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from his article 9/29/03 XP Decay

"Within 12-18 months" I believe was his exact words, in March '03. Don't listen to this moron.

" IDLE-TIME PROCESS. Once in a while the system will go into an idle mode, requiring from five minutes to half an hour to unwind. It's weird, and I almost always have to reboot. When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing? Once in a while, after you've clicked all over the screen trying to get the system to do something other than idle, all your clicks suddenly ignite and the screen goes crazy with activity. This is not right."

John Dvorak may be more of a journalist than say Rob Enderle or Laura Didio, but the guy is a nutter. Have a look at his comments on the current iMac: "The design is hardly inspirational. In fact, if you put two headlamps on it and a metal sun visor over its "windshield," it would be reminiscent of a 1954 DeSoto." Or perhaps his opinion that Linux would die as soon as MS released a distro http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1768170,00.as p

I would trust a random guy on slashdot much more than I'd trust Dvorak's insights...

Do you remember "How to Kill Linux" and the article (I didn't found it) about Google preparing to launch an OS?

Uploading music that you don't have permission to upload is NOT legal in Canada. For instance, see Russell McOrmond's post to pcmag. Russell is super active trying to make Canadian copyright law sane, for instance, he runs Digital Copyright Canada, who recently had their Petition for Users' Rights submitted to parliament.

The real meat is here (two links in... why don't people link to the interesting content anyway?)

Test-Driving the Dual Core Pentium EE 840

pic.

but 4000 bucks.. well, it SHOULD be impressing.

but seriously though.. it seems like a "thank you mates! were so happy we actually GOT this thing and not having to just do a paper review on your paper launch".
just check these:
"
Subratings (out of 100):
Video: 100
Gaming: 100
Music: 100
Photo: 100
"
ok.

has info as well

"At 9.0 for desktops and 9.2 for notebooks, Apple's impressive reliability scores are at least a point higher than the industry averages. Nearly all respondents to our survey who supplied quotes about their Apple desktops found them extremely reliable. Compared with other brands, a much lower percentage of Apple desktop systems needed repairs over the last year."

Too few respondents report needing support with or repairs to their Apple computers to rate the company in these areas. Last year, Apple had better-than-average support for its desktops and notebooks, and its notebook repairs were similarly well regarded. (There were also too few respondents to rate desktop repairs in 2003.)

"In recent subscriber surveys, Consumer Reports has found Apple laptops to be among the most reliable and Apple technical support to be top-notch. Apple computers are also less susceptible to most viruses and spyware than Windows-based computers. The Apple PowerBook is relatively expensive as laptops go, however. "

They claimed it's available now (and even provide an "e-value" for it), but I was unable to find it anywhere on Dell's site.

Bottom Line: it's fast. Real fast.

You reminded me of a recent Dvorak column titled "How to Kill Linux" (probably linked in many other /. threads)...

<grrr>

130W design power consumption, impressive number, right?

On the other hand, Free scale e600 dual core has a power budget of 15W.

If I am the designer of next hybrid car, I go after the second one.

If I was in the market for an eBook reader I'd just wait for a Librie competitor. The Librie is currently Japanese only and pricey, but far and away the best technology.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1749479,00.as p

PC-Mag says the 4:10 has a "BatteryMark" of 4:05. Four hours and five minutes of REAL battery life in a form-factor that compares to the ThinkPad, and power that blows away the X40.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1757493,00.as p

Those numbers jive with what I've seen in testing my demos and building my enterprise images for deployment.

It seems kind of unfair to reference Ms. Rosen up front as being "quite attractive," just because she has a nice portrait of herself next to her quite well-written article. You must know that as a result, many /.'ers are going to click over there to scope her out...while ignoring the article entirely.

It strikes me that there's a bit of gender bias lurking here--I mean, do you see people referencing the "devastatingly handsome" John C. Dvorak or the "toe-curlingly sexy" Robert X. Cringely?

...

Oh. Right. Sorry.

j

DUH the test was a waste of time and everyone here already knew it was BS, but people, have you SEEN the "cow taser" page linked to from the review article?!! I think I just pissed myself from laughing so hard.

Then it wasn't exactly a waste of time, was it?

Part of the reason people read Dan's stuff (just in case anyone missed the main link to his site) is his entertaining writing style. I almost always learn something from his articles, even if it's got nothing to do with what the article's supposedly about. Dan is obviously fully in on the joke himself or he wouldn't even be linking to things like cow tasers in his articles. It's people like you - who think reviews have to be a "waste of time" simply because the products in question are such obvious bunk - who don't seem to quite get it.

In a world where product reviews often offer little or not information at all, and where the strongest and most specific statement you might read is how one product or another is vaguely "generally good", writers like Dan are a refreshing change - he writes pieces that are always entertaining in and of themselves, often more informative than they need to be, and with plenty of useless but interesting trivia to keep you interested when the product in question is less than worthwhile. I only wish he'd review more stuff that I'm actually interested in buying (though I've become interested in buying a few things I would never have even known about but for his review).

