I have a very quiet environment. For me to preserve that, it is critical is that the laptop be quiet. So, I got a Twinhead.
The Twinhead that I got does have a fan in it. But the fan is thermostatically controlled. I had the computer for months before finding the right (wrong?) conditions to trigger fan operation. In practice, the Twinhead runs fanless.
Twinhead does not have the best prices. I found that Dell had clearly better price/performance. But Dell has a loud fan.
BOTTOM LINE: if you want quiet, the Twinhead is well worth it!
Question: does anyone know of other PC laptops that also have fanless operation? (I will be getting a new laptop in a few months; so I'd like to know about alternatives.)
Probably the most prestigious general news magazine (in the world) is The Economist. The current edition has a story whose headline says it all:
But Dmitry did no wrong
... The story is available online (here), but not for free. Following are some quotes:
... Mr Sklyarov, working in Russia, where, as in most countries, such things are not illegal, had written a program that circumvented some of the limits... a piece of software... made by Adobe Systems. His talk in Las Vegas was about the weaknesses in Adobe's software that made such tricks possible.
Mr Sklyarov did not... [do] the kind of activity forbidden by copyright law.... But the DMCA makes it a crime merely to create the tools that can violate copyright--even if those tools have other, legitimate uses (such as the making of a copy of a book by its owner for his own "fair use").
... support for the DMCA is strong in Congress, where the entertainment industry has lobbied hard.... at www.freesklyarov.org, the schedule for more protests is getting longer. And rightly so.
As you can see, it's not just geeks who feel that this is gross injustice.
I think that citing support from The Economist would be beneficial.
The most conspicuous victim of the war on drugs has been justice, especially in America,...
The attack on drugs has led to an erosion of civil liberties and an encroachment of the state that alarms liberals on America's right as well as the old hippies of the left. At the Cato Institute, a right-wing think-tank in Washington, DC, Timothy Lynch is dismayed by the way the war on drugs seems to be corrupting police forces....
Civil liberties... suffer because there is usually no complaining witness in a drugs case: both buyer and seller want the transaction to take place. The police, says Mr Lynch, therefore need to rely on informants, wire-taps and undercover tactics that are not normally used in other crimes. The result is "a cancer in our courtrooms", as he puts it, that proponents of America's drugs war rarely acknowledge as one of the costs of prohibition.
Gradually, the police get accustomed to using these "undercover tactics" even when doing so violates civil liberties. And then they use those tactics in more and more investigations, whether it is legal to do so or not--like (perhaps) keystroke sniffing. And of course, they claim that the end result justifies the means. Clearly, Justice is the loser.
I'm not sure that I agree with all this, but it's an interesting perspective.
the nearby city of Tyre had the most accurate approximation of pi -- and they kept it a secret, since they made a lot more money that way. pi, during the time period in question, was intellectual property.
This is great! Do you have a reference?? (Maybe it could be used in IP court cases.)
You are part of Nupedia and you are biased in its favor. That's fair enough. You make comments that strongly support your views about Nupedia. That too is fair. But then you make wholly misleading claims like "Our review process is vastly superior to that of Britannica". This is wrong. But even if the claim was true, you would not know that it was, because you have not tested your process under the conditions in which it needs to be tested.
Here's a comparison. Imagine you wrote a program to draw polygons. Just wrote--not even tested. Then you claimed that your programming-writing methodology was better than the one used by Adobe and Corel to develop their drawing programs. Such a claim is clueless.
Nupedia has a handfull of short articles. It is as useful for reference as a polygon-only program is for drawing. The Britannica's treatment of numerous subjects is similar to the treatment in book length studies of those subjects. And Britannica maintains scholarliness, clarity, and authority. It is as useful for general reference as Adobe and Corel programs are for drawing.
You do both Nupedia and yourself a disservice by stating such nonsense.
An encyclopaedia is just like any other (nonfiction) book, except that it covers more topics. You pay for a book on astronomy. Or a book on biochemistry. Or on Greek history. Etc. With an encyclopedia, you get all those books in one.
The encyclopaedia Brittanica is truly scholarly. I once picked several topics at random, looked them up in other highly-regarded specialist sources, then looked them up in the Brittanica. (It was a project that took a few weeks.) The Brittancia was superb, presenting the knowledge clearly, concisely, and with great insights. Sometimes the Britannica was even more insightful than the specialist sources. And both the breadth and depth of coverage were excellent.
The Britannica articles are not written by just anybody. The Britannica editors choose the articles' authors from among the leading researchers in their respective fields. So the erudite qualtiy of the articles is entirely expected.
Second, you might read a bit more about breast cancer and probabilities. The BRCA genes much increase your chances of getting breast cancer. That's it. Like crossing in the middle of the street increases your chances of being hit by a car. But you can still cross the street and reasonably expect to live.
