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It's possible to convince somebody of something with the right (form of) argument.

Entry created on 2024-07-09 Authors: steeph (338) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Beliefs (2) Communication (3) Conspiracy Narratives (1) Conversation (2) Corona (12) Opinions (2) Science (6) Thinking (3)

There is this thing that I've noticed happen when I'm speaking about something I've heard or read about but don't feel like an expert on. I believe that one should not spread information unless one truely understands it as well as how the information was gathered, what knowledge it builds on, what relevance and meaning it has in the context it likely will be applied in by the person who receives the information, and a few other principles that are hardly possible to honour every time. Those principles cannot be applied to everday conversations like smalltalk, without eliminating the interaction. (That's another topic, though.) So I don't apply them in general conversations with colleagues and customers and often overlook them in conversations with friends and other peers. So it is almost inevitable that I at some point say something I'm not 99.99% sure is correct the way I present it. It happens a lot with "interesting facts" and "what most people don't know". What happens then is that I feel in the wrong to some degree - because I have not made absolutely sure that I'm neither wrong nor going to be misunderstood - while the person I'm speaking to (if they see me as a peer, take me serious and are listening to me) takes what I say as new information and fits in into what they already know and believe. They don't know about the tiny feeling of guilt that I have. So I am regularly surprised when I speak to someone and seem to influence their set of beliefs inadvertently.

How to convince somebody of something is quite a complicated question psychologically. I've read enough about it to know that and to know that I'm not interested in learning how to do it in any professional way (or with style). But there are some interesting aspects to know about how easily people can change their mind in some situations and how tough it is to make somebody change their mind in others.

There was an experiment done that is often referred to in social media sometimes as an interesting bit of knowledgle and sometimes as an argument of an almost political nature, hinting at the stubbernness or irrationality of people with different beliefs (usually beliefs that deverge from the widely accepted set of scientific knowdlege). The simplified conclusion of this study is often presented as this: Presenting a person with a firm belief evidence that their belief is factually wrong makes it even stronger (see Backfire Effect). The conclusion that people draw from this sometimes is: Arguing rationally with somebody with an irrational belief will have the opposite from the intended effect. That is not usually true, though. Not only are cases where that happened rare even in the study that is referred to, the effect could also not be replicated when several researchers tried.

Sometimes I come across a person and learn of a belief of theirs that I find problematic for some reason or another. An extremist attitude to societies basic questions, fascist ideas formulated into political demands, a conspiracy narrative that results in hostile behaviour, things like that. These are usually beliefs with a large foundation that was built over years if not decades and they are often embedded in a world view that justifies and explains anything that might appear to others to oppose ethical code or the reasoning behind the belief. But "often" is not "always". And even if those things are the case is the assumption that simple, rational arguments won't have a positive effect is an erroneous one that is made too quickly. Yes, it seems like a hard undertaking to craft responses that take the opposite of your own beliefs into account properly, not as the hallucination of the enemy camp but as an equal to your own opinion. It also feels like the work necessary to formulate a response that foresees all the expectable counter-arguments and to answer all the antagonistical follow-up questions. That's the things I expect to be confronted with after objecting to something somebody said in a conversation. Correctly so. But if forging a plan to optimally convince the opponent to abandon a belief of theirs is not what I want to do, then it's not necessary to put that much work into it. You can just respond honestly with a simple thought and even end the conversation if it becomes too cumbersome. When a topic has an emotional component, it's easy to forget that keeping this on the level of a regular conversation with no expectation that it will have any meaning to anybody other than passing time.

