If you have an iPhone you can get the authenticator for free as an app, and they have said they would like to bring it to more platforms in the future (presumably android, blackberry, minmo and the other major smartphone os's).
The Eee PC showed that there was a market for small, cheap computers (netbooks). I would be hesitant to say Asus invented the netbook with the Eee PC (mostly because of the XO children's laptop), but I don't think it would be totally wrong to say so either. They sold beyond anyones wildest expectations then, and continue to do so today, likely singlehandedly making the difference between unrecoverable losses and bare minimum survival revenue for some computer manufacturers in the current world economy. It basically spawned an entire processor line within Intel (Atom). No doubt it belongs on the list in my mind.
Android on the other hand is just: 1. Google positioning itself to ensure it will not be locked out of the smartphone/mobile ad space, and 2: Setting the bare minimum baseline for what a smartphone OS can be while still being able to compete in the market. Compared to the multitude of other smartphone platforms it has been pretty non-notable technologically in every aspect *but* its availability to manufacturers and users.
who would want a partially charged battery when the power goes out for 3 days in the dead of winter?
I would, since the status quo is no battery at all.
The cool kids on the block already have natural gas generators hooked up to their houses in the case of power outage, and I would guess that a natural gas generator would last significantly longer at a significantly lower TCO than any currently available battery technology (when at the scale of powering a house).
I was always a bit skeptical. How can you create electronic music, digitally, on computers etc and then claim that putting them on vinyl somehow magically improves the quality?
I've always thought that people buy vinyl because it's just a bit more romantic. Or they're fucking idiots.
Vinyl tends to be mastered better, where 95% of "better" simply means that it is not digitally manipulated to be louder.
You would need a good sound system, a good ear, and some specific songs/soundbytes to be able to get any statistical significance of perceived quality in a double blind vinyl vs 128 kbps AAC test, and 99% of what doesn't sound the same could probably be fixed by upping that number to 160-192 kbps (LAME and the like are overkill for listening, might be appropriate for a digital backup, but I've never read of any legit scientific test showing any sort of statistical significance in favor of lossless to justify using it for everything).
You would be better off spending money on better speakers rather than on vinyls and a player anyday, unless you are into that whole cover art romantic aspect of them.
People do NOT walk around the world indiscriminately. They avoid bad neighborhoods, treat suspicious people like aliens, profile people in any way possible, and then react. Take a white male and walk them around times square, then a full body tattooed, gauged ear, sub-dermal implanted carnival exhibit and walk them through the same area and watch the difference in how people react. They may be the nicest person in the world but the women will still hug their purses and the men will lower their heads. Ever heard "Don't look at anybody on the subway/bus/EL/whatever"? It's because people acknowledge that there are mouthbreathing retards that will fuck you up because you looked at them funny or because they like your briefcase.
People DO interact with the internet indiscriminately. Most can't tell a good site from a bad site, don't know the difference between a "funnycats.avi" and "funnycats.avi.exe", blah blah blah blah blah. Chances are if you are reading this you have fixed someone's computer because of this haphazard e-disregard, so I don't need to tell you that most people just don't get safe browsing practices.
This guys issue is that there is a select, very vocal group of people who think they are safe on the net but aren't, so he wrote a proof-of-concept to show them that it doesn't matter what platform you are on, there is no replacement for safe browsing practices (and not using default passwords, and and and and and...).
Seriously, this is the stupidest fucking story I've ever read. AT&T oversold their infrastructure, and now they have three choices:
1: Do nothing, lose customers due to poor service. This is the worst idea, bad both long term and short term. 2: Raise prices to drive down demand like this schmuck suggests, lose customers. This is a bad idea, you increase revenues short term maybe, but lower revenues in the long term. or 3: Invest in more towers, bigger backends, thicker tubes, etc. "Lock in" customers not just with exclusive contracts with manufacturers but instead with a combination of exclusive contracts AND quality service. That would make a lot of happy customers, and though the initial investment would likely be many billions of dollars, happy customers are worth at least as much.
