With AMD's 5000 series is now coming down price, by the time NVIDIA gets it's 100 series shipping, it won't be *that* much faster since it's a similar generational leap, and similar process size, but it will be high priced until a significant ammount of stock hits channels... oh and to sting the early adopter fanboys.
Just like the sucess of AMD 4800 cards, many people will go for the significantly better bang for buck in the 5800 line. It looks like AMD is in a good position.
Not forgivable. This was an empty Gatorade bottle with some electronics attached. What did they suspect was in it? Highly combustible oxygen?
What next, a kitchen egg timer could be mistaken as a bomb and a Home Economics class evacuated?
Terrorism hysteria has turned into insanity. I will seriously be neither surprised when we hear more about everyday objects coming under suspicion. I'm waiting to hear about someone wearing adult incontinence diapers being stripped searched at an airport because they were suspected of having an underwear.
Who really knows what a bomb looks like, except for the experts? Most people go off they've seen in the movies no doubt. In the realy world bombs don't have lots of red and blue wires with a red-led countdown timer that beeps every second. One would assume someone making a bomb would attempt to mask what it is. For example, shoe-bomber and underwear bombers.
I might resist the practical joke I had in mind, duct taping an old cellphone and wires to a coke can and putting it on my co-workers desk.
This is not first time you can buy a ex-military jet and re purpose it for mucking around (On a side note there have attempts in the past to produce a kit-built DIY supersonic jet such as the Bede http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede_BD-10). BUT this is quite a formidable plane. This is like buying a F14 or F15 (Which I believe the russians designed it to counter), which as far as I know, you don't have a hope in hell of picking one up for your own use.
PrintScreen/SysRq, Scroll Lock & Pause/break are all very seldom used keys. However PrintScreen is used far more often than the others. I would go so far as to say it is the most legendary key on the windows keyboard.
A single key screenshot button is a great OS feature, it'll save your bacon, and capture some epic hilarity, and make support a breeze. It's not used that often statistically, but it's used when crucial.
While they are at it, do we really need 12 Function keys? I have seen a number of laptops with Fn + 1 to + as the function keys. Clever. Doesn't get in the way too much either, especially if the keyboard becomes more ergonomic overall. It makes room for them to put the printscreen back.
I wonder if this is a victim of marketing vs the engineering department. You know what I mean (unless you're in marketing).
Engineers briefing the marketing team may have said "... can collect energy up 10 meters away" Yes of course it could, but didn't fully explain it wouldn't gain useful charge unless within 30-50cm... in a best case scenario.
This may have also been designed as a device that merely maintains a charge, or trickle charges, sitting next to a wi-fi base station. Indeed they claim it has a 4000mw battery, much like other battery-booster pack products. I further suspect this is also chargable from regular outlets with an adapter, but merely maintains a charge via harvesting (which is still doubtful).
I don't really need to explain how this would be misinterpereted by the marketing guys, who like to combine bits of information and pretty numbers together without any consideration of what the combination of said statements implies. If that doesn't compute for any of you, then (again) you're probably in marketing.
Result: Snake oil, supposedly.
Why I say all this is BOTEC calculations by posters. Some have pointed out self-discharge of common batteries, which at best, takes as little as 6-12 months. This gives us a crude 1 metre distance at the absolute maximum (assuming full power 1000 milliwatt wifi) just to break even and maintain a charge, assuming high efficiency.
Only if this thing was sitting pretty much on top of a decently powered wi-fi base station you'd be able to trickle charge it. It seems to me maybe this was the original intention of the design, as a way to keep a spare battery booster maintained with charge. But once again, the marketing department strikes.
I have an alergy to sunlight, usually when emerging from a dark room into bright sunlight my eyes water, my nose goes ichy and I sneeze sometimes. It lasts a few minutes until my eyes adjust. I always thought this was a natural normal reaction and thought nothing of it, indeed it makes sense that your eyes water in bright light. But no, when I mentioned to a professional, apparently it's common but not normal and has been diagnosed as an alergy.
Agreeing with the above post, sometimes it just doesn't happen, or it lasts longer, or it doesn't clear up for hours, its variable.
Indeed there are people who can die from an alergic reaction to UV light.
