I pulled the plug on Comcast over six months ago, and I love it. I bought a Dell Inspiron Zino HD 410 and hooked it up to my big ol' TV. It has HDMI out which actually sends the audio as well, since this computer is designed to be TV connected. It does a great job for streaming Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon VOD.
I'm saving $60/mo., and enjoy a better experience. On demand streaming is wonderful, since there's so much out there to watch already. I do have to be patient, waiting for TV shows to hit Hulu or movies to hit Netflix, but it's been worth it to me.
The only thing I really miss is the ability to just sit down and let the flashing box entertain me. Now I do have to make a choice. Before, I could sit down and let a Mythbusters marathon entertain me. I can still do that, but I have to think to do it before I can do it.
I've also been spending more and more of my time watching podcasts from TWiT and others. I watch very little actual TV these days, only those shows I really want to see.
I'm going to patent an idea I had where I write a patent down on paper using some sort of marking method (such as a pencil, ink pen, or a printer). Then I'll sue everyone who tries to file a patent!
That's all well and good, except this started in Feb 2001. For those without a calendar handy, that's BEFORE 9/11, and very shortly after Bush took office.
That, and Quest didn't do it because they had competent lawyers who told them it was obviously illegal. AT&T and Verizon must have a decent legal department too, they just chose not to listen.
Get the QNAP TS-409 Pro. All the options of the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+, significantly cheaper.
When I was looking at these, I did get the sense that any of these ready to go solutions will lack in performance as compared to a full-blown server that you could build yourself. The benefit comes from the time savings (at least for me). I also saw a cost savings, since the QNAP system is pretty cheap. All told it was $1000 for the NAS, 3x 500 GB drives, and a UPS.
I hate that they claim it's science.
On Mythbusters, they have the benefit of ignorance. Neither of them is scientifically trained, so they have some reason for when their experiments are bereft of real conclusions.
These guys are supposedly "scientists" and they are much less rigorous than the Mythbusters. On the concrete episode, they managed to declare "success" only because they drastically changed the goal midstream. Can't they end an episode with failure? That occurs in real life, sometimes.
Has no one noticed that human ears have an upper (and lower) limit of frequencies they can hear? People who say they can tell the difference between music sampled at 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz are either liars or a new breed of super-hearers. Who cares about the frequencies we can't here?
Since I'm a mechanics guy and I have very little experience with computational fluid dynamics, I may be completely wrong. However, this seems like something quite useful for analysis. Why can't you use the "discrete derivative-like operator" in analysis instead of trying to use a continuous version on a discretized domain? Could you eliminate the issues you mentioned of not maintaining conservation of energy, mass, etc. by using this method for the differentiation?
As I posted below at your level, this seems very similar current techniques in fluid dynamic simulations used in industry already. I'm wondering if they just applied that to games in a specialized form to get this. The few details the article gives seems to say just that.
They mention "discrete differential geometry" in the article. This sounds a lot like a finite element/difference approach to solving fluid dynamics problems. I'm wondering if they are actually just solving for true phenomena using a simple FEA code or the like. Later when they start talking about flux (really, they're talking about calculating vorticity), they mention this same sort of discritization used in engineering.
The difference is that you can use software packages to optimize your design based on any design variable and response you can come up with. That's the whole point of design optimization. Check out http://www.redcedartech.com/ who make HEEDS. You set up your design variables, thickness here, length here, what material is this made of, etc. and then say that the max. stress must be less than this, the first natural frequency must be higher than this, the deflection of this point must be smaller than this, etc. It performs an intelligent search of the design space, even when you have a huge number of variables.
Design optimization right now is where FEA was 15 years ago, on the brink of becoming not just huge in the industry, but ubiquitous.
It's hard to tell from this article, but it is unlikely that the mesh was actually generated by this program. They probably create an input file with a commercial code, and this program just runs the topology optimization.
This particular paper isn't new, and neither is design optimization. NX, Pro/E, ABAQUS, ANSYS, etc. are all just analysis tools. True design optimization, that is, the ability to find non-intuitive solutions to problems with literally hundreds of variables is a burgeoning market. This article is surprisingly sparse with details, but topology optimization is powerful in that it can bypass the mesh generation because it uses the same mesh with every analysis. It does several analyses (sometimes hundreds) and each time it changes the "density" of each element until you reach a predetermined weight reduction while maximizing stiffness. This is actually only a tool for preliminary design, since it only deals with strain-energy; it never even looks at stress. In fact, the solution is independent of the actual magnitude of the loads applied, only the location of the BCs.
