I have been repairing and upgrading laptops for ages. Some are more difficult to maintain than others. All in all, once you get the knack to work on them and have the right tools, most are not that much different from a branded desktop. This especially valid for the corporate series from all manufacturers.
Intel has been bitten by its non-cannibalisations strategies in the past.
One of the main reasons for Athlon to have its time in the sun is not its performance. It was _NOT_ that much better initially. It was Intel deliberately limiting and crippling various product lines on non-cannibalisation grounds. i810, i840 and most importanty crippling i815e which had 2G memory addressing capacity by design with a 512MB strict marketing requirement (sounds familiar doesn't it?) had more to do with it. As a result Athlon had a chance to capture market even before it became a real contender on performance grounds.
However the times were different. In those days the level of hubris on Intel side was off the scale. That is not quite the case now. Anyway, we will see..
Issue is that Atom except Intel STB boards with their media accel processor is deliberately crippled in terms of video performance. As a result the entire system ends up being crippled wholesale giving the consumers a perception that the computer is slow while it really isn't.
Nvidia has demonstrated this - when paired with a devent video chippery Atom makes a perfectly adequate desktop and notebook. As a result Intel has gone as far as damaging its own media STB roadmap to lock Nvidia out so that Atom does not cannibalise its more expensive CPUs. This is all being done with the tacit support of Microsoft to ensure that demand for "cheap windows" wanes together with cheap computers.
IMO, this decision is a BIG loss for the consumer. This platform is an example of what is wrong about Intel "innovation" as we now it. It is driven not by the desire to improve, but the desire to screw competition. was Nvidia or AMD I should definitely take the FTC to court on this one. This allows Intel a wholesale way out of the concent degree in the segment where competition is at its fiercest - low end notebooks and tablets.
Not all schools are created equal. Some are more equal than the others.
By the way, this is not what I would call selection.
MGU in my days had between 1% and under 0.1% pass rate. Even the rather 2nd rate by Eastern European standards Sofia State University to which I went had higher selectivity for some majors than the "scary" 5% listed here. IIRC Biotech had a sub-1% pass rate, same for law.
IMO there is nothing wrong here. That is what scores and exams are for. You perform well you get in a good school. You perform badly you get in a bad school or no school at all. Discrimination? Yes of course, however I am all for it. We need more such discrimination throughout society as it is a discrimination _AGAINST_ the stupid and the lazy.
This is not on MacBook Air, but on a ancient (circa 2001) Dual P3/733 HP professional workstation which I use as a desktop from time to time.
Power consumption browsing the Register in Konq with flash disabled: 71W. Load Averag sub-4%.
Power consumption browsing the Register in Firefox with flash enabled 110W. Load Average 60%+ (all of one CPU and encroaching on the second one). All it does are a couple of animated adverts in flash.
Similar test on an Pentium M HP notebook - 40W vs 65W. Similar test on an Atom 230 Lenovo netbook - 20W vs 37W. In all cases one CPU (or the one in the Pentium M case) is flat out.
That pretty much says it all. Anyone who has not turned off Flash on a portable device should not complain about battery life. I do not agree with Steve Jobs very often, but he is bloody right on this one. Flash should be prohibited until Adobe learns how to use video acceleration, sleep on select instead of doing idle loops and so on. Browsers do this natively. It has all been coded in them long ago so they eat virtually 0 CPU for such tasks in HTML5 or not.
One does not fly everyday transatlantic in economy where there are no power outlets. Ditto for traveling London to Scotland, Wales or Cornwall on a train second class in the UK (the power plugs are a first class and disabled privilege).
If you do that for a living the Air will be the last in the notebook lineup of your choice. The small MacBook Pro (13"), Vaios, some of the more battery endowed Lenovos are the right choice of a notebook for such a job. They have better battery life and are most importantly more sturdy. The Air is too flimsy for regular travel on public transport. It looks nice on a boardroom or meeting room table. Its sturdines and on-the road functionality however leaves a lot to be desired.