The insight that I keep having and intend to remember in applicable situations more often is that it is not necessary but possible to convince somebody to take on a different view on something. My mind is not short of explanations and explanation attempts from opposite viewpoints and I'm ready to share them with others to encourage a broadening of their thinking. If it's my own view, a belief based on my own experience, I'm often more reluctant to share it if it opposes somebody else's belief. But it is worth it. Provided both conversing parties bring forth the necessary trust to take other's assertions seriously, a calm, rational objection is far better than cutting the topic short. The latter can easily have the same effect as saying something like "Oh, you're one of those." Derogatory remarks should be avoided just like dismissing a concern, be it ever so irrational. Ignoring an argument for being too absurd or discrediting a source without a reason, talking down or being in any way not as respectful as you would like to be treated yourself in an emotional discussion will not get you closer to invoking insight nor to learning something useful yourself. Those aren't new ideas. The realisation that is, as a conscious insight, new to me, is that I'm far more likely to influence somebody's thinking than I assumed. If a respectful discussion can't be maintained for after small talk got out of the area of the mundane, I don't need to maintain it any longer. One sincere offer of a different view on something is better than none, and better than one with a snarky remark about anti-science belief systems appended, which will likely not make your conversational partner want to think about any of what you said. Say something positive and let it sink it. The hours and even night after you talked can do a lot for making a new idea a familiar one that can or needs to be integrated with ones world view.

I will not continue to give tips on how to convince people of anything. That's not what this entry was supposed to be about. And I'm not experienced enough to give good tips. But I want to leave a book referral here. I can't recommend it, because I haven't read it. But it appears to me that Lee McIntyre knows what he's talking about in his book "How to Talk to a Science Denier". I conclude that from what he says in book introduction (YT, IV.

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Community Based Discovery of Interesting Content on the Small Web

Entry created on 2022-04-01 (edited 2022-04-02) Authors: steeph (338) Categories: Bulletin Boards (2) Content (1) Google+ (1) OPML (1) The Small Web (2) World Wide Web (10)

Warning: This entry uses a LOT of words to come to a banale conclusion. Skip to the last paragraph for a tl;dr.

I was thinking about possibilities how interesting web sites could be discovered without relying on general-purpose search engines, web directories or unstructured recommendations in blog posts or threads in bulletin boards. Search engines will likely always be prown to SEO and therefore commercial content popping up among search results when that is not what the seacher is looking for. Web directories can be very nice and helpful if they are maintained well. But the criteria by which links are selected and categories don't always fit the needs of the visitor who is in search of new interesting content. Personal recommendations are worth a lot and I like it when people care enough about a web site or blog posts to share a link in chats or web forums. But they don't satisfy the use case that I have in mind. What I mean is the use case of wanting to create an aggregated feed of content (blog posts, other text posts, videos, audio podcasts, etc...) without learning about every single source of interesting content individually first. If you've been a member of a large social media platform you probably know how helpful it can be, especially to somebody who is new, to be able to follow sources that produce similar content quickly, making it worthwhile to stay, even though you'll want to do a finer selection of what goes into your feed over time. On Twitter I used the retweets of some few accounts with similar interests to build a very interesting feed quickly, and follow and remove single accounts over time to build perfectly individualised lists for myself. On Reddit, you can join a few really big subreddits and have some interesting stuff instantly, then over time find smaller and even more interesting subreddits that weren't among the search results of your favourite search terms.

With weblogs and the small web though, you have to know or find some web sites first to get just a little bit of interesting stuff, then click through a lot of blog rolls and link lists to find some more. It can be a very interesting journey and pastime. Maybe it fits the mentality of bloggers who don't publish on large platforms. But not everybody sees this as a good thing. And looking at it practically, somebody who wants to switch from consuming a single large social network to reading many small independent content producers does not have it as easy as somebody switching from one large social network to another.

Lists on Twitter and Shared Circles on Google+ are the perfect intermediate between picking out yourself what you want in your feed and following what everybody else follows. You do pick yourself, based on a list of interesting sources a friend or like-minded person has shared with you, but you don't have to pick every source individually. Likely there will be content among the possibly hundrets of authors you've started following with one click that you don't like to read. Then it's up to you to put them into a different circle/on a different list or to unfollow them completely. But to start out with a good set of interesting bloggers, you didn't have to search through thousands of web sites yourself first.

I don't see a reason why this isn't done more often with weblogs and other interesting web sites. I've shared and received OPML files for this purpose before. But for some reason people don't usually post their collection of great RSS and Atom feeds on a topic publicly. I'd like to encourage you to do so. If my feed collection wouldn't be embarrassingly outdated, I'd make a start. But the reason why I started thinking about this topic is precisely that I don't have a well looked after list of feeds on any topic. I just haven't cared about them enough for years. I will get it in order and post it here at some point though.