First, you can get energy from magnets. Do you think those iron filings from 5th grade science moved around without an energy input? Isn't a magnetic field nothing more than energy?
Second, magnets certainly do wear out. The question is after how long. Ever had to remagnetize one?
Though, as someone pointed out in a reply to your post the effect of the magnetic field may cancel out overall. So my original argument may not hold water. What I meant is that they measure the input energy as only the input electricity and the output as the work done by the shaft. If the magnets do any work they hadn't accounted for it, because the energy is free once you have them. But, like I said, if the work they do cancels then it may not matter and the article is totally full of crap.
I don't think it's bogus, you just don't understand it. It isn't truly a perpetual motion device. They use permanent magnets to get the extra energy. They don't count that in their input energy, however. Obviously, when these magnets die they will need to be replaced.
...and prefer Gmail. My Yahoo account is my spam account.
When they started the open beta for this thing my mail UI looked totally different. I'm not part of the beta (as far as I know) and when viewing in Firefox my Yahoo mail looks terrible. It's all pretty much no frills HTML, except none of the pictures load. I don't have any of the "fluid" features mentioned in the article. I checked, and in IE it uses the old UI.
So basically, Gmail's interface is, IMO, superior to both the old and my own ugly Yahoo interface.
Instead of making the students pay $45 (like they do here at my university) why not go with something simple? How did they do this a decade ago? They passed out scantron sheets (the fill in the bubble, machine read sheets). If used correctly they are just as effective for use as class attendance and a lot less expensive.
This article was not only poorly written, but it is obvious that it was written by someone who hasn't even used Linux or Mac OS extensively. A microsoft fanboy is just as bad as a Mac fanboy or a Linux fanboy.
Microsoft has done some things well. For instance, when you buy a copy of Windows XP it is expected that you can install that software, regardless of hardware, it will work. Windows is expected to work with every possible configuration. Apple has the benefit of choosing their hardware. This is the same reason you rarely see games crash on consoles.
Obviously, software that crashes isn't really good software, but I still think people should give credit where credit is due for the things Microsoft did right.
That being said, this article sucks. The author uses outdated statistics and spends the whole time arguing that Microsoft is without sin. This requires him to rationalize every Microsoft screw up. There are a lot of things that become sacred cows, but Microsoft is a new one on me.
"...And the only thing we've come up with to deal with the fact that we have no ozone layer, is sunblock. And I don't trust that stuff at all.
Have you ever read the ingredients in sunblock? I've never seen those words anywhere. We don't even know what this stuff is and we slap it on our face. And I guarantee in 10 years you're going to go to the doctor and he's going to look at your chart and go 'look at your cholesterol...it's out of control.' And you'll go 'but doc, I've been eating all the right things.' And he'll say, 'were you using sunblock regularly?' And you'll go 'of course.' And he'll go 'that's your problem.' You could've eaten all the sausage you wanted.'
Why do we trust sunblock? The people who told us about sunblock are the same people that when I was a kid said eggs were good. And then they said eggs were bad. And then they said they were good...then said they were bad...then, they actually said that the yellows were bad...the whites were....MAKE UP YOUR MIND! It's breakfast, we gotta eat!
I'll tell you what I like to use. What I find really works. Crisco. There's no Crisco 1, Crisco 9, Crisco 75. No, it's just Crisco. You never get burnt with Crisco. Why? Because when you start to sizzle, you move your ass." -Lewis Black
Symbolic?! Hubble is the source of virtually all of the science that is currently being performed by NASA in space. The space station does experiments when astronauts take time out of their personal time to do so. The vast majority of time is spent fixing hardware.
Getting rid of Hubble would remove almost all short term scientific benefits we get from NASA.
I won't argue about whether or not the USA is going down the tubes, but I don't think Google will be brought down by one news agency exercising an out-of-date business model. As others have said many times so far, letting Google index their site is in their best interest.
Google's too big, they have serious weight to throw around. Those media companies not controlled by the French will be smart enough to see that Google *helps* them get revenue.
Actually, in today's real world, finite element models are used far more extensively than actual experiments, at least in the auto industry. A prototype costs well over a million dollars and around 6 months to create, while the model is on the order of tens of thousands of dollars and a few weeks to create and run.
Simulations have to be used intelligently, just like lab results. Experiments can be set up wrong, just as variables in a model can be input wrong.
