EDIT as per request: History lectures by Wuhl who is primarily known for being a comedian, so it's actually entertaining. The lectures are on the concept that history as we remember it is largely skewed by popular misconceptions that come from old age media sources first line is "I am going to assume the position that history is pop culture." E.g. taken more from novels by Irving and Longfellow more than it is actual events. Can be summed up by "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Also has parts on the idea that Americans constantly elect or care about their stars "star fucking is as american as apple pie" and other things that have been in American history that have unusual origins.
Set myself a budget of $1300 not counting any random things like wires or other crap.
CPU: i7-2600k--$280, $297 after tax...will OC to ~4.8ghz
Cooling: Corsair H60--#67..$52AR
Ram: 8gb g-skill-$50..43AR
Case: Thor V2--$130
PSU: Thermaltank 850W modular--$108..$78AR
SSD: Samsung 830 128GB--$140
MoBo:Asrock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3--$122
Total so far: $862
Budget left: $438
GPU? Leaning towards AMD 7870 for $370..hopefully figure get it for cheaper, maybe 340 or 330.
Data HDD: Reusing other HDs, will have 1.5TB internal, 500GB portable external..will eventually upgrade internal since it is almost full. Maybe 2TB for $100 if I can find that later.
Anyone have any opinions or ideas for me on what to do for GPU. Since I don't need one immediately I am going to wait to see how Nvidia's new cards are and what the Diablo 3 specs are. Only requirement is that the GPU setup can run 3 monitors, so eyefinity or nv surround set up.
For anyone saying "y buy a pc now w/ ivy bridge just around the corver and y 2600k instead of 2500k"...Ivy bridge is only showing a 6-10% improvement over sandy and sandy prices likely won't drop to much due to ivy's release (intel is a bitch like that). Also I do enough CAD and other work that hyper threading actually will help me out.
A Zimbabwean man has told a court that he hired a prostitute who during the night transformed into a donkey, and that he is now "seriously in love" with the animal, according to state media.
Moyo has been charged with bestiality. The court has ordered him to undergo a mental examination, The Herald said. Photo: ALAMY1:15PM BST 26 Oct 2011
"I think I am also a donkey. I do not know what happened when I left the bar, but I am seriously in love with (the) donkey," Sunday Moyo told the court, according to The Herald newspaper.
Moyo, 28, was arrested in the town of Zvishavane, about 185 miles south of the capital Harare on Sunday.
He said he had paid $25 for a prostitute, and was surprised Sunday morning when he heard people accusing him of having sex with a donkey.
Moyo has been charged with bestiality and remanded in custody. The court has ordered him to undergo a mental examination, The Herald said.
I hate doing two blog entries so close together, but this is cool and didn't want to make a thread bout it.
Gamers have solved the structure of a retrovirus enzyme whose configuration had stumped scientists for more than a decade. The gamers achieved their discovery by playing Foldit, an online game that allows players to collaborate and compete in predicting the structure of protein molecules.
After scientists repeatedly failed to piece together the structure of a protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus, they called in the Foldit players. The scientists challenged the gamers to produce an accurate model of the enzyme. They did it in only three weeks.
This class of enzymes, called retroviral proteases, has a critical role in how the AIDS virus matures and proliferates. Intensive research is under way to try to find anti-AIDS drugs that can block these enzymes, but efforts were hampered by not knowing exactly what the retroviral protease molecule looks like.
"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," said Dr. Firas Khatib of the University of Washington Department of Biochemistry. Khatib is a researcher in the protein structure lab of Dr. David Baker, professor of biochemistry.
Remarkably, the gamers generated models good enough for the researchers to refine and, within a few days, determine the enzyme's structure. Equally amazing, surfaces on the molecule stood out as likely targets for drugs to de-active the enzyme.
"These features provide exciting opportunities for the design of retroviral drugs, including AIDS drugs," wrote the authors of a paper appearing Sept. 18 in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. The scientists and gamers are listed as co-authors.
This is the first instance that the researchers are aware of in which gamers solved a longstanding scientific problem.
Fold-it was created by computer scientists at the University of Washington Center for Game Science in collaboration with the Baker lab.