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Consciousness

Entry created on 2024-07-15 Authors: steeph (338) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Consciousness (1) Philosophy (4) Science (6)

Consciousness is such a heavy topic that, even if I keep clear of actually trying to address the so-called hard problem, writing anything on it feels like I'm over-stretching my copetence in both science and philosophy. But I've decided to be confident enough to type out some of my thoughts an how the subject is discussed.

The topic interests me on an academic hobby level. Consciousness in dreams especially is something that I've read and thought a lot about and experimented with over years. Really explaining the nature of the brain-tingling that a good philosophical chain of thoughts gives me would take a lot longer than I'm prepared to spend writing this entry and would probably produce enough related sentences to write a book about it. Suffice it to say I'm interested - among other things - in how experiences and thereby people's realities change when input is filtered differently by the brain that processes the input (more of less or differently consciously).

One reason why I find it hard to structure thoughts around the topic is because of the definition of consciousness. There is none that encopasses all the cases where it is regularly used with the assumption that the meaning of the word in the context it is used in is clear, or obvious. That is OK in principle. And I've decided to do thew same here and not define it in any way, for simplicity. But when discussing the topic academically, when writing a paper on a related subject or when writing a book on it (with an academic target audience or not), a definition that prefaces the presentation of any concept or theory is necessary to allow for a productive discussion. Without a definition on such a varied subject interesting things may be said on it. But it's complicated to impossible to discuss them in a structured way or to do epirical reasearch on them. In other words, they lose some very important possibilities of being useful above entertainment. That is probably why a definition usually is brought forth in such publications. But not always. Introducing a concept on most other topics doesn't require the author to first define what they think the field of research actually is about. But such a requirement inheres - in my opinion - in discussing the subject of consciousness; something that can be experienced by somebody who agrees to the fact that they are experiencing it (according to some definitions) but who at the same time argues that it (according to some definitions) may not exist as a distinguishable state. I've seen a panel discussion once where two of the participants discovered their diverging definitions of consciousness in regards of what they wanted to talk about that day halfway through the discussion, which lead them to agree to every seemingly contradicting statements based on the assumption that they each other were the expert on what they were talking about. That was a funny and useful one compared to other panel discussions that muddle ideas and thoughts on the topic by mixing concepts that are not reconcilable with each other.

I'll leave it at that for now because I don't want to actually say anything about consciousness before producing a formal definition, which, in confusion over different views on what consciousness is, I'm not prepared to do.

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Comparing apples and oranges: a randomised prospective study

Entry created on 2021-12-26 Authors: steeph (338) Categories: Apples (1) Language (7) Oranges (1) Research (3) Science (6) Silly (32)

There is a research paper that was published a year ago and hasn't gotton enough attention in my opinion. I wished many times that somebody attempted something line this scientifically.

There are several very basic things wrong with this paper. The results are pretty much useless apart from the overall success of the comparison itself. Ignore the details. I can finally say with confidence that comparing apples with oranges is not as outragiously impossible as it is usually made out to be.

Here's the link to the paper. And here it is on NCBI.

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Case Modding

Entry created on 2024-09-22 (edited 2024-09-28) Authors: steeph (338) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Case Modding (11) Computer Noises (1) DIY (15) Retro Computing (6) Scrap (1) incompelte (1)

I used to be somewhat of a casemodder in the early to mid 2000s. That's kind of the style of casemodding that I still like today. We used to shun people who buy ready parts or cases instead of building parts and modding cases themselves. I especially was an advocat of building things from materials that could be found on the street or in scrap containers or were otherwise free to aquire. Maybe just because i didn't have any money, didn't know many people who had enough money to simply buy materials and tools and didn't foresee a future where I was able to simply buy anything I needed to build something. To this day I like using leftovers, scrap and otherwise free materials to build things. I think I wasn't aware of that in the 2000s; but which case mods I like how much is to a large degree determined by how scrappy the building materials were and how simple the tools were. I wasn't usually trying to build something that looks slick and exactly like planned, but something that looks unique and cool, and maybe extraordinary.

