Slashdot Mirror
New Year's Eve Wrap-Up of Wrap-Ups
SkeeterMac writes "CNN ran an article today listing the top dubious achievements in personal computing for the year... raising again the point that PC speed can not be measured only in megahertz! Too bad the author doesn't think so, because they slam Apple for pricing the iMac around $1,500 for "chugging along at 700 Mhz"..."
cwill1004 writes "Mary Jo Foley has written up a set of predictions for Microsoft in 2003. She suggests that the tablet PC will be a bust, MSN gaining on AOL, and Microsoft getting more flak for its DRM (digital rights management) offerings, much like it did for the Windows Product Activation. It's on Microsoft Watch."
angkor links to Shift's "stupid web moments of 2002."
And the good news -- sulli writes "Just in time for New Year's, the New York Times (register now, use a workaround, or forever hold your peace) discusses at length the health benefits of alcohol. Prevent heart attacks, not with drugs or diet, but with a good California Zinfandel! Avoid strokes with a Perfect Gin Martini! Just don't overdo it, and you'll be fine - too much alcohol, like too much caffeine, has well-known effects. But in moderation, bottoms up!"
Update: 01/01 01:07 GMT by T : Here's another. An anonymous reader submits: "The BBC News has an amusing article titled the 'E-cyclopedia's glossary of 2002'. One wonders what future generations will make of our 'Bollotics' and 'Euronating'... Even Slashdotting gets a mention."
It's new years eve! Do you people really not have anything more exciting to be doing than reading Slashdot? You'd never catch me posting on a geek news site on the party night of the year. Ever.
...of potential local time live webcasts from around the world.
/.ed first.
/. you better beleive I'm raising my glass every 2 mins.
What the hell does that mean? Oh, wait, you mean if it doesn't get
May be helpful for those who want to raise a glass to the New Year every hour on the hour.
I don't need a reason to raise my glass every hour. Its New Years Eve and I'm ranting on
I noticed that there were 1991 bytes in the full article. Could the /. editors raise that to 2003 bytes by adding a few spaces, spelling errors, etc.? It'd be a small touch that the whole community would appreciate.
You zap the moderators with a wand of humor! The moderators resist!
*eyes the pack of Mike's Hard Cranberry Lemonade*
Dude you'll be sick before you get drunk.
Just a thought :)
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
The Imac looks really cool, but damn it is overpriced. With PC prices dropping like a stone, and even clever integrated PCs starting at $1000 (eg, Gateway's) and barebone PC chassis like the shuttle Cubes & motherboard for $300, the Jellybean is just not cost-effective unless you Gotta Have A Mac.
Test your net with Netalyzr
The really sobering news in that article was that they knew in 1972 that alcohol could help people at risk for cardiovascular disease but the government forbid publication of the study.
In other words, they suppressed information that would have reduced the number of people who died from this disease.
Nearly one million people died in 1999 from cardiovascular disease.
That's one in every 2.5 deaths.
Fucking unbelievable.
This goes well with the news that the government suppressed research into the marijuana's effectiveness in treating cancer. Since the 1973 study talked about in the linked story, there have been three separate studies demonstrating that THC holds promise in reducing or eradicating tumors, but still the government virtually prohibits the research.
The total number of dead worldwide may be in the hundreds of millions.
I'm glad to see the slashdot editors consider this news, even if they didn't bother giving it its own berth. Good thing nobody introduced a new MP3 player today.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
You can cost more and STILL be cost effective. If the Apple is more reliable, and you're able to get more work done, the added initial cost may be outweighed by the lifetime of added productivity. Even if it saves you 15 minutes a day, that's 300 minutes a month (5 hours), and 60 hours a year. If you make $30 an hour, that's $1800 or roughly the cost of the machine! (Okay, so it's a bit of a stretch, but it's important to take these things into account.)
From the NYT article on the beneficial health effects of moderate alcohol consumption:
Moderate drinking can help prevent strokes, amputated limbs and dementia.
I'm sorry, for a second there I thought that said... AMPUTATED LIMBS?!? I'd think the correlation between alcohol consumption and severed limbs would run the other direction. I mean, I grew up in white-trash East Texas and an informal study of most of my classmates seemed to indicate that those who had the highest alcohol consumption also tended to accidentally lose or damage appendages. Whereas I, who drank virtually none, still have... um... "all the parts God gave me."
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
you'd be chugging a can of [insert caffeinated beverage here] every two minutes. Real geeks don't have time for glasses.
/me swallows two tins of penguin mints. Match this caffeine high!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Metric Time will herald a new dawn of productivity and quick figuring of time sheets.
Janet from Allentown says, "I've been waiting for metric time for 25.35 Decamonths! TeeHee!"
Let the celebration begin! (At exactly 0.01 days!) Metric Time is here!
More or less that's true.
It used to be that each town had their own "official clock" for the town, kept usually at Town Hall or the biggest employeer, and all other clocks in that town were synced to that master clock. At that point, as you moved east or west the times between the towns would change gradually based on how far apart they were. Basically, there were an infinite number of time zones.
It wasn't until trains came along that "railroad time" became an issue... and the rest is history. Instead of having analog accuracy in our time zones anymore, we've gone digital.
The DLAPAPA (Designed Like A Picasso And Priced Accordingly) award goes to Apple Computer for the design of its latest iMac, the one that looks like half a round melon impaled with a bent easel. You have to shell out $1,499 to get one with a CD-RW drive, chugging along on a 700-megahertz processor.
Oh yeah, this iMac is a total rip off at $1,499.00... Wait, you mean the 700 MHz model is actually only $1,199.00 including CD-RW? Way to go, CNN.
I like my women like my coffee... pale and bitter.
a clear distinction between the reality and the *model.* A clock may be analog or digital. A clock, or a time zone, is just a model of time. In fact, analog *means* model. *Time* is neither analog nor digital. It's reality. Time existed long before clocks. Plants can tell time. There is no such thing as a time "zone." x,y,z,t is literally true. Take one step to the left in space and you also "travel" in time.
For that matter, clocks don't even really measure what time it *is,* they really just measure the passage of time as a dynamic entity.
If you *really* want to know what "time" it *is* the best you can do is look up.
KFG
The article you link claims that "Many conservative Christians follow a dating system developed in the 1600s that places Earth's birthday at 9 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 23, 4004 B.C.".
As a Christian with numerous conservative fundamentalist friends and relatives, and who manages to keep straight the bizarre proclamations coming from the Big Hair Preacher Crowd, let me assure you that no conservative Christian believes this. You might find a few kneejerk populist readers of the National Enquirer that believe this, but they're a different kettle of fish.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
It's just an excuse to get off work and drink like an idiot.
I'll drink to that.
Game... blouses.
Props to H1B's and Indian Programmers
Ya ya, sieg heil.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky