Feature: How to build your own computer: Ask Ars DIY Series, Part III—cases
In 1998, Ask Ars was an early feature of the newly launched Ars Technica. Now, as then, it's all about your questions and our community's answers. Each week, we'll dig into our question bag, provide our own take, then tap the wisdom of our readers. To submit your own question, see our helpful tips page.
Are you ready to build your own system? After looking at hardware and software, in Part III of our Ask Ars DIY series, we look at cases. What are the factors you need to consider when deciding on a case? There is a lot more than good looks to consider—things like airflow, cooling, space, and even the drive mounts. Be sure to read this before you buy a case.
Computer parts don't need to live in a plain, boring box that keeps your parts off the ground and dust-free. A good computer case—or chassis—has to keep its contents cool, but not be too noisy. It also has to be the right size, while fitting your budget.
These are tall orders: with enough money, anyone can have a very nice chassis. For the God Box, it's easy to justify spending a couple hundred bucks on a nice case with the right fans and layout. For the Budget Box, that same case would be half the cost of the entire box. So you've got to be flexible.
Case considerations can be boiled down to size (external and internal), cooling, noise, and cost. Looks matter, too, but who wants a sharp-looking, cramped, noisy case?
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AT&T's broadband data caps start today
Starting today, AT&T will begin restricting more than 16 million broadband users based on the amount of data they use a month. The number-two carrier’s entry into the broadband cap club means that a majority of American broadband users will now be subject to limits on how much they can do online or risk extra charges as ugly as video store late fees.
The new limits—150 GB for DSL subscribers and 250 Gigabytes for UVerse users (a mix of fiber and DSL)—come as users are increasingly turning to online video such as Hulu and Netflix on-demand streaming service instead of paying for cable.
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Science Festival Alliance helps connect scientists and the public
Since our coverage of the San Diego science festival in 2009, science festivals have built momentum. Roughly 17 states will hold at least one this year; Philadelphia is currently celebrating its first festival this month, and San Francisco will join it later in the year. A network run by the Science Festival Alliance is helping cities plan and organize events to connect scientists with the public.
With more effort and money channeling into science festivals, it’s important to determine if the resources are well spent. Does outreach of this scale work for science? While science festivals draw large crowds, do they truly inform the public about science? Do people stay excited about science once the festivals are over? To gain some insight, we spoke with Ben Wiehe, manager of the Science Festival Alliance.
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Feature: Ars Reviews the Quadro 4000 Mac Edition: NVIDIA's sole Mac offering a promising start
Everyone knows the old Einstein quote about the definition of insanity—it's doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. After a pretty harsh review of the Quadro FX 4800, I was really hoping not to have to slam another potentially great card hamstrung by bad drivers. As a 3D professional, I've known NVIDIA's drivers to be their weakest point and have lost track of how many times I've recommended Radeon cards over NVIDIA for Maya and Mudbox (I frequently get asked to recommend video cards). It seemed that NVIDIA was just phoning it in and praying that CUDA's entrenchment in professional non-linear video editing, known to be heavily Mac-based, would be enough to sell these to Mac users. So when NVIDIA felt confident enough in their new Quadro 4000 Mac Edition to give me a card for review, I know that they'd either fixed it or gone insane.
Well, I'm pleased to say that the folks at NVIDIA aren't crazy. But that said, this is no perfect score either.
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Windows Phone NoDo updates held up yet again?
The hits keep on coming. Just as it looked like Microsoft had finally got to grips with the rollout of its copy-and-paste update, codenamed NoDo, for Windows Phone 7, it appears that the company has stumbled once more. It appears that Microsoft has halted delivery of the update to certain Samsung handsets, and not for the first time.
The claims are being made in the comments on a post on Microsoft's official Windows Phone blog. Owners of Samsung's Omnia 7 were complaining that their phones were not being offered the update. Microsoft then confirmed that it had halted delivery of updates to the Omnia 7. Similar allegations were made about the Samsung Focus, with company representatives saying that they would look into the problem.
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Wikileaks cables reveal US pressuring Canada on IP enforcement
"Embassy Ottawa remains frustrated by the Government of Canada's continuing failure to introduce—let alone pass—major copyright reform legislation that would, inter alia, implement and ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Internet treaties." That's the opening line of a United States embassy dispatch sent to Washington, DC in February of 2008, now published by Wikileaks.
"Given the continuing failure of the GOC [Government of Canada] to introduce a copyright bill into Parliament," the missive continues. . . "Post reluctantly recommends that Canada be elevated to Special 301 Priority Watch List in 2008."
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Sony gives more PSN attack details, details "Welcome Back" packages
Sony's Kaz Hirai spoke at a press conference in Tokyo this morning, offering more details about the PlayStation Network outage, the attacks that caused it, and what the company will do to help keep customers happy. He also offered a sincere apology, and bowed deeply. "This criminal act against our network had a significant impact not only on our consumers, but our entire industry," Hirai said in an official statement. "These illegal attacks obviously highlight the widespread problem with cybersecurity. We take the security of our consumers' information very seriously and are committed to helping our consumers protect their personal data."
Here's what Sony shared about the situation, and what the company is willing to do to make you happy.
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How not to measure scientific productivity
Ever since funding agencies started demanding some way to measure a return on their investment, administrators have been coming up with ways to measure scientists' performance. And scientists have been coming up with ways to maximize their value under any particular measuring scheme. In every generation of this game of performance measurement, scientists produce carefully thought-out articles on how the current system simply doesn't capture scientists' work accurately.
A recent Physical Review E paper is one of these, showing that the raw citation count doesn't really capture a paper's importance, nor the researcher's true performance. Yeah, amazing isn't it?
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Weird Science's heart loves booze, hates mornings
Your heart is not a morning organ: Circadian rhythms, the changes your body undergoes based on time of day, influence a huge number of your body's normal processes. It looks like they might influence abnormal processes too. Researchers tracked myocardial infarctions based on time of day, and measured their severity based on standard tests of enzyme levels. It turns out the heart hates the morning, as MI size was largest in the hours from 6am to noon. It would be nice to see a bit of imaging, since a possible alternate explanation for this is that the levels of those enzymes are higher in the heart at that hour, so an identical MI would just release more of them. Still, it's probably worth following up on this.
And the heart sure likes its booze: The evidence that alcohol consumption protects against heart disease has been building for a while, but there's also growing evidence that alcohol helps the heart even at levels where it's dangerous for the rest of the body. In a study of over 40,000 individuals, those who abstained from alcohol entirely had the highest risk of coronary heart disease. "A hazardous consumption of alcohol is associated with a decreased likelihood of CHD after controlling for sociodemographic, psychiatric, and addictive risk factors," the authors conclude. However, the press release notes that the standards for "hazardous" drinking would probably include a lot of European adults.
But it listens to evidence: In the decade from 1996 to 2007, the Swedish medical system greatly expanded its use of evidence-based treatments for myocardial infarctions. The result? The mortality rate in these patients showed a consistent downward trend. Evidence works—who knew?
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