Racism Running Rampant?

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It seems like you can’t turn around without seeing another comment on racism today. Here’s the quick summary.

abc-news.jpgABC is pushing against inter-racial adoptions both on World News and The View:

On the Wednesday, March 3, World News on ABC, inspired by current efforts to adopt orphans in Haiti, correspondent Ron Claiborne filed a report promoting the view that black children may be harmed psychologically from being adopted and raised by white parents. Claiborne focused on the case of black filmmaker Phil Bertelsen who complains that “he and other black adoptees tell a similar tale, of feeling estranged, cut off from their own racial identity and culture.”

Monday, March 8, The View on ABC, as the group discussed the film The Blind Side which features a white family taking in a black teen, co-host Barbara Walters complained about those who criticize interracial adoption as the more left-leaning Joy Behar and guest co-host and actress Vanessa Williams complained that the film portrayed white parents as being the answer to social problems of troubled black kids. – NewsBusters.org

Los Angeles Angels outfielder Torii Hunter is not a fan of all the black imposters in MLB:

black-baseball-star-dominican-and-venezuelan-players-are-imposters.jpg“Even people I know come up and say, ‘Hey, what color is Vladimir Guerrero? Is he a black player?’ I say, ‘Come on, he’s Dominican. He’s not black.’ ” […]

“As African-American players, we have a theory that baseball can go get an imitator and pass them off as us,” Hunter says. “It’s like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper. It’s like, ‘Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?’

“I’m telling you, it’s sad.” – USAToday.com

And finally, Dan Rather had to apologize for his comment that Obama “couldn’t sell watermelons”.

Alienware m11x Initial Review

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m11x-mini.jpgAfter playing with -er- using the m11x for over a week, I can safely say that this is one of the best 11″ notebooks ever created.  I still have more testing to complete because multiple styled battery tests are not only boring – they are time consuming.  However, I feel like I have enough good data -beyond my first impressions– to help those in the market for a portable yet powerful notebook to make a better decision.  I’ve included comparisons to my desktop, Adamo, and netbook to give you a good feel for how this pocket rocket performs.   Below are the specs for my machine:

  • 1.3GHz Intel SU7300 (800MHz FSB, 3MB Cache) overclockable to 1066MHz FSB (1.73GHz)
  • Nvidia GeForce GT 335M Discrete Graphics (1GB GDDR3) with switchable Intel GMA 4500MHD integrated graphics
  • 4GB PC3-8500 DDR3 (2 x 2GB)
  • 250GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
  • 11.6″ WXGA WideHD LED Backlit display (1366×768)
  • Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
  • 802.11b/g/n, 10/100 LAN
  • 3-in-1 card reader
  • 8-Cell Li-ion 64WH battery, 65W Power Supply
  • Dimensions: 11.25″ x 9.19″ x 1.29″
  • Weight: 4.48lbs

First off, let’s address the 3D Marks issue. Engadget reported a “3DMark06 score [of] 5593. That’s significantly lower than the ‘over 6,100’ Alienware claims…” What they missed however was the ability to overclock the m11x in the bios.  A super simple procedure of F2-ing to reach the bios and changing the”OverClock” setting (under Advanced) from “Disabled” to “Enabled” handles overclocking the CPU from 1.3Ghz to 1.73Ghz.  This 33% speed increase is quite noticeable and is required to hit (and exceed) Dell’s claimed 06 marks.  Note: using the overclock option almost ensures the fan will be active in Intel graphics mode.  Using the GPU will kick the fan on as well, but you already knew that going into any gaming laptop.

3D Marks 06
C2D 1.3 Ghz Intel 674
C2D 1.73 Ghz Intel 737
C2D 1.3 Ghz Nvidia 5605
C2D 1.73 Ghz Nvidia 6429

Real world gaming is always the most grueling part of any review, but I suffered through it for you.  ;)  This thing can actually play Crysis at native resolution.  Stock CPU, it can handle the low settings without problems at 1355×768 and looks quite nice doing it.  Overclocking allows a bit more eye candy but not enough to enable full medium settings.  Less ridiculously intensive games do much better at native resolution:

  • Unreal Tournament runs fine at default (high) settings.
  • Far Cry 2 can be played at medium settings when overclocked.
  • Call of Duty 2 can be played at maximum settings which includes an in game 4x AA and generally see between 50-80 FPS stock or 60-90 FPS overclocked.
  • The original Call of Duty is old enough that it can’t support the native wide screen res and forces you to drop back to 1024×768.  With max setting and nHancer set 4×4 AA and 16x AF you generally get 70-200 FPS without overclocking but intense action with large explosions can cause a dip down to 30 FPS at these extreme settings.