Looking at the eassy provided in the last link i can only think to myself "geez i'm glad i didn't have to write bullshit like that to get into my university".
The world I come from is full of oak trees and rain, warm cats on cold nights, and raucous college parties across the street. The sky over my home matches the grey in my eyes; the barbed wire fence around Lake Sequoyah is commemorated eternally by the disfiguration of my left hip.
Am i the only one who puked at that?
Nope.
Besides, its easy to make up a bunch of horseshit like what that girl wrote if you've got forever to say it. It's much harder to make up clear quick and concise horseshit.
It's been my experience using Safari on OS X that Safari performs terribly if you are doing any sort of hard drive I/O, meaning if it is all that you are using, it's going to keep your HDD awake doing god knows what the whole time you're using it. Doing something simple like opening a new tab when logging into WoW takes forever and it's basically the reason why Chrome for mac can't come out soon enough. I'd love to see a similar comparison featuring FF, Chrome, Safari, and Opera on OS X to see if the results are similar.
To add to your comment, you can customize to any point in the songs by right clicking them in itunes, selecting get info, going to the options tab, and setting the start and stop time to whatever you want. Once you have the section of the song you wish to have as your ringtone, hit ok to save the changes, right click the song and select convert to AAC this time. Doing so will make a new.m4a of the section you defined with the start and stop times, and then you can just right click the new song in itunes, select show in finder (show in explorer on windows?), and change the file extension to.m4r instead of.m4a, and double click to open the new m4r file. It will add the new file to itunes under the ringtones section and sync up with your iphone automatically then (and don't forget to uncheck the start and stop times in the original file then).
If you have a razr or any other phone with bluetooth and bluetooth on your computer, you can do the same thing to make ringtones for those also, you just have to use whatever bluetooth sync program your phone uses (and you probably have to convert to mp3 instead of AAC, which is changeable in itunes preferences, and skip the m4a -> m4r section).
Read that section again, 10.6 beat 9.10 on the Apache compile, but lost by as much as it had won on the PHP compile. As with most of the tests they used, its a toss up between OS's.
In reality, both of these "benchmark" articles blow goats. The Computerworld one is extremely subjective and takes a whole lot of artistic license in determining the winners in a few categories. The Phoronix one gets points for being more objective, but in reality it really doesn't tell you anything. Unless you use your computer only for something extremely specific like doing long scientific calculations and simulations or intense movie rendering etc., the performance difference between OS's could be as much as 15-25% and still not matter. The difference between me saving a document and it taking a quarter second or it taking a half second is negligible, as is loading a webpage in a half second compared to a whole second. That's not to say more performance and better tuning isn't nice, it's actually a great thing. It's why I prefer Chrome to Firefox. The miniscule differences in page loading, startup times, and url searches all add up to a more positive experience that I prefer. BUT (and thats a big but, like something sir mix a lot would enjoy), when it comes to a choice such as what operating system you should use, there are so much more important reasons than how quickly your system compiles apache to base your pick on. Application capability is a big one. Like to game? Windows it is. Are you a big traveler? Then the 8 hour battery life of the new Macbook Pro's + OS X might be just what you need. Working in academia? Depending on where and what you are involved in, Linux could be the dominant OS of choice.
Each system has it's own advantages and disadvantages. Comparing things like installation experiences (something your users should only have to go through once) or benchmarking their performance in a multi-threaded ray tracing is journalistic wankery and serves no real purpose but to inflate page clicks and rouse up the fanboys. If you want to really figure out what OS is best for you, then look first to yourself and what your computer needs are, then find the one that meets those needs through its available applications and support. If all of them meet your needs, then look at the price of each and what sort of hardware needs you have, and if the OS can meet those. Still stumped? Pick which OS you're most familiar with. Point is, random performance metrics and criticisms of taskbar vs. dock or expose/spaces vs. compiz is the grime at bottom of the barrel in terms of reasons to pick an OS.
Okay, fanboys, stop modding reasonable comments like the above as flamebait... your bias is showing.