In any case, the article is from the article is from the realm of the bleeding obvious. I browse the web in Konq will _ALL_ plugins disabled and switch to Firefox with working flash only when I need it and only on sites I trust. As a result I can happily get by on a Pentium M or G4 class machine where people need a Core i3 or even Core i5. For example I am typing this on a 2004 vintage G4 mini (stuffed with RAM to the gills) running Debian in Konq at the moment.
If you open a 70-80-es soviet book on photography there is always a BIG chapter on touching up pictures. There is a reason for it - if you see the zombies in charge (Brezhnev, Suslov, etc) faces without retouching you would probably lose sleep for the next few days from recurring nightmares.
Netflix is not Bittorent and has a well defined source which is a commercial entity. So the ISP knows after who it needs to go. Further to this, as it is not P2P traffic Netflix itself has no choice but to grow its infrastructure if it is to retain its service level. Otherwise it will congest its links to ISPs and kill its own service offering.
So Netflix will have to start building its network infrastructure and peer with ISPs close to the user across the US and the globe.
We have already been through this. Before it was Google/Youtube destroying the Internet. Well it did not. Simply Google now has a backbone which can put most tier 1s to shame and peers with anyone anywhere.
Most importantly, the number of links and peerings will increase so the end result will be GOOD for the Internet as it will become more resilient (Assuming ISPs use local/distributed peering not just for Netflix but for the other peering).
Next thing you will get a visit from the fraud squad.
Same as the guy which used Lynx to donate to a charity campaign in the UK a few years back.
The "security pros" providing security solutions t the donation site decided that it is being hacked (well, he did play a bit with various URLs to get past some particularly stupid javascript based submit code).
We don't have a magic recipe for making our kids behave like a civilized human being. You know, if we had such a thing, we'd have conquered the world by now, don't you think?
Civilized != Unruly and vice versa. A kid that will refuse to sit in one place and read a book when told and will go wondering off around and exploring his surroundings may still be perfectly civilised. A kid that will disassemble her robot tutor is not uncivilised, she is curious. A kid that makes a hellish racket when playing may not necessarily be uncivilised and so on.
As far as conquering, questioning authority and independence are essential attributes to a conquest mentality. It is exactly the opposite to what you are inferring to as "civlised". Good example is medieval Japan which folded onto itself and staid stagnant for centuries. It was civilised to the bone. Super duper civilised society where everyone knew its name and place. Question authority? Yeah right, where is that blunt bamboo saw for your neck?
So what, punish (and put on pills if that does not work) every child which has a curiosity how things work? Punish (and put on pills if that does not work) every child that would question the authority of an adult.
Wonderful idea. That has been tried by the way and is the standard tactics of lazy and incompetent teachers especially in some countries. The ballpark figures for the UK are that more than 25% of children with special statements have them for exactly that reason - their teacher at some point was too lazy and incompetent to enforce authority and went for the easy way out (that was on the BBC and a few major newspapers by the way, I am not inventing that number)
The result of such laziness is also well known - it is well known which countries end up exporting intellectual labour or importing brains.
No thanks, I would rather have my 2 and a half year old disassembling toys and picking locks (which she does) and my 8 year old try his luck in an authority contest with any new teacher he has. By the way he won in reception and year one vs both teacher and headmaster leading to the point where the incompetent dolts in those schools trying to stitch him with a statement. He has lost the contest with every teacher since in his new school. Lots of headache for me, but hey, that is what children are for - to give parents a headache once in a while.
And going back to the original topic - I cannot see anyone growing up while allowed to question authority and tinker with things not making a mockery of a robot teacher. That may work only in a society which has considerably harder concepts of seniority and authority than EU/US.
There is nothing wrong with using computers and robots to educate kids on a one by one basis. They are priceless to that regard. The same 8 year old I referred to is spending up to an hour a day with things like Mathletics, Spellodrome and educational multimedia. That however is one to one.
