly. I'd tell them to lay the machine on it's side and really push, and they'd write back saying that they were sure it was already in correctly. But lo and behold, when they actually tried my method, the card dropped another 1/4 inch, and then the system would boot!
The really bad part was that you could insert the card normally and be able to tighten the screw on the back of the card until everything looks just fine, yet the card would still be too high in the socket and the system wouldn't boot. You had to lay it over and really push, and then you'd feel it go "thunk" as it dropped into place.
Back on topic though - I agree that the whole idea of supporting two different CPU's on the same motherboard seems to be aimed at the retailers, not the do-it-yourselfers. I would expect performance to suffer when running one or the other processor. (Try to tweak it in favor of Intel and AMD performance suffers, and vice versa...) A good compromise means they both run slow!
I'd have thought you would be able to find a better deal on-line. (I know I did...) Plus I really don't like Best Buy - but that's another thread altogether...
The grandparent's post questions the availability of high-end cards... I agree that at times they can be hard to find in retail outlets, but then again most power users in my area don't shop at the retail stores to begin with. (They shop on-line)
I'm not sure it makes good business sense for a retail outlet to stock the more expensive cards. (Limited market, short shelf life before prices fall, etc...)
Still, I haven't noticed any shortage of those same cards on-line. Is this shortage a recent development?
Um... No. You don't need another person. The purpose of the longer cables is so that you can click the mouse to start recording while you are in the room, then start playing.
That's what my friend does. He sits in the room with the musicians. (Well, the desk is actually in the closet, but the doors have been removed.) He has a monitor, keyboard, and mouse on the desk, connected to the CPU via long cables and a KVM switch. The CPU case (with the noisy fans and hard drives) is in the next room. When the band is ready to start, he clicks on the "record" button and away they go.
It does't take up any more space to do it this way. You still have to have a spare room to set up for recording. All you need to do is put the CPU in a different room. It can sit on the floor, or up on a shelf. No need to dedicate the entire room to just the CPU! (In fact, my friend's CPU is sitting on the floor in his master bedroom.)
Bottom line: I doubt that it cost him more than $150 (cost of the cables & KVM switch) to set up his recording room like this. That's a far cry from $1200.
I'd think that $1200 would be better spent on some long cables for the microphones, the mouse, and the monitor so you could put the computer in another room! (And take the leftover money and rent some studio time, or use it to buy some acoustic foam and make your own sound booth.)
I've got a friend that uses his machine to record tracks for local bands. He set up a spare bedroom in his house as a recording room (think lots of acoustic foam) and ran the cables through the wall to the next room where his computers were. (The large RAID-5 array was way too noisy to be in the same room with the musicians.) Works well enough that he can charge about 1/4 of what the local recording studio does.
Anyway, I really think $1200 for a case is over the top. Sure, there are a few people who will buy it for the coolness factor, but those are also the people for whom money is usually not a serious issue. I simply can't see this unit selling in any serious quantity when there are far cheaper means of achieving close to the same sound reduction performance.
Did you see the price on that Zalman no noise case on the Quiet PC site? I mean, sure heat pipes are expensive an all, but who in the hell is going to pay nearly $1200 just for a CASE?
Sheesh - you'd think active noise cancellation hardware would be cheaper... (Not to mention way, way, cooler!) Er - as in "gadget-like cool", not temperature cool.
Slashdot Mirror
>>I eagerly await the broadband over power lines initiative
ARGH!
There are serious issues with BPL. It generates interference that compromises several amateur radio bands, and is likewise interfered with by the legal operation of numerous low-power transmitters. (This includes CB radio transmitters as well as ham radio transmitters.)
Visit http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/ for more information.
"...regardless of its consequences"
This implies that there needs to be some negative consequence of a power user's high usage of the Internet in order for it to be classified as an addiction.
But the overwhelming majority of power users I know gain significant benefit from their 'Net connection. Where is the negative consequence that should otherwise dissuade them from using the Internet?
I think that the "addicted" label just doesn't apply outside of a few special (and comparatively rare) cases. (Gambling, gaming, and pr0n, for example.)