It has nothing to do with bias. To say that 10.N to 10.N+1 is the same as XP SP# to XP SP#+1 is at best a horrible misunderstanding, and at worst a malicious (towards Apple) lie. I'm going to lean more towards it being the latter in this situation, because
1: It's not $100 a year to upgrade, its about $50 a year since 10.3 2: It's a bullshit comparison anyways because you are comparing consistently upgrading to the newest OS on one side and consistently not upgrading on the other 3: If you ignore the fact that it's already a bullshit comparison because you are just pointing out that it costs money to upgrade your OS and doesn't cost money to not do so, it is still a weak comparison, because even though 10.N releases are not as big as Vista was to XP, 10.N releases are much bigger than Windows service packs. 4: Historically Microsoft has followed a 2-3 year release schedule similar to how Apple has the past 7 or so years, they charge more at retail per OS release than Apple does, and they will likely be returning to that sort of release schedule if the Vista to 7 turnover time is any indication. Think about it: 3.0 (1990) -> 3.1 (1992) -> win 95 -> win 98 -> win 2000/ME - > xp ('01) -- *6 freakin years* --> vista (early '07) -> Win 7 (sept 09?).
As to the actual Google Voice thing, I really don't care on anything more than on "the principle of it all" level. "Duplication of functionality" is a dubious reason for Apple to block any application for the phone, especially if the applications do so in a novel way like GV. For me, Google Voice seems like it would be cool if you don't have an iPhone or if you have lots of separate phone numbers, but otherwise I don't really see what is so revolutionary about it. If you don't have an iPhone the voicemail emails would be useful, but if you do have an iPhone it's just visual voicemail. That said if you do have lots of separate phone numbers, the idea of being able to configure which of your numbers ring depending on who is calling is pretty slick. Most everything else GV provides seems to be pretty standard stuff (call forwarding, call history, conference calling, etc). Really as far as I'm concerned the best thing to come as a result of GV is all the e-drama, because it's without a doubt been one of the (if not the) major factors in Apple's still meager but growing openness about the app store.
To counter anecdote: Here in Chicago diesel prices can vary somewhat widely. Now a gal of diesel was usually at a 10% or so premium over the 87 octane stuff. If your near any of the highways (i57, i94, i294, i55, etc), expect a 10-15Â premium on top of that. Diesel was cheaper than gas last maybe 4-5 years ago right around when gas was hitting the $3 to $3.50 mark, though there was a brief time when the economy crashed that it was cheaper than normal unleaded by about 15Â. Now local gas prices are anywhere from $2.45-$2.65, and diesel is usually around $2.55-$2.75.
More on topic though, it sounds like its a pretty cool hack. I've investigated diesels as a potential first car in the past due to the advantages it had at the time like: more torque at lower rpms which is better for quick off the green light but never exceeding 45 mph city driving, no hybrid premium, cheaper diesel fuel, and quietness. I don't know if the last one applies to all new diesels, but I remember reading a car and driver 4-ish years ago about some near-production BMW prototype that when going full out on some random racetrack barely produced more noise than the ambient noise of the track itself (say 3-5 decibels). Contrast this to my 1999 plymouth grand caravan (affectionately known as the big purple monster) with just short of 180k miles, which roars like a aged muscle car that smoked from when it was a sweet sixteen until it had to have its voice box removed and sounds like a brick wall in a wind tunnel at 65+ mph.
Unfortunately however, diesel fuel is not cheaper than gas is anymore (at least where I live). Hybrids have hit mainstream with the Prius, which has brought down the hybrid premium down by maybe 1/5th or so of what it used to be. And last, but certainly not least, varying state environmental regulations have kept most the good diesel cars out of the states. A diesel hybrid could mix up the game a bit, but really only time will tell.
Arguably the apps that were available for Palm at the time are why they are still around today. Its my very minimal understanding that Palm was the top dog by a reasonable amount and then shot themselves in the foot over and over until it nearly killed them as a company, and that the majority of the few loyal Palm users that never left *didn't* leave because of X necessary application/feature.