The overclocking is noticeable in CPU intensive tasks such as video encoding or calculating prime numbers.  I ran wPrime several times after a reboot and took the best time.

wPrime 32M in Seconds
i7 Core 3.21Ghz (Desktop) 8.97
m11x C2D 1.73Ghz 55.7
Adamo C2D 1.4Ghz 62.4
m11x C2D 1.3Ghz 68.2
Asus Atom 1.8Ghz 125.7
Asus Atom 1.6Ghz 134.4

Besides CPU, the other common bottleneck in ultralight computers is often slow hard drives.  SSDs can greatly improve this area not only in data transfer speeds but also in access time.  A note on the HD Tune results for the m11x that was not overclocked:  You will notice the abysmal 7MB/sec minimum.  Running the test 3 times I got the spikes of slowness 2 out of the 3 times.  Now those spikes will happen on not-completely-sanitized machines when the antivirus or some other background process grabs a few clock cycles or hit’s the disk momentarily.  So they are to be expected and should not be inferred to mean bad, bad things.  You will notice this very low min did little to change the average speed of the drive compared to the overclocked tests.  However, after using the m11x for a week, I can attest to the real world reflection of these results.  The m11x for the most part is adequately  zippy even considering the fact that I’m accustomed to my ultra-fast workstation.  However at times it seems the slower CPU and HD bog down at the same time and performance grinds to a halt for an agonizing second or two.  Consider your normal notebook taking a “union break” and pretending it’s a netbook for a few seconds and then returning to normal.  Perceived speed is relative but the difference is there even compared against itself.  The good news is that I have not yet seen this happen while the CPU is overclocked.  Granted you can still overtax the CPU easily with intensive tasks but that is a different matter.  OC’d it doesn’t seem to have the odd random slowdown.

Min

MB/sec

Max

MB/sec

Ave

MB/sec

Access

in millisec
Intel 2nd Gen SSD 205.7 236.9 230.6 0.1
Adamo OEM SSD 97.0 137.5 103.1 0.3
2x WD Black RAID 0 (speed) 111.4 218.4 179.4 11.6
WD Green 40.2 100.0 73.5 13.3
m11x overclocked (7200rpm) 43.2 102.1 77.8 18.1
m11x (7200rpm) 7.4 101.0 76.3 19.2
Asus 1000ha 1.5 57.8 34.4 19.7

The chart above is arranged by access time as that often is a more noticeable in how fast a computer feels.  Fast transfer rates can help during an a program install or copying a large video file.  Fast access time helps everything – especially launching applications where many small files must be brought together to load the program.  For this “speed feel” test Gimp was used as it is a big slow program to load which gives a nice worse case test and makes it easier to time with a stop watch.  The test was repeated several times and the best time was taken.  However only the first launch after each reboot was used as after that cache skews the results (for instance a 2nd launch following the first for both the Adamo and the m11x completed in under 8 seconds when caching all but eliminated hard drive speeds from the equation)

Gimp Load Time in Seconds
i7 Core Desktop, Intel SSD 2.8
Adamo C2D 1.4Ghz, OEM SSD 10.0
m11x C2D 1.73Ghz, 7200 HD 15.9
m11x C2D 1.3Ghz, 7200 HD 18.4
Asus Atom 1.8Ghz, 5400 HD 25.4

Even with the faster 7200rpm HD option from Dell and a faster CPU clock speed, the Adamo’s even faster SSD allows for a significantly zippier user experience in Windows.  Dell offers an SSD upgrade but unfortunately it’s $570.  Now the good news is that it is 256GB which is large as SSDs go.  The bad news is that OEM SSD – as seen in my Adamo – don’t tend to live up to the Intel benchmark of SSD speed.  However, drives are not that difficult to upgrade, so you can always grab a top performing SSD later and spread out the payment pain a little as well.

Finally battery life.  I am still running a battery of tests (heh heh) but I can report that the battery is quite strong.  In fact, I believe that the majority of the weight difference between this machine and other “thin and lights” is actually battery weight not the GPU or fans. At the request of my friend Brad over at liliputing, I have run battery tests on HD video use first.  Interestingly, the results are almost identical with the Core2Duo running stock or overclocked. Apparently the power draw of the CPU running 60-80% is the same as the CPU being overclocked and running 50-70%.  The back light was way too dark at the lowest setting but was quite nice at the 2nd of 8 setting so it was used.  Although the differences between the rest of brightness levels does not seem to be very much, especially considering there are only 7 (not dark) settings. Wifi was on and sound was at 30% for this test. As the m11x has no CD/DVD drive, an iTunes HD video seemed a likely candidate for quick and easy video on the go.