"The focus of the UW Center for Game Sciences," said director Dr. Zoran Popovic, associate professor of computer science and engineering, "is to solve hard problems in science and education that currently cannot be solved by either people or computers alone."
The solution of the virus enzyme structure, the researchers said, "indicates the power of online computer games to channel human intuition and three-dimensional pattern matching skills to solve challenging scientific problems."
With names like Foldit Contenders Group and Foldit Void Crushers Group, the gamer teams were fired up for the task of real-world molecule modeling problems. The online protein folding game captivates thousands of avid players worldwide and engages the general public in scientific discovery.
Players come from all walks of life. The game taps into their 3-D spatial abilities to rotate chains of amino acids in cyberspace. New players start at the basic level, "One Small Clash," proceed to "Swing it Around" and step ahead until reaching "Rubber Band Reversal."
Direct manipulation tools, as well as assistance from a computer program called Rosetta, encourage participants to configure graphics into a workable protein model. Teams send in their answers, and UW researchers constantly improve the design of the game and its puzzles by analyzing the players' problem-solving strategies.
Figuring out the shape and misshape of proteins contributes to research on causes of and cures for cancer, Alzheimer's, immune deficiencies and a host of other disorders, as well as to environmental work on biofuels.
Referring to this week's report of the online gamers' molecule solution opening new avenues for anti-viral drug research, Carter Kimsey, program director, National Science Foundation Division of Biological Infrastructure, observed, "After this discovery, young people might not mind doing their science homework. This is an innovative approach to getting humans and computer models to 'learn from each other' in real-time."
The researchers noted that much attention has been given to the possibilities of crowd-sourcing and game playing in scientific discovery. Their results indicate the potential for integrating online video games into real-world science.
Dr. Seth Cooper, of the UW Department of Computing Science and Engineering, is a co-creator of Foldit and its lead designer and developer. He studies human-computer exploration methods and the co-evolution of games and players.
"People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at," Cooper said. "Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week's paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before."
Games like Foldit are evolving. To piece together the retrovirus enzyme structure, Cooper said, gamers used a new Alignment Tool for the first time to copy parts of know molecules and test their fit in an incomplete model.
"The ingenuity of game players," Khatib said, "is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems.
According to Popovic, "Foldit shows that a game can turn novices into domain experts capable of producing first-class scientific discoveries. We are currently applying the same approach to change the way math and science are taught in school."
The other scientists involved in this project were Frank DiMaio and James Thompson, both of the UW Department of Biochemistry, and Maciej Kazmierczyk, Miroslaw Gilski, Szymon Krzywda, Helena Zabranska, and Mariusz Jaskolski, all of the Faculty of Chemistry of A. Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, and Iva Pichova of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague.
The project was supported by the UW Center for Game Science, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Microsoft Corp
Very sad news to report tonight, as we've learned that Andy Whitfield, the star of Spartacus: Blood and Sand has died. Whitfield was 39.
Whitfield lost his battle with non-Hodgkin Lymphoma on Sunday in Sydney, Australia. The Associated Press reports that his wife, Vashti, issued a statement which reads, "On a beautiful sunny Sydney spring morning, surrounded by his family, in the arms of his loving wife, our beautiful young warrior Andy Whitfield lost his 18 month battle with lymphoma cancer. He passed peacefully surrounded by love. Thank you to all his fans whose love and support have help carry him to this point. He will be remembered as the inspiring, courageous and gentle man, father and husband he was."
Whitfield was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin Lymphoma after the first season of Spartacus, initially causing a delay in production on Season 2 – during which the prequel, Gods of the Arena, was filmed. During this time, Whitfield had responded well to treatment and his cancer had gone into remission and he was expected to return for the second season, Spartacus: Vengeance, and even promoted the series at San Diego Comic-Con in 2010.
Unfortunately, shortly after Comic-Con came the word that his cancer had returned, and he was forced to drop out of the series completely. He was replaced in Spartacus: Vengeance – which is debuting in 2012 -- by Liam McIntyre.
? Leaning towards AMD 7870 for $370..hopefully figure get it for cheaper, maybe 340 or 330.
