Look at it this way: modern processors running at full speed can draw around 100 Watts of power. There's no way your battery is going to be able to hold out for long with that kind of drain from just the processor. Furthermore, for most applications, you're just not going to need something that fast when you're in a position where you can't get to an outlet.
So, instead of "feeling dirty" because the people who designed your laptop were intelligent about it, why not "feel dirty" because you don't know enough about computers to understand why this is an issue, or maybe "feel dirty" because you've been sucked into the trap of thinking that clock speed is the be-all and end-all of computer performance.
Heat transfer through liquid (Which is technically physical contact, BTW) is always going to be better than solid-to-solid transfer, because solids have little pits and cracks full of air, which is an excellent insulator. Liquid (such as boiling water or the oil in a deep fryer) seeps into those cracks and pits and transfers heat over a greater surface area.
Yes, and if I used Play-Doh to make a functioning fully-automatic weapon, that would also be illegal. It's the end result that is illegal, not the means.
Wow, they used 40 armed agents to bust a 29-year-old still living with his parents? I guess they must have decided that they can spare the manpower from, say, the anthrax investigation or the war on terror.
These guys need to lay off a bit. One or two unarmed agents would have sufficed to bring the guy in.
Re:Can't understand.
on
World Cup Final
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· Score: 4, Interesting
The name is actually "association football" in the United States. The word "soccer" comes from that second syllable: association, from when they used to abbreviate it "assoc."
And I agree with you: It's a fast-paced, exciting game that people the world over can understand (As opposed to American football's predominant reaction "What the hell's a first down?" or "Why's he got his face in that guy's ass?")
I've always understood that the reason it never caught on in the US is that it's traditionally been hard to televise: You can't schedule time-outs for commercials, and there's only one break in the middle. Besides, it's one of the few games where it's more fun to watch in Spanish, regardless of the language you speak:
Most chicken eggs do not hatch into chickens (This is the origin of the advice, "don't count your chickens before they hatch"). Further, there's no guarantee that they'd hatch at all, given the G-forces of launch. Racism aside, this is an honest acheivement for a country making its first steps into space.
Y'know, as annoying as spam is, the FTC taking action is not necessarily a good thing. For all the complaining people do around here about the increasing corporatization of the Internet, I should think you would notice that the spammers these people are really going after are largely individuals and very small companies. They're not touching the big corporations (Who never spam, of course, just occasionally send out large-scale "commercial" email) who will soon find that with all the small spammer out of the way, people will be far more likely to reply to THEIR spam.
As much as I detest spam, it at least inspires most people to develop BS detectors.
That was particularly interesting to me, because after graduating college and moving back in with my parents (until grad school starts!) I've suddenly for the first time in three years had a TV set. And I have noticed that I'm more restless and listless than I used to be, and that I seem to gain less satisfaction from reading.
One thing the article doesn't talk about, though, is those people who leave the TV on and do other things. I leave the TV on while I program, and while I cook, and I find that it helps me do those things longer. I wonder if it's having the same effect as when I sit and watch, or whether it simply staves off boredom, like the radio used to do.
One of the big thing about this suit is that the LindowsOS name involves TWO trademarked, competing OSes, Microsoft Windows (which is, IIRC, the full trademarked name) and Linux.
This, however, may indicate a far more subtle attack by Microsoft. If it wins this trial, it can go on to say that Torvalds is not actively defending his trademark, and thus it is no longer legitimate. Combine that with the underhanded support of a few bastards who don't mind making "Linux distributions" that are almost, but not quite like our penguin friend...
Not cool. But possible.
It can work if marketed right
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 1
The only way I can see this thing working is if he takes a cue from Big Blue: Don't try to go it alone, license the patents to a slew of other companies. I'll bet Honda would pick it up in a heartbeat. Let them do the development needed to make it more practical and affordable, and let the combined advertising of a couple different manufacturers convince people they want it. Hell, it's not too late to get a bunch of these things in time for the SLC Olympics.
If I could get my hands on one of these, I'd hook it up to a PIC and a Compact Flash card in IDE mode, then store Project Gutenberg text files on the card with an index so that I could select a title by having the device read them to me. Sounds like a summer project...