Can you be addicted to information? Does that even make sense?
Ok - I agree that there are *some* people that are addicted to Internet gambling. And surely there are plenty more examples of 'Net surfers that could be identified as "addicted" to pr0n. (You know the type... "But, but, I *need* my 160 gigs of all-anal-animal-pr0n!")
But do these groups comprise 6 to 10% of the users? No way.
I think the article incorrectly identifies what I would call "power users" of the Internet as being addicted to it. But as you poinited out, most power users are just curious about things in general, and are using the 'Net to *learn* about new things. (However trivial the topic in question may seem.)
I honestly can't see how you could ever classify the quest for knowledge as an addiciton.
The "time tunnel" effect is always a crowd pleaser. Drill a hole in a penny and press it onto the shaft of a small DC motor. (It needs to be almost, but not perfectly, perpendicular to the shaft.) Glue a small mirror (1" square or less) onto the penny. Turn on the motor and bounce the beam off the spinning mirror. Add some fog to the room and dim the lights, and you've got a very cool effect indeed. (Wrap a rubber band around the barrel of the laser pointer to keep it on, and tape it into position near the spinning mirror.)
Or you can build two spinning mirror assemblies and generate lissajous patterns. (Think: Spirograph)
Or use some hot glue to tack a tiny mirror onto your speaker's woofer. Bounce the laser off the mirror while you play loud music, and you'll get all sorts of wierd patterns.
Or lay a CD-ROM on your turntable (you do still have one, right?) with the reflective surface up, and bounce the laser off the disc. (The narrow tracks act like a diffraction grating, splitting a single beam into multiple beams.) Slowly rotate the turntable platter (especially with the disc slightly offset from center) to get more effects.
Have a look at my site for some idea of the types of effects you can produce.
Here are a few other sites that might give you more ideas:
LaserFx.com
Sam's Laser Faq
Isn't that what epinions (www.epinions.com) is for?
>>>"Sure, that was the engine of thought behind stories such as WarGames and 9x109 names of god"
Don't forget "The Adolecence of P-1". While a bit dated compared to today's technology, back in the 70's it made for a great read.
Horny, brilliant, master-of-the-art-of-the-last-minute cram student at a decent sized college takes an interest in computers, then launches on a quest to write a probram that can break the storage protection on the hulking mainframe... He ends up writing a learning engine of sorts, and unleashes it on a banking network of big iron. He looses control of it almost immediately thereafter. 3 years later he's working as a drone at a large data center when all the big iron grinds to a halt and "Call Gregory" pops up on the sys console! Trouble ensues...
Back then the author glossed over the details of how the program learned. Today, though I'm sure the state of the art of AI has advanced quite a bit, I believe we're still a long way from anything electronic that approaches even basic mamalian intelligence.
Still, a goal worth working for...
Gotta agree; pointless... At least with old fashioned graffiti there was a slim chance that you could view something that was visually pleasing while you contemplated the fact that what you are looking at is basically an act of vandalism.
Now all you get is a word, or a link, that is still an act of valdalism. But there's really nothing to look at. You've got to go look up the actual content using your cell phone, and then it might be something really lame - or worse, a goatse link.
What's the point? How many people are going to take the creator's word that the relevent link will be pleasing/funny/informative/(insert adjective here)? Especially after the first penis-enlargement Grafedia works start showing up. (Hey spammers! Here's a new delivery method for you! Get your victims, er - customers, to actually come to you for a change!)
I have always heard it spoken thusly:
"The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity..."
Sigh...
Why not buy a socketed motherboard instead? They you can just plug in another CPU of the same type/brand as you just fried? Really, how likely is it that if you're an Intel guy, that you're going to have an AMD CPU lying around? Or vice versa?
Granted, you might not be a rabid fan of either company and thus may have spares of both makes available... But again, why not just plug in another Athlon when you bake the first one vs plugging in a Pentium IV?
I don't see this motherboard being of much use to the hobbyists. More likely it's aimed at retailers.