People can be genuinely alergic to some really strange things. So how is it then that it is so implausible that someone might be alergic to wi-fi? Then human immune system is not only strange but unstable
The only remaining implausible thing IMHO is the distance.
If I wrap your hand around a USB wi-fi dongle, maybe you can feel the tingling from the EM field or static electricity or something, especially if it's a poor design.
Problem is, if you are 50 feet away, the energy level is suddenly about 500,000 times lower, that's totally ignoring any walls in the way. For all practical purposes the signal is lost in the seething bath of EM raditation all around us, it cannot have any effect on you, period.
I heard it said that a lifetime of being in the same house as a Wi-Fi router is equivelent of holding a cellhpone against your head for 1 hour. So far, in a world with billions of cellphones used for countless hours of talktime held to the side of the head, there isn't a worldwide pandemic of brain tumours. So if there is an effect it is extremely small to not show up.
Wi-fi danger debunked. No need to thank me.
Yet it's plausible that people are alergic to EMF, it's certainly established that people can be alergic to parts of the EM spectrum.
...theologians have recently determined that God has a "MicrosoftMode". Watch out for the Blue Sky of Death.
Did I just fix that for you? Is that what you meant?
If/when the universe implodes in a big crunch we would actually see the cosmic microwave background radiation, in all directions in the sky, blue shifted.
Here are the odds of being killed by a airborne terrorist in a handy infographic - It's about 1 in 10 million. Wow, you're orders of magnitude more likely to die by the plain falling out of the sky by itself... which they do.
Not as of a few days ago. Chrome passed Safari in browser market share, according to digitaltrends.com.
Remember, that's a beta Google product vs Apple's flagship browser.
Safari isn't even the browser of choice for Mac users, for chrissake.
Google Chrome is not beta anymore, infact it's versioned at0 3.0.195.38 last I saw. But you are right in that it is very very new. Safari has been around some time.
Safari has had very little penetration as a alternative browser on non-mac OSes, because it isn't actually a compelling alternative, it's good enough, but it can't compete.
I can't think how many times I've bought some crappy Chinese knock-off product only to have it break much sooner than the local equivalent. So yes it costs more when you have to replace it sooner.
So what do I do? I go and buy another of the knock off items, because it's cheaper to replace.
Infact, China may be somewhat more ethical than certain western nations would be in the same situation, but of course they will put their own internal needs first. However China will likely end up selling us electric motors, solar panels, and EV batteries cheaper, that if we prodcuced them locally, as with just about everything else that is manufactured in China.
It's not just Neodymium, Lithium and some other elements such as those used in high efficiency electric motors are largely sourced (if not exclusively) from China.
This may push along ocean floor mining, which would solve all these problems.
For extra points submit this to your favourite open source project and have it accepted into the main code release - since it appears to be prefectly geniune, compiles, and can do what it appears to - it's certainly possible. Finally demonstrate your backdoor when the project is released to the wild.
If you manage to get this into the GNU/Linux Kernel, you get a job at the NSA.
Write short, readable, perfectly innocent looking C code, that somehow commits an evil act under certain circumstances.
This year's challenge: write a luggage routing program that mysteriously misroutes a customer's bag if a check-in clerk places just the right kind of text in a comment field.
I am certain that this is already a feature of existing luggage routing software.
The energy released was mind-numbing: in one-fifth of a second, this supercharged magnetic neutron star blasted out as much energy as the Sun does in 250,000 years!"
There's no way for me to get my head around these numbers to "truly" feel it. What methods can you use to visualize such extreme numbers?
"I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way! "
Slashdot Mirror
This just validates that Avatar has any kind of noteworthy message that we haven't heard before.
With AMD's 5000 series is now coming down price, by the time NVIDIA gets it's 100 series shipping, it won't be *that* much faster since it's a similar generational leap, and similar process size, but it will be high priced until a significant ammount of stock hits channels... oh and to sting the early adopter fanboys.
Just like the sucess of AMD 4800 cards, many people will go for the significantly better bang for buck in the 5800 line. It looks like AMD is in a good position.
Not forgivable. This was an empty Gatorade bottle with some electronics attached. What did they suspect was in it? Highly combustible oxygen?