Whether you've got the genes of not, you can take preventative measures to avoid breast cancer. First and foremost of those measures is diet: low in saturated fats, high in fresh (cruciferous) vegetables and fresh fruits, and ideally organic. You might also include some vitamin C supplementation.
The $100 billion/yr cancer industry benefits from your ignorance and fears.
Thanks for the translation! My favorite part is where the article states
... under Russian law it is Adobe software that is in violation, because it limits freedom of usage by consumer. It violates Consumer Rights. Besides Adobe does not inform consumers about all these limitations in their software.
So Russia is now the real Land Of The Free! God Bless America!
Re:Is the law really meant 2 be understood by laym
on
IANAL
·
· Score: 2
The law is not only unfathomably complex, it is also inconsistent. There was a project undertaken a few years ago at Carnegie-Mellon Univeristy to write the law in a formal computer-like language. Someone did their Ph.D thesis on this.
When you write something in a computer language, there is no ambiguity. The CMU proposal was to do the same with the law. Nothing ever came of the proposal, though. Imagine all the vested interests it would come up against.
It's worth taking a look at the example in the thesis (in the Appendix). The example is a single section of the law, comprising about 2.5 pages. It is entirely incomprehensible. It is contradictory. And, when you eventually come to understand parts of it, it is ridiculous. The author then shows how it would be practical to rewrite this in a formal (i.e. computer-like) language.
Of course, there are still subjective tests to be made when applying the law. Humans are still needed. But the knowledge recitation and logical analysis should be, and could be, done in a much better way.
This is fascinating, as is the story given at www.earhart.org (helpfully found by the poster of comment #80).
According to www.earhart.org, the US government covered up the truth about Earhart's disappearance. Question: what motives would the government have for this?
This is an amazing story! I can understand that you might want to post anonymously. Like another Slashdotter, though, I would like some independent evidence. Could you supply a link to the court site, or the company's web site?
Yup, I'm one of them there audiophiles. NO, I don't normally go around shouting about it. But do you like music? Do you like lots of different bands and styles? Would you like to be able to listen to them live, whichever songs you want, whenever you want? That's what most audiophiles want.
I like music. And if you cannot tell the difference between live music and music played back through a $2000 stereo, then you are deaf. Live music is much much more enjoyable. Indeed, it is a different experience. Many people seem to think that this is because of the different physical environment in which live music is played. They are wrong. The experience that I get from my stereo is fairly close to live. People who visit me who would not think of themselves as audiophiles have found the same.
Why are some people, who have obviously never had the experience, complaining about others enjoying music at something closely approximating the way the musicians played it?
This is a good point. But you should mention one other thing: most end users want a monolithic environment. For exactly the reason you analogize: only mechanics want to buy the car separate from the radio, seats, and wheels.
Bill Gates has made this point in some speeches. Geeks might not like it, but he's right. And Gates operates a business: he is giving the customer what the customer wants. This definitely contributes Microsoft's success.
I have a really quiet home environment, where I
use my computer, and quietness was a critical
factor in deciding which computer to buy. I
chose a Twinhead laptop. These run without a fan (though they have a thermostatically-controlled fan, as a backup for their proprietary heat pipe cooling system). So Twinhead laptops are very quiet.
I don't work for Twinhead, and have no affiliation, but I can recommend them. Curiously, their advertising makes no mention of their computers being fanless.
______________________________________________ "I may have said something yesterday, changed it today, and will change it tomorrow. This does not mean that simply because I made a statement yesterday, I should adhere to it." --Ayatollah Khomeini
It's even worse. Those 1261 are for the years 1996-2001 (which are the years searched by default). There are hundreds more if you search prior years.
Does anyone know what would happen if source code that violated those patents was produced in Europe (where there are no software patents), and then the object code was distributed to the Land of the Free (over the 'net)?
Also, has anyone tried contacting IBM etc. about using those patents? I know nothing here, but it might be that some of those patents are purely defensive--i.e. just to prevent others patenting them. So IBM might let GNU use them.
There are several comments about a class-action suit. There was a
class-action suit brought against Alexa for violating privacy. Alexa lost.
The decision was on 19 April 2001 by a U.S. District Court. You can read about it at http://www.alexa.com/settlement/index.html.
There has been preliminary approval of a settlement. The court is scheduled
to hold a "fairness hearing" on 27 July 2001. It looks like
Alexa will lose a couple million dollars. Is this enough to deter others from trying such tricks?
If you go to the trouble of actually reading the story, you'll find the following:
The [cometary] collision wasn't directly responsible for the extinction but rather triggered a series of events, such as massive volcanism....
So the comet did not directly cause the extinctions.