A few years ago I built half a dozen computers based around the ECS K7S5A motherboard, and they all performed (and still are performing) flawlessly. In fact, it was my early success with the K7S5A that led me to try a few other ECS motherboards, mostly with disastrous results. I don't recommend ECS motherboards in general, but in the past I have suggested the K7S5A board to lots of people that were building an AMD system on a tight budget.
The only problem I experienced with the K7S5A was the incredibly tight AGP socket. You couldn't correctly seat the graphics card unless you set the case on it's side and pushed with both hands. I was always afraid that I was about to crack the motherboard... But once you got that sucker in there, everything was fine.
I had 4 or 5 people e-mail me from a discussion forum about the K7S5A. Seems they would boot the machine, hear 8 beeps, and then nothing. (blank screen, no disk activity) The problem was that the AGP card wasn't seated properly. I'd tell them to lay the machine on it's side and really push, and they'd write back saying that they were sure it was already in correctly. But lo and behold, when they actually tried my method, the card dropped another 1/4 inch, and then the system would boot!
The really bad part was that you could insert the card normally and be able to tighten the screw on the back of the card until everything looks just fine, yet the card would still be too high in the socket and the system wouldn't boot. You had to lay it over and really push, and then you'd feel it go "thunk" as it dropped into place.
Back on topic though - I agree that the whole idea of supporting two different CPU's on the same motherboard seems to be aimed at the retailers, not the do-it-yourselfers. I would expect performance to suffer when running one or the other processor. (Try to tweak it in favor of Intel and AMD performance suffers, and vice versa...) A good compromise means they both run slow!
Best Buy?
I'd have thought you would be able to find a better deal on-line. (I know I did...) Plus I really don't like Best Buy - but that's another thread altogether...
The grandparent's post questions the availability of high-end cards... I agree that at times they can be hard to find in retail outlets, but then again most power users in my area don't shop at the retail stores to begin with. (They shop on-line)
I'm not sure it makes good business sense for a retail outlet to stock the more expensive cards. (Limited market, short shelf life before prices fall, etc...)
Still, I haven't noticed any shortage of those same cards on-line. Is this shortage a recent development?
Um... No. You don't need another person. The purpose of the longer cables is so that you can click the mouse to start recording while you are in the room, then start playing.
That's what my friend does. He sits in the room with the musicians. (Well, the desk is actually in the closet, but the doors have been removed.) He has a monitor, keyboard, and mouse on the desk, connected to the CPU via long cables and a KVM switch. The CPU case (with the noisy fans and hard drives) is in the next room. When the band is ready to start, he clicks on the "record" button and away they go.
It does't take up any more space to do it this way. You still have to have a spare room to set up for recording. All you need to do is put the CPU in a different room. It can sit on the floor, or up on a shelf. No need to dedicate the entire room to just the CPU! (In fact, my friend's CPU is sitting on the floor in his master bedroom.)
Bottom line: I doubt that it cost him more than $150 (cost of the cables & KVM switch) to set up his recording room like this. That's a far cry from $1200.
I'd think that $1200 would be better spent on some long cables for the microphones, the mouse, and the monitor so you could put the computer in another room! (And take the leftover money and rent some studio time, or use it to buy some acoustic foam and make your own sound booth.)
I've got a friend that uses his machine to record tracks for local bands. He set up a spare bedroom in his house as a recording room (think lots of acoustic foam) and ran the cables through the wall to the next room where his computers were. (The large RAID-5 array was way too noisy to be in the same room with the musicians.) Works well enough that he can charge about 1/4 of what the local recording studio does.
Anyway, I really think $1200 for a case is over the top. Sure, there are a few people who will buy it for the coolness factor, but those are also the people for whom money is usually not a serious issue. I simply can't see this unit selling in any serious quantity when there are far cheaper means of achieving close to the same sound reduction performance.
Sheesh - you'd think active noise cancellation hardware would be cheaper... (Not to mention way, way, cooler!) Er - as in "gadget-like cool", not temperature cool.