As for this particular review, I think it's worth reminding the Slashdot crowd of the dangers of pseudo-science every now and again - pseudo-scientific articles do occasionally slip through the editing process here, and are often accepted as fact.

Read the Techworld article. It does give the voting figures. It also says the vote "failed to provide an outright winner". What it also reports is that an Airgo statement gives a strong reason to hope for a merger of the proposals - something in contrast with the UWB deadlock.

In my original Slashdot submission, I believe I wrote "end-game" rather than "end-point", which seems fair. It either got changed or I mis-typed (in which case I apologise) - I can't check which here.

Either way, your accusation is out of line. If you want to beat on someone, beat on Unstrung or PC Magazine.

My own attempt to get high search engine ranking: Free Porn Magic For You! Based on an article at PC Magazine. Please click on Free Porn Magic For You! to make me amazingly rich and famous.

Tum tee tumm

Now I look like a plonker!
I went and relooked at the problem, and apparantly theres a fix (put in place well after I initially made my assertions about it..)

Its not a simple one click thing, but it may work.

Heres a link

I can't actually confirm if this works as expected yet (very unclean bloated registry), but if it does, then it will be easier.

Oh yeah, every year for the last several years. Examples follow"

March 2003

July 2003

November 2004

December 2003

Here's a link to the whole story.

It's worth the read for more than just the ``idle process hog.'' He really gets going. Goodness, I wonder exactly when it was that hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del twice wouldn't reboot one's machine immediately. IT MUST BE SOME CONSPIRACY!

However, the last quote gets the ironic gold award for the millenium:

And please, will the characters who "have never had a crash or blip" in 10 years of "heavy use" not contribute. I'm sick of these people. They're full of it.

John C. Dvorak:
"IDLE-TIME PROCESS. Once in a while the system will go into an idle mode, requiring from five minutes to half an hour to unwind. It's weird, and I almost always have to reboot. When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing? Once in a while, after you've clicked all over the screen trying to get the system to do something other than idle, all your clicks suddenly ignite and the screen goes crazy with activity. This is not right." (link)

I was astounded by that enough to look it up. I didn't think he was THAT dumb, he's not. Though he certainly doesn't seem to know what a patch is. linky

Dvorak was complaining that his machine sits idle for minutes at a time, while he's been madly clicking away trying to get it to do things. Then it springs to life, executing all his commands at once. Personally I've never experienced any of the issues he's talking about.

Seriously, this is the same guy that insisted Apple was going to switch to Intel processors.

That was DOS, not Windows.

A lot of people called dvorak stupid because they didn't understand his last article, on Google co-opting Wikipedia. That's because the /. story linked to page 2 and with only the tiniest clue that it wasn't the start of the article people just didn't get it. Please re-read it from the start before diss'ing him (and contribute to wikipedia's fund-raising drive).

Of course, this is the guy who has pronounced Apple as dead more than once. What value is the opinion of a pin-headed pundit? Wow. I was like, a poet there.

Anyway, MS-Linux? W(hy)TF would I use that? The reason people use Linux is usually to get away from Windows and it's diseases. Why would I run Linux as a subjugated app under an inferior kernel design on a server? To enhance security? Ha!

Dvorak says "MS Linux would quickly become the dominant linux distribution." He pulled that right out of his arse. Does he think that many people would actually buy Linux from Microsoft when it's available for FREE elsewhere?

John C. Dvorak--I think you over estimate MS's position to dominate a market that's based on not being Microsoft.

http://www.g4tv.com/freshgear/features/39129/USB_2 0_Versus_FireWire_pg3.html

Despite the speed advantage USB 2.0 offers over the old v1.1 standard, FireWire remains the performance king of plug-and-play connections.

http://www.firewire-1394.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm

Performance Comparison - FireWire vs. USB 2.0

Read and write tests to the same IDE hard drive connected using FireWire and then USB 2.0 show:

Read Test:
5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 33% faster than USB 2.0
160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 70% faster than USB 2.0

Write Test:
5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 16% faster than USB 2.0
160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 48% faster than USB 2.0

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,844061,00.asp

Though USB 2.0 is rated at a higher throughput speed, FireWire delivered faster performance on external hard drives when connected to a desktop.

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.macopinio n.com/columns/macskeptic/02/02/08/

And there's more, which can be found via Google.

Looks like a Linux fanboi is mad at John, he was just writing about how to kill linux.

Can't take anything he says without a grain of salt after all the time he spent pimping OS/2 and declaring the "Death of Apple" every other week.

Chordic and split keyboards were not invented for that reason, they were attempts to come up with better keyboard designs for computing while standing or walking.

Chording keyboards were invented by Doug Engelbart, inventor of the mouse. It was designed so one hand could type and the other could point. His BAT chording keyboard sits on a desk and cannot be used while being carried.