A likely scenario has been suggested by Hermann Burchard (at okstate.edu):
In Permian/Triassic boundary strata in South China, the element iridium is
not present or at most only in trace amounts.... This can be understood... by noting certain connections with the iridium-rich Hawai'i
hotspot, which has been moving in a SE direction across the Pacific for >
100Ma, probably 225Ma, starting off from Sibiria.
As mentioned by Victor Clube and Bill Napier in their book "Cosmic Winter",
magmas from the great Hawai'i volcanoes are rich in iridium.... There is a clear trace on the floor of the Pacific ocean beginning with the Emperor Seamount chain from the Kamchatka Peninsula to Midway Island, then
angling off in a slight left turn along the Hawai'ian island chain. Although
the trace possibly is now partly subducted in the Kamchatka - Aleutian
trench, it seems clear enough that the hotspot was originally positioned in
Eastern Sibiria.
Underlying the hotspot is a mantle plume which presumably was created when a
cosmic body hit Sibiria and created the vast flood basalts of Yakutia
(Sakha). See the article by Renne et al. in "Science", 1995, 269:1314, for
a map of the conjectured extent of the original lava beds....
Therefore, little doubt can exist concerning the essential identity of the
following events:
1. Inception of Hawai'i hotspot in Sibiria.
2. Sibirian flood basalt eruption.
3. Cause of P/T mass extinction.
Event 1 probably was a cosmic body impacting in Sibiria....
To summarize the above--a comet crashed into Earth, which triggered massive volcanism, which in turn led to extinctions.
IANAL but suspect that both the SouthAustralian law and the Swedish law could be challenged as a violation of international human rights conventions. One convention that might be applicable is the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 of this Declaration reads as follows.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
There are obvious escapes there for the Swedish government, but the European Court of Human Rights has been pretty strong in protecting people.
_______________________________________
Don't blame Windows--if you were a Microsoft operating system, you'd have problems too.
The first cloning of a human is about to begin. It is for a couple who want to recreate their son; the son died in an accident when he was ten months old.
The work is being undertaken by the Raelian-backed Bahamas-based Clonaid company, which is charging a few hundred thousand dollars. Clonaid says that if it's successful, they intend to make it a business. Some independent scientists who have examined the Clonaid methodology say that it will "probably" work.
Cloning a dead adult is not the same as bringing the adult back to life, because the clone would not have the dead person's memories. But cloning an infant seems different. Clonaid actually refers to their work as "bringing back to life a 10-month old child". (Even a new-born infant has some memories from its mother's womb, though--as well as some affects from the womb environment.)
The following is extracted from a story at Space.com:
Engineers at APL are looking at the prospects for relaunching the NEAR
Shoemaker spacecraft from the surface of asteroid Eros. A command is already
built into the probe as it rests upon the space rock's surface.
The liftoff from the asteroid is on tap for this Wednesday, roughly 2:00
p.m. Eastern time, according to David Dunham, NEAR's mission designer at
APL. Dunham said the probe may rise upwards well over 1,300 feet (400 meters)
above Eros. The spacecraft would then settle down to a new landing spot. "The whole thing is just more icing on the cake," Dunham said.
NEAR Shoemaker was not designed specifically for the touchdown, with the
daring dive called for as the mission drew to a successful close on February
14.
When the spacecraft was launched February 17, 1996, its fuel tanks were
filled with 715 pounds (325 kilograms) of fuel. After five years, exactly
how much propellant remains is unknown. Precious bursts of fuel were needed
to prod NEAR Shoemaker lower and lower to the surface of Eros....
In computer memory format, the system has a capacity per sq cm in excess of 86 Giga Bytes of re-writeable RAM data - this equates to a memory capacity of 3400 Giga Bytes(3.4 TB) within the surface area of a credit card! Data access time is around 100 MB/sec. A single unit with this capacity, but using the computer's processor, has a physical size of about 3 cm x 3 cm x 1.5 cms (high). An additional advantage over existing data storage systems is that only 20% of gross capacity needs to be allocated for error correction, which is significantly less than the 40% for hard disks and 30% for optical storage. Production costs are anticipated to be less than £30 [$50] for such a unit.
(Taken from the link posted by comment #58.)
So access times are much slower than for a conventional hard disk.
This week's edition of The Economist has a review of the same book, with similar conclusions. So stop complaining about the review by Mr. Katz.
The Economist also includes a review of World War 3.0: Microsoft and its enemies by Ken Auletta. In comparing the two books, they say that "Mr Auletta gives a top-down view, placing the Microsoft trial in the broader context of the telecommunications, technology and media industries, [whereas] Mr Heilemann... gives the bottom-up view from Silicon Valley... Anyone looking for the behind-the-scenes story of the Microsoft trial will have to read both books to get the full picture. Mr Heilemann's account is the more entertaining and faster-paced of the two, whereas Mr Auletta's is more substantial."