Last year when the x25-m first came out the 80 gig version cost $595, or just a little less than $7.50/gig. Now the same 1st gen drive costs $314 with a -10 dollar discount and free shipping on newegg, or about $3.92/gig.
The new 2nd generation drive 80 gig drive sells for $225, or $2.81/gig. If it follows the same price trend as the 1st gen model around this time next year it should cost ~125 dollars, or about $1.53/gig.
Here are the quick results of the xbench of my 5400rpm 160gig drive in my two year old macbook pro:
Sequential read on the SSD is over 6x faster, and sequential write is 2x faster, but for the performance where it matters the difference is much more noticeable. Random read on the SSD is nearly 140x faster, and random write is over 40x faster.
Couple that performance difference with the lower power consumption, lower noise, and higher threshold for damage, and its a no brainer as to what is the single most price-efficient possible upgrade you can make to a laptop to boost overall performance, responsiveness, and battery life.
I wish I could justify buying one now, but I can't. However, 12 to 18 months from now I will probably be shopping around for a new laptop, and when I do I won't be settling for anything but a SSD. The benefits are just to great to ignore.
Maybe I'm behind the times, but since when was "Time taken to add a line to your hosts file" considered the final word in OS benchmarks?
Of all the things you could argue are better about Linux when compared to Windows: price, security, speed, support for old hardware, package management, faster release cycles, and better consumer rights, you chose how long it takes to add a line to the hosts file.
Mod parent +1 funny to immortalize the single greatest fanboy post I've ever seen.
What really needs to happen is the W3C needs to grow some fucking balls and put their foot down on a codec. I really don't care what codec they use, but they should absolutely pick one, because the vendors are never going to agree on a standard when each vendor is pushing its own agenda and there is no perfect codec solution. The result of *not* picking one and furthering the continuation of flash/silverlight bullshit is much worse than only half the vendors supporting the standard.
Good luck getting the masses of users to "grow a pair" and not get locked in. They just want to watch their funny cat videos and porn. The so called good guys representing the masses of users need to realize that they are basically THE authority on standardizing the web, and act accordingly for the users benefit.
Those results are from nearly a year ago so battery life will have likely improved some from the 2.0 -> 2.1 -> 2.2 -> 2.3 -> 3.0 OS updates, but it gives you an approximation for the difference between the edge vs 3g power consumption.
For the a lot of people who grew up during his heyday, Michael Jackson was "The King of Pop". As a singer/performer, he helped define a genre during his time. People remember the emotions of getting pumped up before a game to a song, or losing their virginity to a song, or getting through a rough time with a song. Those emotional attachments create powerful memories and connections.
When my grandfather died my mom listened to the same Yanni CD for like 12 months straight and it never occurred to me why until like 4 years later when I made the connection that that was what we would always listen to on our weekly visits to the nursing home, and that the songs soothed her and helped her cope with the loss. Because of that, Yanni (whose music I'm not even a fan of) evokes a pretty strong emotion to me, and a much stronger emotion from my mom. The completely intangible feelings that music can give you can feel _more_ tangible or be more rememberable than the changes to our lives brought about by the achievements of some guy in a lab, even if those lab achievements mean far more to mankind in the long or short run.
Pretty sure VLC doesn't do hardware acceleration on any platform period. Nvidia supports VDPAU in linux which allows you to play HD flawlessly with practically any card as long as the video player supports it (and a number do, mplayer and XBMC are two that come to mind off the top of my head).
Slashdot Mirror
If you have an iPhone you can get the authenticator for free as an app, and they have said they would like to bring it to more platforms in the future (presumably android, blackberry, minmo and the other major smartphone os's).
