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Comment Re:Old computers boot from USB? (Score 1) 146

Booting Linux from drive A ...
Reading....
Please insert floppy boot disk #2
Reading....
Please insert floppy boot disk #3
Reading....
Please insert floppy boot disk #4
Reading....
Please insert floppy boot disk #5
Reading....
Please insert floppy boot disk #6
Reading....
...
Phew, only 750 more boot disks to go.

Comment Re:Sub $500? (Score 1) 335

You can pick up a used Xbox for $50 from gamestop.com and put XBMC(the software which Boxee forked from) on it. It's a very nice media center for playing any media shared on your network. The only downside is that the xbox does not have the processing power to decode HD content, and has no input for recording content. To get those things, you probably will have to spend 500-600.

Disclaimer: It may cost you a little more than $50, since in order to hack the xbox to run xbmc, you need a particular game, a memory card, and an adapter that allows your computer to write to the memory card. Luckily for me, a friend of mine already had all those though.

Comment Re:Per capita (Score 1) 388

So the once usable land is now covered with water.
Now if you cover the surface of the water with floating solar panels, you get double the land use!
You could even throw some windmill rigs in there between the solar panels. Triple purpose action!

Comment Re:What about the production? (Score 4, Informative) 553

LEDs appear very bright when viewed directly for two reasons:

1) They are nearly a perfect point light source.
2) They light output is typically very directional.

But when you try to illuminate a room with one, you have to spread out this concentrated beam so much that it's not nearly as bright as your first impressions might make you think.

Comment Re:Wrong bulbs (Score 1) 553

I have noticed this problem with all the floodlight style bulbs that I have tried, but rarely with the bare spiral bulbs. I think it might have something to do with the fact that the enclosed flood lights dissipate heat less effectively than regular ones.

http://1000bulbs.com/ has a huge selection of CFLs in varying power ratings and color temperatures. A couple years ago I replaced all my incandescents with some 13W 5000K bulbs I bought on that site. They come on instantly(ok maybe .5 sec delay) at full brightness. I got 5000K color temp. since it is supposed to be closest to sunlight, though some people may prefer a warmer look. The ones I got are called Longstar IIRC, I'm not sure if the exact same ones are still available.

Comment Performance Race is Shifting Towards Perf. / Watt (Score 4, Insightful) 342

In recent years not only has CPU performance been increased, but the efficiency in terms of power consumption per unit of work has greatly improved.

Even if the majority of users begin realize they have no practical use for top end CPUs with gobs processing power, everyone still benefits from higher efficiency CPUs. It reduces electric bills, simplifies cooling systems, allows for smaller form factors, etc. I think in the future the power efficiency will become more important as people start to care less about having the ultimate killer machine in terms of processing power. People are already performing actions on their mobile devices(iPhone, Blackberry, etc) which were possible only on a desktop in past years. The strict power requirements of these devices with tiny batteries will continue to demand improvements in CPU technology.

I'm waiting for the day when it is common to see completely passively cooled desktop computers, with solid state hard disks, no moving parts, sipping just a few watts of power without emitting a single sound.

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