Here are a few examples of things that I did to cases of mine that I liked.

(I'll pick out photos of these examples at some point, maybe. I haven't yet.)

Coloured foil window

Making a whole in the left wall of a tower case is probably the most common case mod. There were various window kits to make it easy to get to a clean-looking result. I didn't care for those for a long time. Instead of bying any material to create a window in my case, I used what I had: a dremel-like tool with a cutting disk and some red polymere foil an old text book used to be covered with. If I remember correctly, my mother bought this book used one year for my new school year instead of getting the current version. The previous owner had a red protectie cover around it. Eventually one of the seams ripped and the cover slid off every day. So I left the cover off. It was translucent. A unique material, I thought. So I kkept it in case I wanted to build something with it some day. The case I used it for used to house a generic 286. I put a 586 in it, I think. In the early 2000s that was just an old, very slow computer, not a #RetroComputing statement. I glued the sheet to the steel case from the inside after removing the burr and abraded the edges with a used corner of some sand paper. With bright cold lights inside you could sort of look inside the case. But it was mainly for style. The rest of the case was covered in some tape that I found at some building site once. That way the cut edges didn't look too rough. It certainly was a unique look. I still like the style of that case.

Plastic hose IDE and floppy cables

Ribbon cables, such as they were used for IDE, floppy drives and SCSI, used to be impossible to tuck away nicely. Round cables, such as pretty much all cables that are connected externally, can be clipped almost anywere. Wide ribbon cables need to be folded to wire them cleanly. That doesn't even work well if the case and all parts are designed for it, which they never are. In most PCs those cables used to be just left hanging around, blocking airflow and view. Some PC manufacturers used to cut the ribbons into five or six parts and fixed them with a stacked position with cable ties. That looked much cleaner. And suddenly round IDE and floppy cables became a thing. The connectors were the same. But inbetween they weren't ribbon cables anymore because the individual wires were split up and shrouded in a plastic tube. Those cables were more flexible and usually more colourful than conventional IDE cables. Again, you could buy them. But until the day I got a set with a motherboard that I bought, I didn't want "factory made" round IDE and floppy cables. I made my own by splitting up ribbon cables and stuffing them through an old shower hose or a piece of a garden hose. Not as flexible, but just as practical as bought ones.

Aluminium tape wrap

I don't know where I got it. But I had enough wide aluminium tape to cover an entire mini tower on the sides and the top. To cover up the imperfect edges I used red electric tape. So almost the entire case was striped red and silver at an unusual. Simple, no cost for me in that case, and quickly giving a nice, retrofuturistic look to a before boring, grey mini tower.

IC exterior

Another idea that I once had was to use all the ICs (at least those that were at least 1 cm wide) from all those defective motherboards and extension cards that accumulated over the years. People would bring and I would pick up so much old PC hardware that others didn't need anymore. Often the reason was that at least some part had a hardware defect, in which case I usually gave up my hopes to get it working again. I had an entire wall covered in old motherboards at one point. Much of this stuff was from the mid-90s or older and therefore not worth keeping intact even if it was in a great condition when I got it. Eventually there were just too many unused and defective cards and other boards and I decided to recycle their ICs before I got rid of what I thought I'd never want to even look at again. I cut off all those ICs with a knife (only SMD chips), covered the right side of a big tower in double-sided adhesive tape and neatly placed one next to another. Sometimes I used chips smaller than a cm to fill gaps. Not even half of the side got covered. I tried to get more from other people who wanted to throw stuff away. But what I got didn't bring me close to covering even the one side. My idea was to cover all the sides. I realised I had to pay money to get enough even broken electronics to finish the case. That wasn't beside the idea. Also it didn't feel right to use just any old ICs. It was supposed to be a PC chip case. I never finished the case. Unfortunately I didn't have the idea to make the IC field transition into something else, like a solid colour, even just the gray the case was before. Or maybe I didn't want to dso that. Nowadays I have some ideas where I could possibly get trunkloads full of ICs that I assume aren't recyclable otherwise. Maybe I wouldn't use a big tower if I'd ever started this again.