What next, a kitchen egg timer could be mistaken as a bomb and a Home Economics class evacuated?
Terrorism hysteria has turned into insanity. I will seriously be neither surprised when we hear more about everyday objects coming under suspicion. I'm waiting to hear about someone wearing adult incontinence diapers being stripped searched at an airport because they were suspected of having an underwear.
Who really knows what a bomb looks like, except for the experts? Most people go off they've seen in the movies no doubt. In the realy world bombs don't have lots of red and blue wires with a red-led countdown timer that beeps every second. One would assume someone making a bomb would attempt to mask what it is. For example, shoe-bomber and underwear bombers.
I might resist the practical joke I had in mind, duct taping an old cellphone and wires to a coke can and putting it on my co-workers desk.
This is not first time you can buy a ex-military jet and re purpose it for mucking around (On a side note there have attempts in the past to produce a kit-built DIY supersonic jet such as the Bede http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede_BD-10). BUT this is quite a formidable plane. This is like buying a F14 or F15 (Which I believe the russians designed it to counter), which as far as I know, you don't have a hope in hell of picking one up for your own use.
it was just a rocket spiraling out of control. A rocket exhaust plume merely behaves differently in space/ the exosphere than in the lower atmosphere.
PrintScreen/SysRq, Scroll Lock & Pause/break are all very seldom used keys. However PrintScreen is used far more often than the others. I would go so far as to say it is the most legendary key on the windows keyboard.
A single key screenshot button is a great OS feature, it'll save your bacon, and capture some epic hilarity, and make support a breeze. It's not used that often statistically, but it's used when crucial.
While they are at it, do we really need 12 Function keys? I have seen a number of laptops with Fn + 1 to + as the function keys. Clever. Doesn't get in the way too much either, especially if the keyboard becomes more ergonomic overall. It makes room for them to put the printscreen back.
I wonder if this is a victim of marketing vs the engineering department. You know what I mean (unless you're in marketing).
Engineers briefing the marketing team may have said "... can collect energy up 10 meters away" Yes of course it could, but didn't fully explain it wouldn't gain useful charge unless within 30-50cm... in a best case scenario.
This may have also been designed as a device that merely maintains a charge, or trickle charges, sitting next to a wi-fi base station. Indeed they claim it has a 4000mw battery, much like other battery-booster pack products. I further suspect this is also chargable from regular outlets with an adapter, but merely maintains a charge via harvesting (which is still doubtful).
I don't really need to explain how this would be misinterpereted by the marketing guys, who like to combine bits of information and pretty numbers together without any consideration of what the combination of said statements implies. If that doesn't compute for any of you, then (again) you're probably in marketing.
Result: Snake oil, supposedly.
Why I say all this is BOTEC calculations by posters. Some have pointed out self-discharge of common batteries, which at best, takes as little as 6-12 months. This gives us a crude 1 metre distance at the absolute maximum (assuming full power 1000 milliwatt wifi) just to break even and maintain a charge, assuming high efficiency.
Only if this thing was sitting pretty much on top of a decently powered wi-fi base station you'd be able to trickle charge it. It seems to me maybe this was the original intention of the design, as a way to keep a spare battery booster maintained with charge. But once again, the marketing department strikes.
I have an alergy to sunlight, usually when emerging from a dark room into bright sunlight my eyes water, my nose goes ichy and I sneeze sometimes. It lasts a few minutes until my eyes adjust. I always thought this was a natural normal reaction and thought nothing of it, indeed it makes sense that your eyes water in bright light. But no, when I mentioned to a professional, apparently it's common but not normal and has been diagnosed as an alergy.
Agreeing with the above post, sometimes it just doesn't happen, or it lasts longer, or it doesn't clear up for hours, its variable.
Indeed there are people who can die from an alergic reaction to UV light.
People can be genuinely alergic to some really strange things. So how is it then that it is so implausible that someone might be alergic to wi-fi? Then human immune system is not only strange but unstable
The only remaining implausible thing IMHO is the distance.
If I wrap your hand around a USB wi-fi dongle, maybe you can feel the tingling from the EM field or static electricity or something, especially if it's a poor design.