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I pulled the plug on Comcast over six months ago, and I love it. I bought a Dell Inspiron Zino HD 410 and hooked it up to my big ol' TV. It has HDMI out which actually sends the audio as well, since this computer is designed to be TV connected. It does a great job for streaming Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon VOD. I'm saving $60/mo., and enjoy a better experience. On demand streaming is wonderful, since there's so much out there to watch already. I do have to be patient, waiting for TV shows to hit Hulu or movies to hit Netflix, but it's been worth it to me. The only thing I really miss is the ability to just sit down and let the flashing box entertain me. Now I do have to make a choice. Before, I could sit down and let a Mythbusters marathon entertain me. I can still do that, but I have to think to do it before I can do it. I've also been spending more and more of my time watching podcasts from TWiT and others. I watch very little actual TV these days, only those shows I really want to see.
Has Farhad Manjoo ever written a good tech article? I have yet to see one.
LinuxMCE uses MythTV for DVR functionality. It does use Xine/Mplayer for DVD playback. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxMCE#Software_components
I'm going to patent an idea I had where I write a patent down on paper using some sort of marking method (such as a pencil, ink pen, or a printer). Then I'll sue everyone who tries to file a patent!
That's all well and good, except this started in Feb 2001. For those without a calendar handy, that's BEFORE 9/11, and very shortly after Bush took office.
That, and Quest didn't do it because they had competent lawyers who told them it was obviously illegal. AT&T and Verizon must have a decent legal department too, they just chose not to listen.
Get the QNAP TS-409 Pro. All the options of the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+, significantly cheaper. When I was looking at these, I did get the sense that any of these ready to go solutions will lack in performance as compared to a full-blown server that you could build yourself. The benefit comes from the time savings (at least for me). I also saw a cost savings, since the QNAP system is pretty cheap. All told it was $1000 for the NAS, 3x 500 GB drives, and a UPS.
I hate that they claim it's science. On Mythbusters, they have the benefit of ignorance. Neither of them is scientifically trained, so they have some reason for when their experiments are bereft of real conclusions. These guys are supposedly "scientists" and they are much less rigorous than the Mythbusters. On the concrete episode, they managed to declare "success" only because they drastically changed the goal midstream. Can't they end an episode with failure? That occurs in real life, sometimes.
Has no one noticed that human ears have an upper (and lower) limit of frequencies they can hear? People who say they can tell the difference between music sampled at 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz are either liars or a new breed of super-hearers. Who cares about the frequencies we can't here?
Since I'm a mechanics guy and I have very little experience with computational fluid dynamics, I may be completely wrong. However, this seems like something quite useful for analysis. Why can't you use the "discrete derivative-like operator" in analysis instead of trying to use a continuous version on a discretized domain? Could you eliminate the issues you mentioned of not maintaining conservation of energy, mass, etc. by using this method for the differentiation?
As I posted below at your level, this seems very similar current techniques in fluid dynamic simulations used in industry already. I'm wondering if they just applied that to games in a specialized form to get this. The few details the article gives seems to say just that.
They mention "discrete differential geometry" in the article. This sounds a lot like a finite element/difference approach to solving fluid dynamics problems. I'm wondering if they are actually just solving for true phenomena using a simple FEA code or the like. Later when they start talking about flux (really, they're talking about calculating vorticity), they mention this same sort of discritization used in engineering.
The difference is that you can use software packages to optimize your design based on any design variable and response you can come up with. That's the whole point of design optimization. Check out http://www.redcedartech.com/ who make HEEDS. You set up your design variables, thickness here, length here, what material is this made of, etc. and then say that the max. stress must be less than this, the first natural frequency must be higher than this, the deflection of this point must be smaller than this, etc. It performs an intelligent search of the design space, even when you have a huge number of variables.
Design optimization right now is where FEA was 15 years ago, on the brink of becoming not just huge in the industry, but ubiquitous.
It's hard to tell from this article, but it is unlikely that the mesh was actually generated by this program. They probably create an input file with a commercial code, and this program just runs the topology optimization.
This particular paper isn't new, and neither is design optimization. NX, Pro/E, ABAQUS, ANSYS, etc. are all just analysis tools. True design optimization, that is, the ability to find non-intuitive solutions to problems with literally hundreds of variables is a burgeoning market. This article is surprisingly sparse with details, but topology optimization is powerful in that it can bypass the mesh generation because it uses the same mesh with every analysis. It does several analyses (sometimes hundreds) and each time it changes the "density" of each element until you reach a predetermined weight reduction while maximizing stiffness. This is actually only a tool for preliminary design, since it only deals with strain-energy; it never even looks at stress. In fact, the solution is independent of the actual magnitude of the loads applied, only the location of the BCs.