  • iTunes HD Video Battery Test: 10% warning with 22min windows estimate at 3:32 or 3hr 54min total
  • iTunes HD Video Battery Test (OC’d): 10% warning with 24min windows estimate at 3:31 or 3hr 55min total

Or enough time to watch 6 Psych episodes with time to spare.  From general use, I can also tell you’ll see 2+ hours of gaming and 6+ hours of light, gentle use.  I flesh will out those numbers with further testing and include them in my complete review in the days ahead.

m11x-and-1000ha.jpg m11x-and-adamo.jpg thin.jpg

Until then let me just say that the balance between power (CPU & GPU), portability, and battery life in the m11x makes it quite a compelling offering.  It is well worth the extra money over the many CULV Thin and Lights out there.  As it is alone in it’s offering of an overclocked CPU and a best in class GPU (true mid-range for gamers), it is easy to call this the most powerful 11″ notebook you can buy.  For the power user wanting a bit more, an upgrade to an speedy (non OEM) SSD could make this thing really rock at a still cheaper than some price.

UT To Honor Gore With Docorate – In Marketing?

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An open letter to the  UT Board of Trustees:

I was wondering if the honorary degree for Al Gore was in marketing. For only slick marketing could present Mr Gore as anything but a failure.

In politics he not only lost his presidential bid, but failed to carry his own state.  And yet that state’s school now seeks to honor him.

His environmental endeavors -that have made him both famous and wealthy- have turned out to be based on a series of lies.  Perhaps the board missed the continuous string of scandals involving Gore and his fellow Nobel laureates over the past six months.

An honorary degree following his Nobel prizing victory for his video power point presentation -that is now know to be flawed- would have been regrettable but understandable.  Now that his charade has been exposed as not merely self-serving but also completely inaccurate, the board’s decision casts a negative light on the school.

For if lack of respect and integrity can be overlooked in the light of fame and fortune – what does that say about the goals of the University?  How does that impact UT’s respect and integrity?

And perhaps more to the only point which board appears to care – how will this decision effect future donations from the vast majority of Tennesseans that see the man behind Mr Gore’s marketing.

Scott
UT Graduate and Donor

Alienware m11x Heartbreak And First Impressions

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Dell Adamo, Alienware m11x, Asus 1000HA lined upSo I must admit that when Dell announced an 11″ sized Alienware laptop starting at just $799 – I was sold.  The fact that I got an additional 10% off from work made it an even sweeter deal!

Rumored to launch Feb 5th, only the pre-order page launched – though a few days early. So I was forced to wait for the ship date of March 1st or so it seemed – until two days ago Dell informed me that my new toy had shipped out and I would get it a week early.  As the hours past slowly waiting for the FedEx man that would never come – heartbreak set it.  Three conversations with Dell later – turns out they lost my laptop between the factory floor and shipping door.

“Oh that’s what that box in the hallway was…”

Anyway, delayed a day but no worse for the wear, I received my m11x today.  I’ve never been one for unboxings and really everyone knows what it looks like already.  The real question is how does it perform – not just in gaming but as anything from a portable work horse to a video entertainment device.  A full review and comparison to the Dell Adamo 13″ (another recent acquisition when it’s price dropped below a grand) is in the works but first off some first impressions.

  • One thing that was not completely clear to me beforehand was the alien head on the lid – did it light up or not?  Well, it does but unfortunately it can not be controlled by fancy alien color control system.  So a partial victory there.  The rest of the unit you can color change to your hearts content.
  • The keyboard is quite different than both my desktop’s Sidewinder X6 keyboard and my netbook’s keyboard in feel, but I would describe it as “nice”.  I would have preferred full sized arrow keys, however, as I use them often when my using a notebook in my lap and surfing the web.
  • The screen which looks great keeps resetting the brightness level to the lowest setting even though I’m on the “balanced” power profile.  This could be some alienware setting I’m missing.
  • The sharp edge of the unit is a bit harsh on my wrists as I’m typing this post up.
  • The mouse buttons are smushy.  It’s not that they have a “bad” click but it is a much deeper click than one would expect. In fact it’s probably the deepest click buttons I’ve seen in the last several years.  Now it’s probably only depressing a mm more than normal but it feels more like 1/4″

The unit weight is interesting.  It is by far the heaviest of the three notebooks pictured, but it doesn’t seem much bulkier. I account for this because two things.  First you brain expects a certain weight based on the size of an object and second unbalanced weight seems much heavier to hold in your hand.  The 1000HA netbook is much smaller than the other machines but not much lighter, also it is back heavy because of the battery.  Both of these things make it “surprisingly” heavy. The Adamo is both larger and thinner so it really messes with your mind.  Some times it feels  “surprisingly” heavy sometimes  “surprisingly” light.  This has continued over a few weeks with it.  Both Dell’s are extremely well balanced weight wise.  So the m11x doesn’t feel light by any means but it doesn’t feel heavy either.  The chart below is based on my actual devices measured on a scale with 1 gram accuracy.