It's really not a non-issue: The success (or lack thereof) of this case will determine the willingness of corporations to pursue legal squelches of source code and, eventually, technical discussions conducted online in forums such as Slashdot. While programmers won't all be locked in iron boxes if the MPAA comes out victorious, I know quite a few who will quickly retract code just because some corporate entity sends them a threatening letter on impressive letterhead.
The genie being out of the bottle is irrelevant, especially considering the way government agencies like to seize computer equipment first, then search the drive for excuses to keep it and prosecute.
Besides, what's wrong with fighting this on principle? A de facto victory feels nice, but in the absence of one in court, we're still being branded criminals.
Correct me if I'm wrong (IANAL), but it just seems dumb to insist that a judge remain impartial after the trial. If the evidence presented during trial is enough to persuade a judge to a decision, then it is only normal that the judge be convinced that his decision was correct -- and be allowed to retain that opinion after the trial is over.
If he had said these things before the trial, then there would be cause for concern. But what the hell is wrong with sticking to your guns after the fact? Call it "bias" if you like, but to me it sounds like his verdict was more honest considering that he was actually convinced of what he was writing about.
Have no fear: Billg is still the ``greedy, naive power-hungry egomaniac" we all know & love. And he's got a ring of folks around him who will do theri utmost to keep him that way. They check his computer daily to make sure he'll never see a BSOD, & assure him that he is the genius he thinks he is.
After all, if he realized just how bad things truly were, & how much he could have done to prevent those bad things, he'd also see that they were nothing more than a band of toadies & parasites, & be out on the street without stock options or job prospects.
I just had a flashback to the old stories of Siddharta Gautama, who was shielded from death and decay by his royal advisors and parents. Once day upon seeing a sick man, a crippled man, a dead man, and a religious man, he realized how the world really was, and fled to live a religious life.
Wow, I just compared Bill Gates to Buddha. I suddenly feel the need to go wash.
Is anyone else bothered by the apparent fact that, when allegations of security lapses come up, neither side thinks to actually -look- at the code? My feelings on MS and CoS notwithstanding, the obvious solution should have been to whip out the code and say, "Here, look for yourselves. No holes. Good secure code." And that should have been the end of it.
Why is it acceptable to make decisions like this based on the personalities of the people involved? Nobody would say, "I trust NT security because Bill Gates is " or something like that. It's nuts!
I guess what I'm trying to say is that MS was wrong to give instructions for taking defrag out. Either it's safe, and the Germans can play bash-the-Scientologist elsewhere, or it's not safe, and should be either stripped out of Windows entirely or at least patched. This is that kind of crap that you get when marketing and PR people make technical decisions.
A thought occurs to me: Since solar cells need a stable surface area, why not plaster these babies on the top of a dirigible aircraft? Without having to haul fuel, and with the electricity (to spare!) to heat a sizable cabin at high altitudes, it would be conceivable to run airships very, very cheaply.
How much do you think you have to drink before it occurs to you to run around the house with camera and empty soda bottles in hand making "leaked screenshots" of Quake IV?
The bottle of gin looked empty, if that's a clue...
I want to see real corporatism, Jon. Show it to me. Show me corporations stomping all over normal people.
Well, in Morgantown, WV where I live, there's been a local controversy over a new Wal-Mart. Basically, what happened/is happening is this:
Wal-Mart came into town and decided that the existing Wal-Mart here was making enough money to justify building a Super Wal-Mart. They bought a largeish patch of land and declared their intentions.
The problems are that in order to build there, it requires the deaprtment of highways to specially build an access road at a particularly bad spot, and which the people living near there don't want.
The land, by the way, contains an Indian burial ground. The university, which sold them the land, is coming under heavy fire for doing so.
In addition to these concerns are the normal anti-Wal-Mart problems. Namely, that it sucks business away from local stores by undercutting tactics, that it engages in censorship, and that it doesn't produce enough jobs to offset the ones that are lost. This, may I also remind you, would be the -second- Wal-Mart in town, and is likely to put the old one out of business.
There have been protests both public and in various meetings. Clearly, they are -not- wanted, and there is little if any demand.
Wal-Mart's response has been aggravating, if anything. They produced poll results saying that people do want it (The polls are widely considered to have been faked), and they've fought hard for the access road without addressing the concerns of their would-be neighbors.
Chances are that the Wal-Mart will be built, along with the access road. The result of that will be no matter what, economic problems (whether the result of local businesses failing, or the wal-mart failing), possibly more car accidents, and for certain bad feelings all around.