The idea to put a robot into the dominant position in a human social environment which is a classroom is beyond idiotic. A teacher is not just an explainer and illustrator. A teacher is an example to the students. It is the "leader of the pack" and any teacher not ready to assume that position should never try to cross the classroom door. Even if a robot manages to assume that position, which I doubt, I really do not want to be anywhere near the kids coming out of that classroom.
Uncommon in Europe, but very popular with American families because it will hadrly ever scratch back. It also has a strange, uncatlike characteristic reaction when you pick it up. It just goes limp until you put it down. As a result kids drag them around like ragdolls. That is where the name comes from.
It also tends to pretty much sit where you put it and you can pick it up from the same place a few hours later. Once again, I have seen a ragdoll make himself comfortable in a position that my old siamese would have never staid in.
Have you seen a Korean child? Think of a ragdoll cat. You put it somewhere (with books and toys in hand) and you can safely come back a couple of hours later. It will be there and you will not hear a squeak in the meantime. I have no idea how they do it and I am not sure if I should admire it or get shivers from it.
In any case, a robot will not survive 15 minutes in a classroom with average European (or american for that matter) kids. I know what my daughter will do. If she cannot get her hands on a screwdriver she will craft herself a replacement out of whatever she can find and start disassembling the thing until she has figured out what makes it tick or it is so dead that she will lose interest. That is probably still better than the reaction of her brother who would simply use it for target practice.
The first private golf club in Bulgaria near Ihtiman on the main Europe Turkey highway has the main cafe building made out of bits from a decomissioned Tu-154. It has been there for 20 odd years now. Parts from the tail are used for signs on the highway. The fuselage and the wings are incorporated in the building. I can think of at least two more cafes and restaurants made out of decomissioned Il-18s and there is a hotel in Germany made out of one as well.
You can get an airframe which is past its max hours on the cheap fairly easily. Transportation is a bit of a hassle, but it generally costs less than building a dwelling of the same size. So if you have a big enough chunk of land and get this past the planners (especially in countries like UK) that is doable.
There is an easier, cheaper and better option though which is also easier to get past the planners. With the rail transport going to sitting places only there is a suprlus of Pulmans and their East German equivalents (used in ex-Soviet Block). These are way easier to adapt and convert into a supercool house.
The PCR techniques used to amplify it for detection purposes are so sensitive that enough remains can be picked up by crimelab.
The only way to reliably "clean" clothing that has come into contact with this is to dip it in DNAases (enzymes that specifically hydrolise DNA). These are actually quite easy to come by in Holland. Holland is one of the world capitals of developing "pumped up" chicken meat. That used to be "pumped up" with crude pork and beef proteins extracts, however labs started picking up pork or beef based on DNA (very similar to this detection method). So now the extracts are treated with DNAase so that the tests do not work. As a result DNAase is actually not that difficult to come by. Just talk to your "halal" (quotes intended as it is stuffed with pork to the hilt) cheap chicken supplier.
Not that it would matter anyway as this is mostly against petty criminals.
Not to worry, Chinese will have EPA in a few years. Otherwise there will be nobody left healthy enough to work in their factories. We have all been through this.
They nick what cannot be tracked or identified and quickly move along onto the next target. My mom's house got burgled recently. They did not touch a brand new TV, computers or anything else. Go in, quickly look into the usual places for money and valuables, pinch whatever they can and go out before the alarm responce group arrives.
Slashdot Mirror
Answer:
All animals are equal. Some are more equal than the other.
George Orwell, "Animal Farm: A Fairy Story"
I have been repairing and upgrading laptops for ages. Some are more difficult to maintain than others. All in all, once you get the knack to work on them and have the right tools, most are not that much different from a branded desktop. This especially valid for the corporate series from all manufacturers.
Intel has been bitten by its non-cannibalisations strategies in the past.