Sofa PC

I had a sofa in my room. I don't remember where I got it. I probably picket it up from the street after somebody got rid of it. At the time I was thinking about andd experimenting with getting a PC very quiet, if not silent, without compromising on performance. This was a much more prevalent topic at the time, because CPUs used more and more power with every new model (peaking in the Pentium 4, which is famous for needing much more than 100 W at the clock speeds it was marketed for being able to run at). CPUs power consumption wasn't throttled in as many ways as they are today. Coltage was usually fix, so it needed to be as high as you needed it to be at peak performance moments. Clock usually couldn't be changed dynamically. The CPU couldn't switch parts of itself off when it didn't need them. And the power it consumed it needed for its single core; so there was no core to shut down, either, in idle moments. Other components usualy also used more power than they do today. Motherboards were built by more individual ICs, chipsets didn't idle well either, voltage regulation wasn't as efficient for performance CPUs, hard disks needed more power than even today's spinniung hard disks. Automatic, temperature-based fan control wasn't as advanced either when you wanted to regulate it for a chip's temeperature, and you had to place the sensor not only outside of the chip, but usually outside of the cooler. And I wanted to have a surver run 24/7. I was actually running a few services on the internet from my bedroom at the time, of which one was used and relied on at a daily basis. So, what I came up with was to build a PC into my Sofa. It had thick foam padding and a cotton filling, which made it sound proof at least to lover frequencies. I removed enough of the cotton to give it a large room with wich to interchange air. And it sort of worked. It got hotter in there than I hoped. But it was pretty quiet. Now that I'm thining of it again, I could've done some things to improve aitflow to the outside withou opening the sofa up too much to leak sound. There were no frequencies, apparently, at a multipe of the resonance frequencies of any of the wood panels of the sofa. Sitting on it wasn't affected in any way. And the whole thing was easily accessable from the front. There was a cut-put right above the floor with a handle, with which you coulde pull out a board, that slid out on small wheel. On the board all the components were mounted. I used parts from a relatively cheap ATX case to make the motherboard and drives mount easily. I never got it down to the temperature I set out to get. And I couldn't use high-rpm hard disks because then that was the only noise in the room and it was very annoying. But it worked, and the sliding mechanism was fancy, even though it was so simple to build. The cutout and handle were actually easy to overlook in the pattern of the fabric that the sofa already had. I got the ideaa for the sofa mod after I ran the server inside my wooden desk for a while. That is another story. The sofa mod was kind of the enhanced version of the desk PC.

I wonder why I don't make things like these anymore. Because making something in a unique style that you like feels extra good on top of the feeling of making something yourself.

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A Really Very Good Laptop

Entry created on 2024-09-04 Authors: steeph (338) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computers (15) Laptops (2) ThinkPads (2) incomplete (33)

This is a continuation of my recent entry about what I think makes a good laptop.

Display And Keyboard Size

I used to think a larger screen would be better, because you could see things better. But when sitting directly in front of the thing, it doesn't really make a difference whether the screen is 12 or 15 inches across. Larger screens tend to be available with higher resolutions. I think my preference for 15 inch laptops come from a time where there was a notable difference in price between laptops with screens with hardly acceptable and good resolution. But I've come to accept smaller-than-HD resolutions even though there are tasks where it really makes a difference. But with 15 year-old laptops, an HD screen doesn't have to make the thing much more expensive. So there are options, even with 12 inch devices.

The other thing is the keyboard (again). A larger device has more room for a more comfortable keyboard. HP makes use of the extra room. Dell didn't, at the time the laptops I'm interested in were made. In mobile workstations with a 15.6 inch screen can have a numblock, a 14 inch one can be less crowded (no half-size keys, spaced out special keys, extra rows). EliteBooks used to do a good job at that up until the 3rd generation. 12.1 inch Thinkpads (or the newer 12.5 inch ones) are a good example for crowded laptop keyboards. Not a bad keyboard. But there just isn't enough space to include and position all the keys one might want to have where one might want to ghave them. The thing is: 14 and 15 inch ThinkPads and Latitudes use the same keyboard layouts as their 12 inch counterparts. That's another plus for EliteBooks if you want a larger than 12 inch device.