Links:
The Sound of One Hand Typing
Site selling the BAT keyboard

Firefox browser by itself is pretty nice, but the barebones edition does not really offer much added value compared to IE or Opera. The extensions, however, are amazing, I sometimes browse their extensions catalog just to see what I am missing, or make sure I don't miss articles like this to see what the other folks are using.

You honestly think this is just a "non-IE" problem?

IE has the same vunerability (although through a different method) ...

here is an article about it

• www.boingboing.net/2004/07/14/more_roomba_hacking. html
• www.roombacommunity.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=6&to picdays=0&start=50&sid=4b9bfe3e721838e9d7363430ab6 fed2f
• www.boingboing.net/2003/01/17/hacking_the_vacuumro .html
• www.engadget.com/entry/4967632541028408/
• www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1231080,00.asp

According to this article: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1745930,00.as p and the related link http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp (scroll down for OS statistics), Mac growth is being outpaced by both Linux and Windows XP.

Looks like MacOS is going.... going.... almost gone.

Why, oh why, don't newsites put actual links to the product's (or company's) website when writing an article or review. News.com is bad enough, but PC Mag also does it. When you click on one of the suggested story links at the bottom you get another review of the software. They actually have an url to the website, but it's not a link, one has to copy and paste to go to the website!!

Do these news sites want the companies to actually pay for a direct link? What is the motivation? I've had several articles on news.com in which I'd like to visit the company's website, for which a url is nowhere to be found and I have to resort to Google to find it. ARGH!

Don't you know? The next PowerBook (and all other future Macs) will run on Intel chips. Dvorak said so!

Tivo cable card box

Actually, take a look at the Dell Optiplex SX280 (I hope thats the one I'm thinking of). I've seen a few Dell machines in offices, where the PC basically that small as the Mac mini.

The dimensions for the miniMac: 2 x 6.5 x 6.5 inches [HWD] = 84 cu.in.

Comparable footprint, but the Dell's H, W and D are real awkward (the H and D stick out - and the W makes it feel like it is easy to topple over.)

miniMac = 2.9 lb. + powersupply from compact wallwart plug.

Dell Optiplex = 11 lb + external power supply which is twice the size of their notebook powersupply.

You could pack the miniMac in your briefcase; not so with the Dell.

The Canon EOS Digital Rebel shares much of its firmware with the higher-end EOS 10D. This was first discovered by an enterprising Russian hacker known as Wasia, who figured out how to turn on the inactive portion of the firm-ware, expanding the camera's capabilities. He's now releasing his own version of the firmware and updating it as he figures out how to get the Digital Rebel to do even more.

RTFA - PC Magazine's review

One standard which might gain acceptance is the Biometric XML standard.

(PCMag news article http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0%2C1759%2C31950%2C0 0.asp )

Google "pre-n review" and you get

Belkin Wireless Pre-N Router

From this link:

we measured throughput of 40.7 Mbps at 60 feet from the router (where 802.11g products typically deliver 15 Mbps)

So at 60 feet, they were getting 40.7 full duplexed, 81.4 half. Considering wireless overhead that must be involved, that isn't bad throughput.

What is most interesting is that the throughput at 1 foot from the router was actually less than at 60 feet by over 20 Mbps.

Well, not just anything. Slashdot passed on Dvorak's most recent bashing of Apple! Elsewhere, there is plenty of heat (but little light) elsewhere.

"Has this ever happened to you? You've just snapped some great pictures, and you want to quickly transfer them to your laptop to e-mail them to friends. But you left your camera's cable somewhere else. SanDisk wants to make that problem go away"

Alienware slips by one quarter and they get on the list, but Voom has been promising me the uber DVR for almost a year with no follow through and there is no mention at all?

I demand a recount!

I LOVE the Voom service, as any real geek would, but that DVR needs to roll out already!

Actually, the DirecTV DVR with TiVo isn't the horse TiVo should be placing its bets on because DirecTV's building their own...

What TiVo's planning on is forgetting about partnering with the cable systems. The cable systems are affraid of letting content be streammed to PCs and won't include that feature in their DVRs, but TiVo will be able to build a CableCard-enabled box and then be able to do what they want with the digital video stream without having to please the system owners.

PC Magazine has more details.

J Wolfgang Goerlich

Darn, somebody beat me to the submission. Anyways, here's my version, which has some more information:

Robotics physicist Mark Tilden has unveiled his follow-ups to the Robosapien, which was mentioned on slashdot last year and sold rather well during the holidays. The foremost is the $200 Robosapien V2, which will be able to lie down, stand up, speak, use its built-in camera to recognize objects and people, and follow a laser-traced path. The $70 Robopet will be able to perform simple tricks and learn through positive and negative reinforcement. The $100 Roboraptor is covered with sensors and will have three different moods: hunter, cautious, and playful. The Robopet is scheduled to launch in July, with the Robosapien V2 and Roboraptor scheduled for September. I can't wait to see what hacks people come up with for this.