One of the main reasons for Athlon to have its time in the sun is not its performance. It was _NOT_ that much better initially. It was Intel deliberately limiting and crippling various product lines on non-cannibalisation grounds. i810, i840 and most importanty crippling i815e which had 2G memory addressing capacity by design with a 512MB strict marketing requirement (sounds familiar doesn't it?) had more to do with it. As a result Athlon had a chance to capture market even before it became a real contender on performance grounds.
However the times were different. In those days the level of hubris on Intel side was off the scale. That is not quite the case now. Anyway, we will see..
Classic case of a positive feedback loop in action.
Issue is that Atom except Intel STB boards with their media accel processor is deliberately crippled in terms of video performance. As a result the entire system ends up being crippled wholesale giving the consumers a perception that the computer is slow while it really isn't.
Nvidia has demonstrated this - when paired with a devent video chippery Atom makes a perfectly adequate desktop and notebook. As a result Intel has gone as far as damaging its own media STB roadmap to lock Nvidia out so that Atom does not cannibalise its more expensive CPUs. This is all being done with the tacit support of Microsoft to ensure that demand for "cheap windows" wanes together with cheap computers.
IMO, this decision is a BIG loss for the consumer. This platform is an example of what is wrong about Intel "innovation" as we now it. It is driven not by the desire to improve, but the desire to screw competition. was Nvidia or AMD I should definitely take the FTC to court on this one. This allows Intel a wholesale way out of the concent degree in the segment where competition is at its fiercest - low end notebooks and tablets.
Not all schools are created equal. Some are more equal than the others.
By the way, this is not what I would call selection.
MGU in my days had between 1% and under 0.1% pass rate. Even the rather 2nd rate by Eastern European standards Sofia State University to which I went had higher selectivity for some majors than the "scary" 5% listed here. IIRC Biotech had a sub-1% pass rate, same for law.
IMO there is nothing wrong here. That is what scores and exams are for. You perform well you get in a good school. You perform badly you get in a bad school or no school at all. Discrimination? Yes of course, however I am all for it. We need more such discrimination throughout society as it is a discrimination _AGAINST_ the stupid and the lazy.
Bodysuit dude, not bikini suit, leather vest, party dress or military fatigues.
So no Leya, no Lt Col Carter, no Teyla and no Cylons either.
Though a bit of Vala Mal Doran may fit the bill.
This is not on MacBook Air, but on a ancient (circa 2001) Dual P3/733 HP professional workstation which I use as a desktop from time to time.
Power consumption browsing the Register in Konq with flash disabled: 71W. Load Averag sub-4%.
Power consumption browsing the Register in Firefox with flash enabled 110W. Load Average 60%+ (all of one CPU and encroaching on the second one). All it does are a couple of animated adverts in flash.
Similar test on an Pentium M HP notebook - 40W vs 65W. Similar test on an Atom 230 Lenovo netbook - 20W vs 37W. In all cases one CPU (or the one in the Pentium M case) is flat out.
That pretty much says it all. Anyone who has not turned off Flash on a portable device should not complain about battery life. I do not agree with Steve Jobs very often, but he is bloody right on this one. Flash should be prohibited until Adobe learns how to use video acceleration, sleep on select instead of doing idle loops and so on. Browsers do this natively. It has all been coded in them long ago so they eat virtually 0 CPU for such tasks in HTML5 or not.
One does not fly everyday transatlantic in economy where there are no power outlets. Ditto for traveling London to Scotland, Wales or Cornwall on a train second class in the UK (the power plugs are a first class and disabled privilege).
If you do that for a living the Air will be the last in the notebook lineup of your choice. The small MacBook Pro (13"), Vaios, some of the more battery endowed Lenovos are the right choice of a notebook for such a job. They have better battery life and are most importantly more sturdy. The Air is too flimsy for regular travel on public transport. It looks nice on a boardroom or meeting room table. Its sturdines and on-the road functionality however leaves a lot to be desired.