The Eee PC showed that there was a market for small, cheap computers (netbooks). I would be hesitant to say Asus invented the netbook with the Eee PC (mostly because of the XO children's laptop), but I don't think it would be totally wrong to say so either. They sold beyond anyones wildest expectations then, and continue to do so today, likely singlehandedly making the difference between unrecoverable losses and bare minimum survival revenue for some computer manufacturers in the current world economy. It basically spawned an entire processor line within Intel (Atom). No doubt it belongs on the list in my mind.
Android on the other hand is just: 1. Google positioning itself to ensure it will not be locked out of the smartphone/mobile ad space, and 2: Setting the bare minimum baseline for what a smartphone OS can be while still being able to compete in the market. Compared to the multitude of other smartphone platforms it has been pretty non-notable technologically in every aspect *but* its availability to manufacturers and users.
I would, since the status quo is no battery at all.
The cool kids on the block already have natural gas generators hooked up to their houses in the case of power outage, and I would guess that a natural gas generator would last significantly longer at a significantly lower TCO than any currently available battery technology (when at the scale of powering a house).
Those already exist, just google "belgium cows".
Conceptually the thing as the kid, cows born without the gene so they basically are giant masses of muscle.
I was always a bit skeptical. How can you create electronic music, digitally, on computers etc and then claim that putting them on vinyl somehow magically improves the quality?
I've always thought that people buy vinyl because it's just a bit more romantic. Or they're fucking idiots.
Vinyl tends to be mastered better, where 95% of "better" simply means that it is not digitally manipulated to be louder.
You would need a good sound system, a good ear, and some specific songs/soundbytes to be able to get any statistical significance of perceived quality in a double blind vinyl vs 128 kbps AAC test, and 99% of what doesn't sound the same could probably be fixed by upping that number to 160-192 kbps (LAME and the like are overkill for listening, might be appropriate for a digital backup, but I've never read of any legit scientific test showing any sort of statistical significance in favor of lossless to justify using it for everything).
You would be better off spending money on better speakers rather than on vinyls and a player anyday, unless you are into that whole cover art romantic aspect of them.
People do NOT walk around the world indiscriminately. They avoid bad neighborhoods, treat suspicious people like aliens, profile people in any way possible, and then react. Take a white male and walk them around times square, then a full body tattooed, gauged ear, sub-dermal implanted carnival exhibit and walk them through the same area and watch the difference in how people react. They may be the nicest person in the world but the women will still hug their purses and the men will lower their heads. Ever heard "Don't look at anybody on the subway/bus/EL/whatever"? It's because people acknowledge that there are mouthbreathing retards that will fuck you up because you looked at them funny or because they like your briefcase.
People DO interact with the internet indiscriminately. Most can't tell a good site from a bad site, don't know the difference between a "funnycats.avi" and "funnycats.avi.exe", blah blah blah blah blah. Chances are if you are reading this you have fixed someone's computer because of this haphazard e-disregard, so I don't need to tell you that most people just don't get safe browsing practices.
This guys issue is that there is a select, very vocal group of people who think they are safe on the net but aren't, so he wrote a proof-of-concept to show them that it doesn't matter what platform you are on, there is no replacement for safe browsing practices (and not using default passwords, and and and and and...).
http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/flashdiskcomparo.html
^ this guy disagree's, saying the transition will come as early as 2013-2014 (five years from march 2008) for 2.5" drives.
Seriously, this is the stupidest fucking story I've ever read. AT&T oversold their infrastructure, and now they have three choices:
1: Do nothing, lose customers due to poor service. This is the worst idea, bad both long term and short term.
2: Raise prices to drive down demand like this schmuck suggests, lose customers. This is a bad idea, you increase revenues short term maybe, but lower revenues in the long term.
or
3: Invest in more towers, bigger backends, thicker tubes, etc. "Lock in" customers not just with exclusive contracts with manufacturers but instead with a combination of exclusive contracts AND quality service. That would make a lot of happy customers, and though the initial investment would likely be many billions of dollars, happy customers are worth at least as much.
Looking at the eassy provided in the last link i can only think to myself "geez i'm glad i didn't have to write bullshit like that to get into my university".
