Chances are if I am going to buy an expensive sports car it would be a Porsche. Ferraris and Lambos are just too flashy for me. Not to say that a Porsche isn't flashy, but there is a difference — at least in my mind. I will say that if the money was there I would defy everything I just said and buy a Bugatti Veyron, mainly because of this video. Porsche has just remained so consistent over the years that you can't not love them. Give me a GT2 and i'll be happy. Give me a GT2 in Bavaria and I will be really happy. Seeing as the days of ripping up the road in some expensive German engineering are still to come, I'll (we'll) have to settle for this 914 farm circa 1972. All of these images came from this gallery and show the quaint production of 1970s Porsches being made in Germany by workers wearing overalls. Sports cars and factory photos? Sign me up. More after the jump.
Have you ever given up working on a math problem because you couldn't figure out the next step? Wolfram|Alpha can guide you step by step through the process of solving many mathematical problems, from solving a simple quadratic equation to taking the integral of a complex function.
When trying to find the roots of 3x2+x–7=4x, Wolfram|Alpha can break down the steps for you if you click the "Show steps" button in the Result pod.
As you can see, Wolfram|Alpha can find the roots of quadratic equations. Wolfram|Alpha shows how to solve this equation by completing the square and then solving for x. Of course, there are other ways to solve this problem!
Wolfram|Alpha can demonstrate step-by-step solutions over a wide range of problems. This functionality will be expanded to include steps for solutions in other mathematical areas. Look through the following examples to see the abilities of the "Show steps" functionality.
If you need to learn how to do long division of polynomials, Wolfram|Alpha can show you the steps. Let's try (x5–14x4+3x2–2x+17)/(2x2–x+1):
If you are stumped trying to find the limit of xx as x->0, consult Wolfram|Alpha:
When you need to find the derivative of (3x2+1)/(6x3+4x) for your calculus class, Wolfram|Alpha will find this derivative using the quotient rule.
Are you trying to integrate e2 x cos(3x), but forgot the formula for integration by parts? Wolfram|Alpha will remind you how to integrate by parts.
Wolfram|Alpha can do virtually any integral that can be done by hand. Try the integral of x√[1–√[x]]:
Wolfram|Alpha also has the step-by-step functionality for partial fractions. Try partial fractions of 1/(x3–1):
The step-by-step programs in Wolfram|Alpha rely on a combination of basic algorithms and heuristics including Gaussian elimination, l'Hôpital's rule, and Bernoulli's algorithm for rational integration. These heuristics are a logical formulation of the natural methods used by humans for solving problems. By utilizing Mathematica's powerful pattern-matching capabilities, Wolfram|Alpha's developers have morphed these rules into a platform for breaking down and structuring the solutions to complicated problems, which closely mimics the ways by which a human would solve problems of these natures.
The "Show steps" feature allows you to learn basic mathematics on your own, or it can simply be a nice way to check your work! It can also give you insight on different ways to solve problems. So next time you find yourself ready to give up on a math problem, make sure to check with Wolfram|Alpha. Visit the Wolfram|Alpha Homework Day Gallery for examples of how you can use Wolfram|Alpha as a learning tool for other subjects.
Continue reading Review: Friday Night Lights - The Son
Filed under: OpEd, Friday Night Lights, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
Permalink | Email this | | Comments
As with any popular open source project, there are a number of forks, mods and releases of the Chromium OS on the interwebs already. One such release which has greatly impressed users is called Diet Chromium.
An odd name for an Operating System, it refers to the amazingly small size of the release – sort of a "Chrome Lite." A mere 300MB, it is by no means a trimmed down version of Chrome OS. In fact, it supports more hardware than Chrome OS. Heck, I even got it working on my aging desktop computer using a 1 GB USB drive I had lying around. That is what I expect and want a cloud based OS to be.
Here is how you can get this Chrome Lite OS working as well:
You can download Diet Chromium from here. After the download is complete, extract to get an IMG file. IMG files are to USB drives what ISO files are to CDs. So you would need a software to write the IMG file to a USB drive. You can use Win32 Disk Imager as Jorge suggested if you are on Windows. If you are using Linux for creating the bootable USB drive you can use the ever so handful 'dd' command like so:
dd if=<path to IMG file> of=<path to USB drive>
With that done you are all set to try out Chrome (Chromium) OS. Plug your USB drive in and restart the computer. Make sure to set the boot order to check external drives before it checks the internal hard disk or it will default back to the operating system you have got installed.
The OS boots as fast as touted about. Almost instantaneously you are presented with the login screen, use your Google Account to login. After it signs you in you see a – yes you guessed it – 'a browser', Chromium to be precise. Gmail and Google Calendar open as separate pinned tabs by default. Everything is the browser and the browser is everything, so without much surprise the applications are all web apps. You can access them by clicking on the Chrome/Chromium icon.
The operating system is in early stages and not many options are available at this time. You can toggle ethernet or wifi on or off depending upon your preference (It detected LAN on my PC and WiFi on the laptop automatically).
Besides this there are a few options pertaining to Chromium itself that you can mess around with:
Have a really old computer that can't boot from a USB drive? Fear not, we have got you covered. You too can have a piece of the Diet Chromium pie courtesy of VirtualBox!
Although there are a few extra steps you would have to keep in mind. Remember that Diet Chromium is available as an IMG file. We created a bootable USB drive using the IMG file, well now we have to create a bootable virtual harddisk that Virtual Box will recognize. Doing so is easy, just run the following command:
VBoxManage convertrawformat -format VDI <IMG file path> <filename>.vdi
You might have to cd to the Virtualbox install directory if it is not included in the PATH environment variable. Now attach this VDI file as the virtual hard disk when you create a Chromium OS virtual machine. You can now start and use the virtual machine just like any other.
Trying out Chrome (Chromium) OS is even simpler now. All you need is a 1 GB USB drive and a reasonably good computer and Diet Chromium. Check it out and let us know what you think about Google's new operating system! Will you switch to it full time once it comes out in 2010?
You may already know a few mnemonics without really thinking of them as that. For instance, " Righty, tighty, lefty loosey" is a common way to remember which way to remove or tighten a screw, and ROY G. BIV helps you recall the colors of the rainbow. This guide has plenty of familiar mnemonics, plus obscure ones that will help you tell camels apart or remind you what James Bond films starred Sean Connery.
What are your favorite mnemonics for remembering things? Share them in the comments.
What's that? The code from above is something you would see in an iTunes Extras experience.
When Ben showed me a (admittedly poor) Star Trek iTunes Extras we talked about how it felt like a DVD and wondered what tech produced it.
Now we know that it is our friends: JavaScript and CSS (and some XML fr-enemies... XML Schema? Nooooooooo) as you can see in the TuneKit programming guide.
Great to see the Web diversifying once again. The Web keeps going as it hopefully lives up to the dream of a unifying platform.
![Wolfram|Alpha integrates x Sqrt[1–Sqrt[x]]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_ubOA6b2DZs2_O8DVI9CGsEhObOT-WrkTuSYLKDPCSxb4XCci_WdtiO_mDzVBagGTQn4Adxvv2SYY39fppSNTbsnRuka9w72kGa61Ar90gzTJKMndFp6wihWkvSEV4s=s0-d "Wolfram|Alpha integrates x Sqrt[1–Sqrt[x]]")