In any case, the article is from the article is from the realm of the bleeding obvious. I browse the web in Konq will _ALL_ plugins disabled and switch to Firefox with working flash only when I need it and only on sites I trust. As a result I can happily get by on a Pentium M or G4 class machine where people need a Core i3 or even Core i5. For example I am typing this on a 2004 vintage G4 mini (stuffed with RAM to the gills) running Debian in Konq at the moment.
Everybody was using it. With or without computers
If you open a 70-80-es soviet book on photography there is always a BIG chapter on touching up pictures. There is a reason for it - if you see the zombies in charge (Brezhnev, Suslov, etc) faces without retouching you would probably lose sleep for the next few days from recurring nightmares.
Quite clearly you never had to deal with the question of "whose parents are we visiting this Christmas".
Once you have dealt with it a few times you will definitely understand that.
That and coming back from the office party all smelling of perfume and having lipstick all over your shirt usually does not help your relationship.
So the stats are probably correct.
Never.
Netflix is not Bittorent and has a well defined source which is a commercial entity. So the ISP knows after who it needs to go. Further to this, as it is not P2P traffic Netflix itself has no choice but to grow its infrastructure if it is to retain its service level. Otherwise it will congest its links to ISPs and kill its own service offering.
So Netflix will have to start building its network infrastructure and peer with ISPs close to the user across the US and the globe.
We have already been through this. Before it was Google/Youtube destroying the Internet. Well it did not. Simply Google now has a backbone which can put most tier 1s to shame and peers with anyone anywhere.
Most importantly, the number of links and peerings will increase so the end result will be GOOD for the Internet as it will become more resilient (Assuming ISPs use local/distributed peering not just for Netflix but for the other peering).
Next thing you will get a visit from the fraud squad.
Same as the guy which used Lynx to donate to a charity campaign in the UK a few years back.
The "security pros" providing security solutions t the donation site decided that it is being hacked (well, he did play a bit with various URLs to get past some particularly stupid javascript based submit code).
We don't have a magic recipe for making our kids behave like a civilized human being. You know, if we had such a thing, we'd have conquered the world by now, don't you think?
Civilized != Unruly and vice versa. A kid that will refuse to sit in one place and read a book when told and will go wondering off around and exploring his surroundings may still be perfectly civilised. A kid that will disassemble her robot tutor is not uncivilised, she is curious. A kid that makes a hellish racket when playing may not necessarily be uncivilised and so on.
As far as conquering, questioning authority and independence are essential attributes to a conquest mentality. It is exactly the opposite to what you are inferring to as "civlised". Good example is medieval Japan which folded onto itself and staid stagnant for centuries. It was civilised to the bone. Super duper civilised society where everyone knew its name and place. Question authority? Yeah right, where is that blunt bamboo saw for your neck?
So what, punish (and put on pills if that does not work) every child which has a curiosity how things work? Punish (and put on pills if that does not work) every child that would question the authority of an adult.
Wonderful idea. That has been tried by the way and is the standard tactics of lazy and incompetent teachers especially in some countries. The ballpark figures for the UK are that more than 25% of children with special statements have them for exactly that reason - their teacher at some point was too lazy and incompetent to enforce authority and went for the easy way out (that was on the BBC and a few major newspapers by the way, I am not inventing that number)
The result of such laziness is also well known - it is well known which countries end up exporting intellectual labour or importing brains.
No thanks, I would rather have my 2 and a half year old disassembling toys and picking locks (which she does) and my 8 year old try his luck in an authority contest with any new teacher he has. By the way he won in reception and year one vs both teacher and headmaster leading to the point where the incompetent dolts in those schools trying to stitch him with a statement. He has lost the contest with every teacher since in his new school. Lots of headache for me, but hey, that is what children are for - to give parents a headache once in a while.
And going back to the original topic - I cannot see anyone growing up while allowed to question authority and tinker with things not making a mockery of a robot teacher. That may work only in a society which has considerably harder concepts of seniority and authority than EU/US.
You are missing the point.