All of this is under the assumption that once it's built, people will go there because it's convenient. A large enough corporation can butt in even under harsh criticism, because they know that they have the cash to weather the storm and just wait out the people who hate them.
That's the real thing about corporations. So long as they make money, they are immortal, no matter what they do. No matter how stupid or destructive they are, if they have reserves of cash, then they will outlive every one of us. Too bad there's no death penalty for corporations, eh?
The way I see it, this doesn't affect anything that much. MP3 is a good standard, and people can use it, and record to it, the distribute it the way they want. If people don't use the new standard, then it will die, no matter how cool it is.
Once there's a player for this new encrypted standard, then why bother hacking the standard -- just hack a player, and divert the output to a different file.
The article also states that I can have a single token, and share it among my devices to transfer music between devices with the same token. Why can't I transfer tokens to friends? There seems to be a few logical problems going on here.
Slashdot Mirror
Well then, I'm glad to oblige ;) I actually find that very interesting, since I'll be wanting to keep this cell phone number when I next move.
I wonder if you could get it transferred to a cell phone.
So, instead of "feeling dirty" because the people who designed your laptop were intelligent about it, why not "feel dirty" because you don't know enough about computers to understand why this is an issue, or maybe "feel dirty" because you've been sucked into the trap of thinking that clock speed is the be-all and end-all of computer performance.
Heat transfer through liquid (Which is technically physical contact, BTW) is always going to be better than solid-to-solid transfer, because solids have little pits and cracks full of air, which is an excellent insulator. Liquid (such as boiling water or the oil in a deep fryer) seeps into those cracks and pits and transfers heat over a greater surface area.
Yes, and if I used Play-Doh to make a functioning fully-automatic weapon, that would also be illegal. It's the end result that is illegal, not the means.
These guys need to lay off a bit. One or two unarmed agents would have sufficed to bring the guy in.
And I agree with you: It's a fast-paced, exciting game that people the world over can understand (As opposed to American football's predominant reaction "What the hell's a first down?" or "Why's he got his face in that guy's ass?")
I've always understood that the reason it never caught on in the US is that it's traditionally been hard to televise: You can't schedule time-outs for commercials, and there's only one break in the middle. Besides, it's one of the few games where it's more fun to watch in Spanish, regardless of the language you speak:
Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!!!!! :)
I'd go in a heartbeat! Unfortunately, I'm just a lowly engineer, not a senator or anything. Maybe I should get a job at Enron... ;)
Hmm. I've heard references to black-skinned chicken in Chinese cookbooks. I bet it's the same one.
Most chicken eggs do not hatch into chickens (This is the origin of the advice, "don't count your chickens before they hatch"). Further, there's no guarantee that they'd hatch at all, given the G-forces of launch. Racism aside, this is an honest acheivement for a country making its first steps into space.
As much as I detest spam, it at least inspires most people to develop BS detectors.
That was particularly interesting to me, because after graduating college and moving back in with my parents (until grad school starts!) I've suddenly for the first time in three years had a TV set. And I have noticed that I'm more restless and listless than I used to be, and that I seem to gain less satisfaction from reading.
One thing the article doesn't talk about, though, is those people who leave the TV on and do other things. I leave the TV on while I program, and while I cook, and I find that it helps me do those things longer. I wonder if it's having the same effect as when I sit and watch, or whether it simply staves off boredom, like the radio used to do.
One of the big thing about this suit is that the LindowsOS name involves TWO trademarked, competing OSes, Microsoft Windows (which is, IIRC, the full trademarked name) and Linux.
This, however, may indicate a far more subtle attack by Microsoft. If it wins this trial, it can go on to say that Torvalds is not actively defending his trademark, and thus it is no longer legitimate. Combine that with the underhanded support of a few bastards who don't mind making "Linux distributions" that are almost, but not quite like our penguin friend...
Not cool. But possible.
The only way I can see this thing working is if he takes a cue from Big Blue: Don't try to go it alone, license the patents to a slew of other companies. I'll bet Honda would pick it up in a heartbeat. Let them do the development needed to make it more practical and affordable, and let the combined advertising of a couple different manufacturers convince people they want it.
Hell, it's not too late to get a bunch of these things in time for the SLC Olympics.
Yomiuri Shimbun has an excellent English edition, which has an English version of the article in the Science section.