Dell Adamo, Alienware m11x, Asus 1000HA stacked up

Alienware m11x 4.48lbs
Dell Adamo 4.05lbs
Asus 1000HA 3.16lbs

It doesn’t look it but the notebooks in the pic are lined up both in the back and left of the devices.

Global Warming “Science” Crumbles To Dust

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With repeated “Climate-Gates” coming fast and furious and lots of science, data, political maneuvering, and just plain spin going on, we thought a nice concise summary was in order.  First the fundamental temperature data sets:

  • The British data (Hadley-CRU) maintained by the Climate Research Unit and the Hadley Center for Climate Change –  The Russian Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) discovered the supposed warming trend was created by slowly removing more and more Russian weather stations from the yearly global averages.
  • The National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the U.S. – In the 1970s, NOAA collected the temperature data from 600 Canadian weather stations. But this number has dwindled over the years to just 35 today for the entire expanse of Canada, including just one above the Arctic Circle. (Canada currently operates 1,400 surface weather stations across the country, with more than 100 above the Arctic Circle). “NOAA… systematically eliminated 75% of the world’s stations with a clear bias towards removing higher latitude, high altitude and rural locations, all of which have a tendency to be cooler”
  • NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (NASA-GISS) – Mirrored NOAA in reducing the number of Canadian sites being averaged into the global data and cherry picking those that remained. NASA GISS is run by the “unbiased” James Hansen, who “became famous for calling coal [shipments] to your local power plant ‘death trains’ and advocating war-crime trials for the executives who daily force you to put gasoline in your car.”
  • U.S. weather satellites measuring global atmospheric temperatures – Data is too public to be manipulated or cherry-picked but has only been in operation since 1979.  Satellite data shows no increase in global temperature trends until the unrelated El Nino spike of 1998, with temperatures declining back down since then. By April of this year, that decline had completely offset the 1998 spike, with temperatures back to where they were in 1980.

The Nobel Prizing winning (with Al Gore) United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) often sited as the “gold standard” on Global Warming:

  •  2007 (Nobel Winning) IPCC Report determined a 90% probability that the massive Himalayan glaciers would melt away completely by 2035 – This was scientifically based on a single news report that sited a single Indian glaciologist in 1999. Syed Hasnain, the glaciologist in question, says he was misquoted and provided no date to the reporter. The United Nations never bothered to confirm the claim.
  • The head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, has received millions in grants to further study Himalayan glaciers, based on the original bogus 2035 melting claim. Email correspondence now proves that Pachauri was aware last fall that the 2035 melting claim was false, but he continued to try to hide that from the public through the December Copenhagen summit. After the full story became public, Pachauri and the IPCC finally admitted the falsehood.
  • 2007 IPCC Report claimed that global warming threatened up to 40% of the beloved Amazon rain forest, allegedly because it is extremely sensitive to even modest decreases in rainfall that supposedly may result from warming. (this was back when Global Warming was going to reduce not increase rain and snow) – This was scientifically based on a magazine article by two non-scientists, one being an environmental activist who has worked for the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace.
  • 2007 IPCC Report projected disappearing ice in the Andes, the European Alps, and Africa – This was scientifically based on a student dissertation and an article in a climbing magazine written by a hiker.
  • 2007 IPCC Report claimed that the world has “suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s.”  – This was scientifically based on a unpublished study which, when published in 2008, concluded the opposite: “We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.”
  • The U.N. dramatically claimed that 55 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level making it very susceptible to global flooding – the accurate portion is 26 percent.  Did the IPCC check any of it’s facts?

Professor Jones who was director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (Hadley-CRU) until emails leaked that he would destroy his data before turning it over for a Freedom of Information request.

  • Now claims the Data for vital ‘hockey stick graph’ that “proved” global warming has not been destroyed but is merely “lost” in his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’ – Since the data has been “missing” since October and Professor Jone’s professional reputation is currently stained with “scientific fraud”, one can only hope that a good office spring cleaning will clear all this mess up. (puns intended)
  • Now admits that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
  • Now admits there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena – that is they were not “man made”.
  • Now admits the world could have been even warmer during the medieval period than now – if true the world would be cooling despite man’s best attempts to create CO2.

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