Problem is, if you are 50 feet away, the energy level is suddenly about 500,000 times lower, that's totally ignoring any walls in the way. For all practical purposes the signal is lost in the seething bath of EM raditation all around us, it cannot have any effect on you, period.
I heard it said that a lifetime of being in the same house as a Wi-Fi router is equivelent of holding a cellhpone against your head for 1 hour. So far, in a world with billions of cellphones used for countless hours of talktime held to the side of the head, there isn't a worldwide pandemic of brain tumours. So if there is an effect it is extremely small to not show up.
Wi-fi danger debunked. No need to thank me.
Yet it's plausible that people are alergic to EMF, it's certainly established that people can be alergic to parts of the EM spectrum.
Facebook's Zuckerberg Says Forget Privacy
So he won't mind the camera I have hidden in his bedroom?
Zuckerberg is trying to cover his ass.
So far I have seen no attempt by Zucker to cover anything, nor the groupies who were present.
So I take it you did finish the job?
When a problem arises I get a grip on the situation and shortly a solution is found.
I think that most of us guys have become accustomed to the level of control we achieve with our hand(s)
This site more than others?
...theologians have recently determined that God has a "MicrosoftMode". Watch out for the Blue Sky of Death.
Did I just fix that for you? Is that what you meant?
If/when the universe implodes in a big crunch we would actually see the cosmic microwave background radiation, in all directions in the sky, blue shifted.
It doesn't generate a shitload of radioactive waste, perhaps?
Negligble running costs and maintenance, very little labour to run on a day to day basis. Relatively speaking.
Here are the odds of being killed by a airborne terrorist in a handy infographic - It's about 1 in 10 million. Wow, you're orders of magnitude more likely to die by the plain falling out of the sky by itself... which they do.
Ten million to one:
http://www.boingboing.net/200912301009.jpg
Original post:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/30/odds-of-being-a-terr.html
Food for thought no? Bare it all in mind next time your at the airport being harassed by security - it's all for show.
End of the world? I just checked my calendar, and the last day is December 31st. This has me deeply concerned.
How on earth could this happen? This is shear blistering incompetence that no one thought to include any more days past this point.
In the future could we mine this planet for packing material?
Not as of a few days ago. Chrome passed Safari in browser market share, according to digitaltrends.com.
Remember, that's a beta Google product vs Apple's flagship browser.
Safari isn't even the browser of choice for Mac users, for chrissake.
Google Chrome is not beta anymore, infact it's versioned at0 3.0.195.38 last I saw. But you are right in that it is very very new. Safari has been around some time. Safari has had very little penetration as a alternative browser on non-mac OSes, because it isn't actually a compelling alternative, it's good enough, but it can't compete.
You post was impenetrable, I got lost at "half" so I gave it no mod points.
I can't think how many times I've bought some crappy Chinese knock-off product only to have it break much sooner than the local equivalent. So yes it costs more when you have to replace it sooner.
So what do I do? I go and buy another of the knock off items, because it's cheaper to replace.
Infact, China may be somewhat more ethical than certain western nations would be in the same situation, but of course they will put their own internal needs first. However China will likely end up selling us electric motors, solar panels, and EV batteries cheaper, that if we prodcuced them locally, as with just about everything else that is manufactured in China.
It's not just Neodymium, Lithium and some other elements such as those used in high efficiency electric motors are largely sourced (if not exclusively) from China.
This may push along ocean floor mining, which would solve all these problems.
The solution is to cover your entire body in tin foil, faraday cage!
If you manage to get this into the GNU/Linux Kernel, you get a job at the NSA.
Write short, readable, perfectly innocent looking C code, that somehow commits an evil act under certain circumstances.
This year's challenge: write a luggage routing program that mysteriously misroutes a customer's bag if a check-in clerk places just the right kind of text in a comment field.
I am certain that this is already a feature of existing luggage routing software.
Reality isn't fun. If it was we wouldn't play games.
You mean like having sex?
The energy released was mind-numbing: in one-fifth of a second, this supercharged magnetic neutron star blasted out as much energy as the Sun does in 250,000 years!"
There's no way for me to get my head around these numbers to "truly" feel it. What methods can you use to visualize such extreme numbers?
"I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way! "