So, since I'm on the ThinkPad bandwagon right now, and somebody gave me a ThinkPad X201 from their scrap box, I think that might be what I'm going to use next. I wouldn't have considered a 12 inch device. But, internals aside, it's just as nice to use as a T400, but ligher and taking up less space. I think if I had been introduced to ThinkPads through an X201, X200 or similar, I would have understood the hype much quicker. I will not go much into other manufacturer's counterparts to the ThinkPad X2xx series. But it is worth mentioning that both HP and Dell had similar devices to the X200/X201 both in clamshell and convertable/talet versions and their keyboards aren't worse. The Dell XP2 has a little fan in me. But those might be a topics for another entry.

Old Case With New Oragns, Frankenpads

I don't have anything agains newer hardware. I'm just not ready to give up on laptop keyboards that feel nice to use. The trend of thinner laptops with larger batteries in recent years has been made possible by smaller mainboards with highly integrated CPUs or SoCs. I imagine that the size of modern laptop keyboards is very helpful if one would decide to build a newer PC into an old laptop case. The X201 doesn't seem to be popular for this anymore. Most people seem to preferr newer models for some reason. I would have thought that is one of the most popular devices for Frankenpads, even if it's a bit more work. The keyboard is of the old style, small case still with a lid latch, but there already was an option for a track pad. I have not gathered too much information about doing this myself. But there seems to be enough resources and support in forums to make it a doable project. But you don't even have to. There is a commercial offer for X201s with 10th generation Core i CPU.

I did think about getting a 486 laptop with a really nice keyboard and mod a newer board into that. It would be a nice project. But not as practical as an X201 or similar. After all, the case would be much thicker. Most 486 laptops were about twice as thick. That would make it easier to fit a different board into it and position connectors in the right spots. Most designs wouldn't have room for a trackpad. The availability of replacement parts for ThinkPads is also a good reason to use a ThinkPad for this. But it would be a nice project. Maybe even with an ultraportable electronic typewriter. But for a laptop to buy, the X2100 si the best compromise for many reasons; and you can get it readily built by someone with experience in doing exactly that.

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Beautiful Heatsinks

Entry created on 2024-09-20 Authors: steeph (338) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) CPU Cooler (2) CPUs (5) Computers (15) Coolers (1) Cooling (2) Flowers (3) Heatsinks (2)

(I can't find many free photos of what I want to show here. Maybe I could buy some.) See the links behind the model names for nice pictures.

Heatsinks are a mostly practical thing. They usually aren't seen, so visual design is not very important. Exceptions are where part of a device's case is acting as a heatsink and devices assembled by enthusiasts who care how their internals look (including devices that show off their components, like open PC builds and PCs with windows in their case). This post is about the latter: heatsinks for PC components for people who care how their coolers look like.

To be frank, this entry is specifically abnout Zalman heatsinks. I don't know much about the company. Apparently they are Korean with a name that sounds so un-asian that I doubt that the beginnings really were in Korea. But I know that they made several CPU coolers that I like visually. A heatsink needs to fulfil the task of transporting heat from a small surface to a larger surface where other mechanisms then may exchange heated molecules with molecules from even farther evay. Heatsinks can store more heat energy if they have a larger mass. They transport the heat quicker if they are made of materials that are good at that sort of thing, like copper. And they are better at exchanging heat with their envirement if their surface area is larger. If a chip needs to be cooled better, what's mostly done is to put a larger heatsink onto it (can take in more energy) or blow more air through it (larger/faster fans). It's relatively cheap to just increase the amount of aluminium and/or plastic and call it a cooler. But making the heatsink larger mainly increases the capacity for how much heat energy it can take in from the die quickly, which is good for energy bursts, but not for constant heat absorbtion. And blowing more air through it makes the cooler louder. Zalman took a different applroach around 2000 and was very successful with it in the early 2000s, as it appears to me. They used mainly copper for their heatsinks (even just a copper core used to be a sign for a higher value PC heatsinks before) and they drastically increased the surface area. I don't know who invented the style or manufacturing principle of copper sheets intertwined with a copper base to form a fan-like (as in paper fan) structure. But Zalman did this with the most sense for beauty and with a target market of enthusiast PC builders. I couldn't afford any of their products at the time. But I was a fan from the moment I saw a Zalman Flower for the first time.