The world I come from is full of oak trees and rain, warm cats on cold nights, and raucous college parties across the street. The sky over my home matches the grey in my eyes; the barbed wire fence around Lake Sequoyah is commemorated eternally by the disfiguration of my left hip.
Am i the only one who puked at that?
Nope.
Besides, its easy to make up a bunch of horseshit like what that girl wrote if you've got forever to say it. It's much harder to make up clear quick and concise horseshit.
It's been my experience using Safari on OS X that Safari performs terribly if you are doing any sort of hard drive I/O, meaning if it is all that you are using, it's going to keep your HDD awake doing god knows what the whole time you're using it. Doing something simple like opening a new tab when logging into WoW takes forever and it's basically the reason why Chrome for mac can't come out soon enough. I'd love to see a similar comparison featuring FF, Chrome, Safari, and Opera on OS X to see if the results are similar.
To add to your comment, you can customize to any point in the songs by right clicking them in itunes, selecting get info, going to the options tab, and setting the start and stop time to whatever you want. Once you have the section of the song you wish to have as your ringtone, hit ok to save the changes, right click the song and select convert to AAC this time. Doing so will make a new .m4a of the section you defined with the start and stop times, and then you can just right click the new song in itunes, select show in finder (show in explorer on windows?), and change the file extension to .m4r instead of .m4a, and double click to open the new m4r file. It will add the new file to itunes under the ringtones section and sync up with your iphone automatically then (and don't forget to uncheck the start and stop times in the original file then).
If you have a razr or any other phone with bluetooth and bluetooth on your computer, you can do the same thing to make ringtones for those also, you just have to use whatever bluetooth sync program your phone uses (and you probably have to convert to mp3 instead of AAC, which is changeable in itunes preferences, and skip the m4a -> m4r section).
Read that section again, 10.6 beat 9.10 on the Apache compile, but lost by as much as it had won on the PHP compile. As with most of the tests they used, its a toss up between OS's.
In reality, both of these "benchmark" articles blow goats. The Computerworld one is extremely subjective and takes a whole lot of artistic license in determining the winners in a few categories. The Phoronix one gets points for being more objective, but in reality it really doesn't tell you anything. Unless you use your computer only for something extremely specific like doing long scientific calculations and simulations or intense movie rendering etc., the performance difference between OS's could be as much as 15-25% and still not matter. The difference between me saving a document and it taking a quarter second or it taking a half second is negligible, as is loading a webpage in a half second compared to a whole second. That's not to say more performance and better tuning isn't nice, it's actually a great thing. It's why I prefer Chrome to Firefox. The miniscule differences in page loading, startup times, and url searches all add up to a more positive experience that I prefer. BUT (and thats a big but, like something sir mix a lot would enjoy), when it comes to a choice such as what operating system you should use, there are so much more important reasons than how quickly your system compiles apache to base your pick on. Application capability is a big one. Like to game? Windows it is. Are you a big traveler? Then the 8 hour battery life of the new Macbook Pro's + OS X might be just what you need. Working in academia? Depending on where and what you are involved in, Linux could be the dominant OS of choice.
Each system has it's own advantages and disadvantages. Comparing things like installation experiences (something your users should only have to go through once) or benchmarking their performance in a multi-threaded ray tracing is journalistic wankery and serves no real purpose but to inflate page clicks and rouse up the fanboys. If you want to really figure out what OS is best for you, then look first to yourself and what your computer needs are, then find the one that meets those needs through its available applications and support. If all of them meet your needs, then look at the price of each and what sort of hardware needs you have, and if the OS can meet those. Still stumped? Pick which OS you're most familiar with. Point is, random performance metrics and criticisms of taskbar vs. dock or expose/spaces vs. compiz is the grime at bottom of the barrel in terms of reasons to pick an OS.
Okay, fanboys, stop modding reasonable comments like the above as flamebait ... your bias is showing.