If I could get my hands on one of these, I'd hook it up to a PIC and a Compact Flash card in IDE mode, then store Project Gutenberg text files on the card with an index so that I could select a title by having the device read them to me. Sounds like a summer project...
The genie being out of the bottle is irrelevant, especially considering the way government agencies like to seize computer equipment first, then search the drive for excuses to keep it and prosecute.
Besides, what's wrong with fighting this on principle? A de facto victory feels nice, but in the absence of one in court, we're still being branded criminals.
If he had said these things before the trial, then there would be cause for concern. But what the hell is wrong with sticking to your guns after the fact? Call it "bias" if you like, but to me it sounds like his verdict was more honest considering that he was actually convinced of what he was writing about.
Or maybe I'm just on crack...
After all, if he realized just how bad things truly were, & how much he could have done to prevent those bad things, he'd also see that they were nothing more than a band of toadies & parasites, & be out on the street without stock options or job prospects.
I just had a flashback to the old stories of Siddharta Gautama, who was shielded from death and decay by his royal advisors and parents. Once day upon seeing a sick man, a crippled man, a dead man, and a religious man, he realized how the world really was, and fled to live a religious life.
Wow, I just compared Bill Gates to Buddha. I suddenly feel the need to go wash.
I was unaware that the German government had requested such an audit; I stand corrected.
Is anyone else bothered by the apparent fact that, when allegations of security lapses come up, neither side thinks to actually -look- at the code? My feelings on MS and CoS notwithstanding, the obvious solution should have been to whip out the code and say, "Here, look for yourselves. No holes. Good secure code." And that should have been the end of it.
Why is it acceptable to make decisions like this based on the personalities of the people involved? Nobody would say, "I trust NT security because Bill Gates is " or something like that. It's nuts!
I guess what I'm trying to say is that MS was wrong to give instructions for taking defrag out. Either it's safe, and the Germans can play bash-the-Scientologist elsewhere, or it's not safe, and should be either stripped out of Windows entirely or at least patched. This is that kind of crap that you get when marketing and PR people make technical decisions.
A thought occurs to me: Since solar cells need a stable surface area, why not plaster these babies on the top of a dirigible aircraft? Without having to haul fuel, and with the electricity (to spare!) to heat a sizable cabin at high altitudes, it would be conceivable to run airships very, very cheaply.
The bottle of gin looked empty, if that's a clue...
Well, in Morgantown, WV where I live, there's been a local controversy over a new Wal-Mart. Basically, what happened/is happening is this:
Wal-Mart came into town and decided that the existing Wal-Mart here was making enough money to justify building a Super Wal-Mart. They bought a largeish patch of land and declared their intentions.
The problems are that in order to build there, it requires the deaprtment of highways to specially build an access road at a particularly bad spot, and which the people living near there don't want.
The land, by the way, contains an Indian burial ground. The university, which sold them the land, is coming under heavy fire for doing so.
In addition to these concerns are the normal anti-Wal-Mart problems. Namely, that it sucks business away from local stores by undercutting tactics, that it engages in censorship, and that it doesn't produce enough jobs to offset the ones that are lost. This, may I also remind you, would be the -second- Wal-Mart in town, and is likely to put the old one out of business.
There have been protests both public and in various meetings. Clearly, they are -not- wanted, and there is little if any demand.
Wal-Mart's response has been aggravating, if anything. They produced poll results saying that people do want it (The polls are widely considered to have been faked), and they've fought hard for the access road without addressing the concerns of their would-be neighbors.
Chances are that the Wal-Mart will be built, along with the access road. The result of that will be no matter what, economic problems (whether the result of local businesses failing, or the wal-mart failing), possibly more car accidents, and for certain bad feelings all around.
All of this is under the assumption that once it's built, people will go there because it's convenient. A large enough corporation can butt in even under harsh criticism, because they know that they have the cash to weather the storm and just wait out the people who hate them.
That's the real thing about corporations. So long as they make money, they are immortal, no matter what they do. No matter how stupid or destructive they are, if they have reserves of cash, then they will outlive every one of us. Too bad there's no death penalty for corporations, eh?
Once there's a player for this new encrypted standard, then why bother hacking the standard -- just hack a player, and divert the output to a different file.
The article also states that I can have a single token, and share it among my devices to transfer music between devices with the same token. Why can't I transfer tokens to friends? There seems to be a few logical problems going on here.