Under the name flower they released a number of very different, round CPU coolers as well as at least one chipset cooler. The name started in the 90s, where it was used for a ciurcular aluminium CPU cooler for socket 370 (Pentium III, Celeron). I like those, too. But they are impossible to find and I'm not aware of anybody making anything similar with that much metal around the fan. In my perception the copper goodness started with the CNPS 3000 series, a passive CPU cooler. Right there we have a unique design that hasn't been matched by any other manufacturer. If I would find one of these and I could buy it for < 30 €, I would get it for a future retro build. It got a makeover with the CNPS 6000 series later for socket A.

The CNPS 5000 is hardly worth mentioning here. It follows the design of the Intel Standard LGA 775 coolers, but without the goal of being cheap. The CNPS 7000 series has a layout similar to the original Flower, round with fins surrounding the fan blades from all sides except the top. Not a new design, but again, now it was available in beautiful and with a lot of copper (optionally, as it usually was from the CNMPS 5000 onwards) fins.

The CNPS 8000 has less roundness and more boringness and shall be skipped here. Now we're already in a time were CPU cooler mounts were designed similar to the way they are today and so some of these coolers are still usable with modern CPUs without making a custom bracket, for some you would need to make your own or adapt a bracket. But it's a realistic undertaking. In the CNPS 9000 series there are two beautiful models. The CNPS 9500 and the CNPS 9900.

Another unique design (as far as I've seen) is the fanless external water cooler Reserator 1, of which several version exits but all are called Reserator 1. CPU coolers aside, most of Zalman's coolers are designed for PC GPUs, understandably. There is one design that I'd like to point out here. And that's the ZM-80. Here are reviews of the ZM-80C and the ZM-80D. I bought an early version of the ZM-80 (without a fan) because it was the best way to passively cool my GPU back then. I'm not a gamer. But I still believed that I could use a powerful graphics card. And those had started to require active cooling. The two giant and massive metal plates of the ZM-80, connected with a heat pipe, made the graphics card an uncommonly large part. It was the first time that I've seen an extension card block its neighbor slot. There are similar coolers. Thermaltake took this design to the extreme (although nowadays there are larger GPU heatsinks).

The more time advances, the more boring Zalman's product range becomes.

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About entries about alternative desktop operating systems

Entry created on 2022-06-14 Authors: steeph (338) Categories: Computer (75) Operating Systems (21) Topics: Software → Alternative Operating Systems (18)

When I decided to write about operating systems that not that many people know about, I did so after discovering a handful of small projects that I was unaware of up to that point. After starting to test and try them, I found more interesting projects. After I started to write about what I had already tries, I found even more projects that seemed worth mentioning, between a lot of projects that I thought I better not get into in order to not blow this up into an actual OS comparison project. I thought I had a rough overview over the hobby OS world and commercial desktop OSs. I split my entry about alternative desktop operating systems up into many because I took a lot of time between trying out the OSs and wanted to publish the information piece for piece.

But the longer I keep looking, the more interesting (both in number and in interestingness) projects I find. I now see that trying out most of the interesting desktop OSs would be a huge project. Even just shortly trying those that supply a bootable disk image would take much longer than I thought. So entries about OSs that I've tried will likely be a continuous thing that just at some point will stop without anybody noticing. I see now that it was wrong to assume that I could write a resume after a while.

With the number of projects worth trying and mentioning there also comes a variety that's far bigger than I expected. Just shortly mentioning an OS and my experince trying it out randomly doesn't do much good. A list with a one-sentence description would probably be more helpful to people looking to install and/or try an alternative OS. But a database that contains all the interesting information about every desktop OS out there, filterable and sortable, would again be a proper project that would require some dedication or a lot of time.

So, I just give up on generating interesting or even useful information about alternative operating systems and just continue writing short entries about them like I did so far.

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