There is nothing wrong with using computers and robots to educate kids on a one by one basis. They are priceless to that regard. The same 8 year old I referred to is spending up to an hour a day with things like Mathletics, Spellodrome and educational multimedia. That however is one to one.
The idea to put a robot into the dominant position in a human social environment which is a classroom is beyond idiotic. A teacher is not just an explainer and illustrator. A teacher is an example to the students. It is the "leader of the pack" and any teacher not ready to assume that position should never try to cross the classroom door. Even if a robot manages to assume that position, which I doubt, I really do not want to be anywhere near the kids coming out of that classroom.
Ragdoll is an American cat breed you dolt.
Uncommon in Europe, but very popular with American families because it will hadrly ever scratch back. It also has a strange, uncatlike characteristic reaction when you pick it up. It just goes limp until you put it down. As a result kids drag them around like ragdolls. That is where the name comes from.
It also tends to pretty much sit where you put it and you can pick it up from the same place a few hours later. Once again, I have seen a ragdoll make himself comfortable in a position that my old siamese would have never staid in.
Have you seen a Korean child? Think of a ragdoll cat. You put it somewhere (with books and toys in hand) and you can safely come back a couple of hours later. It will be there and you will not hear a squeak in the meantime. I have no idea how they do it and I am not sure if I should admire it or get shivers from it.
In any case, a robot will not survive 15 minutes in a classroom with average European (or american for that matter) kids. I know what my daughter will do. If she cannot get her hands on a screwdriver she will craft herself a replacement out of whatever she can find and start disassembling the thing until she has figured out what makes it tick or it is so dead that she will lose interest. That is probably still better than the reaction of her brother who would simply use it for target practice.
Gorillaz have been around since 1998. They are mostly 2D though.
The ASICs and the entire routers for that matter in the usual suspects (Cisco, Juniper & Co) have had stable IPv6 support for more than 7-8 years now.
The first private golf club in Bulgaria near Ihtiman on the main Europe Turkey highway has the main cafe building made out of bits from a decomissioned Tu-154. It has been there for 20 odd years now. Parts from the tail are used for signs on the highway. The fuselage and the wings are incorporated in the building. I can think of at least two more cafes and restaurants made out of decomissioned Il-18s and there is a hotel in Germany made out of one as well.
You can get an airframe which is past its max hours on the cheap fairly easily. Transportation is a bit of a hassle, but it generally costs less than building a dwelling of the same size. So if you have a big enough chunk of land and get this past the planners (especially in countries like UK) that is doable.
There is an easier, cheaper and better option though which is also easier to get past the planners. With the rail transport going to sitting places only there is a suprlus of Pulmans and their East German equivalents (used in ex-Soviet Block). These are way easier to adapt and convert into a supercool house.
It does. To an extent. Not enough though.
The PCR techniques used to amplify it for detection purposes are so sensitive that enough remains can be picked up by crimelab.
The only way to reliably "clean" clothing that has come into contact with this is to dip it in DNAases (enzymes that specifically hydrolise DNA). These are actually quite easy to come by in Holland. Holland is one of the world capitals of developing "pumped up" chicken meat. That used to be "pumped up" with crude pork and beef proteins extracts, however labs started picking up pork or beef based on DNA (very similar to this detection method). So now the extracts are treated with DNAase so that the tests do not work. As a result DNAase is actually not that difficult to come by. Just talk to your "halal" (quotes intended as it is stuffed with pork to the hilt) cheap chicken supplier.
Not that it would matter anyway as this is mostly against petty criminals.
If it was just the dinner napkins... Watch Amadeus...
Not to worry, Chinese will have EPA in a few years. Otherwise there will be nobody left healthy enough to work in their factories. We have all been through this.
That is what they do now.
They nick what cannot be tracked or identified and quickly move along onto the next target. My mom's house got burgled recently. They did not touch a brand new TV, computers or anything else. Go in, quickly look into the usual places for money and valuables, pinch whatever they can and go out before the alarm responce group arrives.