First, you can get energy from magnets. Do you think those iron filings from 5th grade science moved around without an energy input? Isn't a magnetic field nothing more than energy? Second, magnets certainly do wear out. The question is after how long. Ever had to remagnetize one? Though, as someone pointed out in a reply to your post the effect of the magnetic field may cancel out overall. So my original argument may not hold water. What I meant is that they measure the input energy as only the input electricity and the output as the work done by the shaft. If the magnets do any work they hadn't accounted for it, because the energy is free once you have them. But, like I said, if the work they do cancels then it may not matter and the article is totally full of crap.
I don't think it's bogus, you just don't understand it. It isn't truly a perpetual motion device. They use permanent magnets to get the extra energy. They don't count that in their input energy, however. Obviously, when these magnets die they will need to be replaced.
It's just a poor use of the word "efficiency".
...and prefer Gmail. My Yahoo account is my spam account.
When they started the open beta for this thing my mail UI looked totally different. I'm not part of the beta (as far as I know) and when viewing in Firefox my Yahoo mail looks terrible. It's all pretty much no frills HTML, except none of the pictures load. I don't have any of the "fluid" features mentioned in the article. I checked, and in IE it uses the old UI.
So basically, Gmail's interface is, IMO, superior to both the old and my own ugly Yahoo interface.
Instead of making the students pay $45 (like they do here at my university) why not go with something simple? How did they do this a decade ago? They passed out scantron sheets (the fill in the bubble, machine read sheets). If used correctly they are just as effective for use as class attendance and a lot less expensive.
This article was not only poorly written, but it is obvious that it was written by someone who hasn't even used Linux or Mac OS extensively. A microsoft fanboy is just as bad as a Mac fanboy or a Linux fanboy.
Microsoft has done some things well. For instance, when you buy a copy of Windows XP it is expected that you can install that software, regardless of hardware, it will work. Windows is expected to work with every possible configuration. Apple has the benefit of choosing their hardware. This is the same reason you rarely see games crash on consoles.
Obviously, software that crashes isn't really good software, but I still think people should give credit where credit is due for the things Microsoft did right.
That being said, this article sucks. The author uses outdated statistics and spends the whole time arguing that Microsoft is without sin. This requires him to rationalize every Microsoft screw up. There are a lot of things that become sacred cows, but Microsoft is a new one on me.
"...And the only thing we've come up with to deal with the fact that we have no ozone layer, is sunblock. And I don't trust that stuff at all.
Have you ever read the ingredients in sunblock? I've never seen those words anywhere. We don't even know what this stuff is and we slap it on our face. And I guarantee in 10 years you're going to go to the doctor and he's going to look at your chart and go 'look at your cholesterol...it's out of control.' And you'll go 'but doc, I've been eating all the right things.' And he'll say, 'were you using sunblock regularly?' And you'll go 'of course.' And he'll go 'that's your problem.' You could've eaten all the sausage you wanted.'
Why do we trust sunblock? The people who told us about sunblock are the same people that when I was a kid said eggs were good. And then they said eggs were bad. And then they said they were good...then said they were bad...then, they actually said that the yellows were bad...the whites were....MAKE UP YOUR MIND! It's breakfast, we gotta eat!
I'll tell you what I like to use. What I find really works. Crisco. There's no Crisco 1, Crisco 9, Crisco 75. No, it's just Crisco. You never get burnt with Crisco. Why? Because when you start to sizzle, you move your ass." -Lewis Black
A quick nitpick, I assume you mean the Mac Mini uses natural convection instead of forced convection for cooling.
Symbolic?! Hubble is the source of virtually all of the science that is currently being performed by NASA in space. The space station does experiments when astronauts take time out of their personal time to do so. The vast majority of time is spent fixing hardware. Getting rid of Hubble would remove almost all short term scientific benefits we get from NASA.
I won't argue about whether or not the USA is going down the tubes, but I don't think Google will be brought down by one news agency exercising an out-of-date business model. As others have said many times so far, letting Google index their site is in their best interest.
Google's too big, they have serious weight to throw around. Those media companies not controlled by the French will be smart enough to see that Google *helps* them get revenue.
Actually, in today's real world, finite element models are used far more extensively than actual experiments, at least in the auto industry. A prototype costs well over a million dollars and around 6 months to create, while the model is on the order of tens of thousands of dollars and a few weeks to create and run.
Simulations have to be used intelligently, just like lab results. Experiments can be set up wrong, just as variables in a model can be input wrong.