It has nothing to do with bias. To say that 10.N to 10.N+1 is the same as XP SP# to XP SP#+1 is at best a horrible misunderstanding, and at worst a malicious (towards Apple) lie. I'm going to lean more towards it being the latter in this situation, because
1: It's not $100 a year to upgrade, its about $50 a year since 10.3
2: It's a bullshit comparison anyways because you are comparing consistently upgrading to the newest OS on one side and consistently not upgrading on the other
3: If you ignore the fact that it's already a bullshit comparison because you are just pointing out that it costs money to upgrade your OS and doesn't cost money to not do so, it is still a weak comparison, because even though 10.N releases are not as big as Vista was to XP, 10.N releases are much bigger than Windows service packs.
4: Historically Microsoft has followed a 2-3 year release schedule similar to how Apple has the past 7 or so years, they charge more at retail per OS release than Apple does, and they will likely be returning to that sort of release schedule if the Vista to 7 turnover time is any indication. Think about it: 3.0 (1990) -> 3.1 (1992) -> win 95 -> win 98 -> win 2000/ME - > xp ('01) -- *6 freakin years* --> vista (early '07) -> Win 7 (sept 09?).
As to the actual Google Voice thing, I really don't care on anything more than on "the principle of it all" level. "Duplication of functionality" is a dubious reason for Apple to block any application for the phone, especially if the applications do so in a novel way like GV. For me, Google Voice seems like it would be cool if you don't have an iPhone or if you have lots of separate phone numbers, but otherwise I don't really see what is so revolutionary about it. If you don't have an iPhone the voicemail emails would be useful, but if you do have an iPhone it's just visual voicemail. That said if you do have lots of separate phone numbers, the idea of being able to configure which of your numbers ring depending on who is calling is pretty slick. Most everything else GV provides seems to be pretty standard stuff (call forwarding, call history, conference calling, etc). Really as far as I'm concerned the best thing to come as a result of GV is all the e-drama, because it's without a doubt been one of the (if not the) major factors in Apple's still meager but growing openness about the app store.
Individuals and anonymous contributors make up for the remaining 24% according to the youtube link posted in the first comment thread.
To counter anecdote: Here in Chicago diesel prices can vary somewhat widely. Now a gal of diesel was usually at a 10% or so premium over the 87 octane stuff. If your near any of the highways (i57, i94, i294, i55, etc), expect a 10-15Â premium on top of that. Diesel was cheaper than gas last maybe 4-5 years ago right around when gas was hitting the $3 to $3.50 mark, though there was a brief time when the economy crashed that it was cheaper than normal unleaded by about 15Â. Now local gas prices are anywhere from $2.45-$2.65, and diesel is usually around $2.55-$2.75.
More on topic though, it sounds like its a pretty cool hack. I've investigated diesels as a potential first car in the past due to the advantages it had at the time like: more torque at lower rpms which is better for quick off the green light but never exceeding 45 mph city driving, no hybrid premium, cheaper diesel fuel, and quietness. I don't know if the last one applies to all new diesels, but I remember reading a car and driver 4-ish years ago about some near-production BMW prototype that when going full out on some random racetrack barely produced more noise than the ambient noise of the track itself (say 3-5 decibels). Contrast this to my 1999 plymouth grand caravan (affectionately known as the big purple monster) with just short of 180k miles, which roars like a aged muscle car that smoked from when it was a sweet sixteen until it had to have its voice box removed and sounds like a brick wall in a wind tunnel at 65+ mph.
Unfortunately however, diesel fuel is not cheaper than gas is anymore (at least where I live). Hybrids have hit mainstream with the Prius, which has brought down the hybrid premium down by maybe 1/5th or so of what it used to be. And last, but certainly not least, varying state environmental regulations have kept most the good diesel cars out of the states. A diesel hybrid could mix up the game a bit, but really only time will tell.
Arguably the apps that were available for Palm at the time are why they are still around today. Its my very minimal understanding that Palm was the top dog by a reasonable amount and then shot themselves in the foot over and over until it nearly killed them as a company, and that the majority of the few loyal Palm users that never left *didn't* leave because of X necessary application/feature.
Last year when the x25-m first came out the 80 gig version cost $595, or just a little less than $7.50/gig. Now the same 1st gen drive costs $314 with a -10 dollar discount and free shipping on newegg, or about $3.92/gig.
The new 2nd generation drive 80 gig drive sells for $225, or $2.81/gig. If it follows the same price trend as the 1st gen model around this time next year it should cost ~125 dollars, or about $1.53/gig.
Here are the quick results of the xbench of my 5400rpm 160gig drive in my two year old macbook pro:
Compare those to the results of the new drive here: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3607&p=4
Sequential read on the SSD is over 6x faster, and sequential write is 2x faster, but for the performance where it matters the difference is much more noticeable. Random read on the SSD is nearly 140x faster, and random write is over 40x faster.
Couple that performance difference with the lower power consumption, lower noise, and higher threshold for damage, and its a no brainer as to what is the single most price-efficient possible upgrade you can make to a laptop to boost overall performance, responsiveness, and battery life.
I wish I could justify buying one now, but I can't. However, 12 to 18 months from now I will probably be shopping around for a new laptop, and when I do I won't be settling for anything but a SSD. The benefits are just to great to ignore.
Mod parent up, FreeBSD switched to using LLVM as their main compiler back in march.
You forgot to yell.
HI, BILLY MAYS HERE WITH A FANTASTIC NEW PRODUCT....
Filter fodder: "Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING."
Maybe I'm behind the times, but since when was "Time taken to add a line to your hosts file" considered the final word in OS benchmarks?
Of all the things you could argue are better about Linux when compared to Windows: price, security, speed, support for old hardware, package management, faster release cycles, and better consumer rights, you chose how long it takes to add a line to the hosts file.
Mod parent +1 funny to immortalize the single greatest fanboy post I've ever seen.
What really needs to happen is the W3C needs to grow some fucking balls and put their foot down on a codec. I really don't care what codec they use, but they should absolutely pick one, because the vendors are never going to agree on a standard when each vendor is pushing its own agenda and there is no perfect codec solution. The result of *not* picking one and furthering the continuation of flash/silverlight bullshit is much worse than only half the vendors supporting the standard.
Good luck getting the masses of users to "grow a pair" and not get locked in. They just want to watch their funny cat videos and porn. The so called good guys representing the masses of users need to realize that they are basically THE authority on standardizing the web, and act accordingly for the users benefit.
If you upgraded from the first iPhone to the 3GS you are going to see a battery life loss because of the 3G.
See: http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3353
Those results are from nearly a year ago so battery life will have likely improved some from the 2.0 -> 2.1 -> 2.2 -> 2.3 -> 3.0 OS updates, but it gives you an approximation for the difference between the edge vs 3g power consumption.
Farming gold isn't what most players find fun about MMO's, hence peoples willingness to pay for it.
For the a lot of people who grew up during his heyday, Michael Jackson was "The King of Pop". As a singer/performer, he helped define a genre during his time. People remember the emotions of getting pumped up before a game to a song, or losing their virginity to a song, or getting through a rough time with a song. Those emotional attachments create powerful memories and connections.
When my grandfather died my mom listened to the same Yanni CD for like 12 months straight and it never occurred to me why until like 4 years later when I made the connection that that was what we would always listen to on our weekly visits to the nursing home, and that the songs soothed her and helped her cope with the loss. Because of that, Yanni (whose music I'm not even a fan of) evokes a pretty strong emotion to me, and a much stronger emotion from my mom. The completely intangible feelings that music can give you can feel _more_ tangible or be more rememberable than the changes to our lives brought about by the achievements of some guy in a lab, even if those lab achievements mean far more to mankind in the long or short run.
Pretty sure VLC doesn't do hardware acceleration on any platform period. Nvidia supports VDPAU in linux which allows you to play HD flawlessly with practically any card as long as the video player supports it (and a number do, mplayer and XBMC are two that come to mind off the top of my head).
See: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_vdpau_gpu&num=1