The conclusion from the twin reviews is worth quoting:
[Both books portray] Microsoft officials as arrogant, foolish and politically naive in expecting to be able to best the American government in the same way that they crushed so many of their competitors.... Whatever happens next... it is clear that Microsoft should have settled the case years ago, when it had the chance. Ultimately, Microsoft's worst enemy proved to be neither the Department of Justice, nor its rivals in Silicon Valley, but itself.
_________________________________________
"Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?"
--prosecuting lawyer, for the British government, arguing against
permitting publication of D. H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterly's Lover" (1960)
Slashdot Mirror
The Twinhead that I got does have a fan in it. But the fan is thermostatically controlled. I had the computer for months before finding the right (wrong?) conditions to trigger fan operation. In practice, the Twinhead runs fanless.
Twinhead does not have the best prices. I found that Dell had clearly better price/performance. But Dell has a loud fan.
BOTTOM LINE: if you want quiet, the Twinhead is well worth it!
Question: does anyone know of other PC laptops that also have fanless operation? (I will be getting a new laptop in a few months; so I'd like to know about alternatives.)
I think that citing support from The Economist would be beneficial.
I'm not sure that I agree with all this, but it's an interesting perspective.
You are part of Nupedia and you are biased in its favor. That's fair enough. You make comments that strongly support your views about Nupedia. That too is fair. But then you make wholly misleading claims like "Our review process is vastly superior to that of Britannica". This is wrong. But even if the claim was true, you would not know that it was, because you have not tested your process under the conditions in which it needs to be tested.
Here's a comparison. Imagine you wrote a program to draw polygons. Just wrote--not even tested. Then you claimed that your programming-writing methodology was better than the one used by Adobe and Corel to develop their drawing programs. Such a claim is clueless.
Nupedia has a handfull of short articles. It is as useful for reference as a polygon-only program is for drawing. The Britannica's treatment of numerous subjects is similar to the treatment in book length studies of those subjects. And Britannica maintains scholarliness, clarity, and authority. It is as useful for general reference as Adobe and Corel programs are for drawing.
You do both Nupedia and yourself a disservice by stating such nonsense.
An encyclopaedia is just like any other (nonfiction) book, except that it covers more topics. You pay for a book on astronomy. Or a book on biochemistry. Or on Greek history. Etc. With an encyclopedia, you get all those books in one.
The encyclopaedia Brittanica is truly scholarly. I once picked several topics at random, looked them up in other highly-regarded specialist sources, then looked them up in the Brittanica. (It was a project that took a few weeks.) The Brittancia was superb, presenting the knowledge clearly, concisely, and with great insights. Sometimes the Britannica was even more insightful than the specialist sources. And both the breadth and depth of coverage were excellent.
The Britannica articles are not written by just anybody. The Britannica editors choose the articles' authors from among the leading researchers in their respective fields. So the erudite qualtiy of the articles is entirely expected.
Second, you might read a bit more about breast cancer and probabilities. The BRCA genes much increase your chances of getting breast cancer. That's it. Like crossing in the middle of the street increases your chances of being hit by a car. But you can still cross the street and reasonably expect to live.
Whether you've got the genes of not, you can take preventative measures to avoid breast cancer. First and foremost of those measures is diet: low in saturated fats, high in fresh (cruciferous) vegetables and fresh fruits, and ideally organic. You might also include some vitamin C supplementation.
The $100 billion/yr cancer industry benefits from your ignorance and fears.
Thanks!
When you write something in a computer language, there is no ambiguity. The CMU proposal was to do the same with the law. Nothing ever came of the proposal, though. Imagine all the vested interests it would come up against.
It's worth taking a look at the example in the thesis (in the Appendix). The example is a single section of the law, comprising about 2.5 pages. It is entirely incomprehensible. It is contradictory. And, when you eventually come to understand parts of it, it is ridiculous. The author then shows how it would be practical to rewrite this in a formal (i.e. computer-like) language.
Of course, there are still subjective tests to be made when applying the law. Humans are still needed. But the knowledge recitation and logical analysis should be, and could be, done in a much better way.
According to www.earhart.org, the US government covered up the truth about Earhart's disappearance. Question: what motives would the government have for this?
This is an amazing story! I can understand that you might want to post anonymously. Like another Slashdotter, though, I would like some independent evidence. Could you supply a link to the court site, or the company's web site?
I like music. And if you cannot tell the difference between live music and music played back through a $2000 stereo, then you are deaf. Live music is much much more enjoyable. Indeed, it is a different experience. Many people seem to think that this is because of the different physical environment in which live music is played. They are wrong. The experience that I get from my stereo is fairly close to live. People who visit me who would not think of themselves as audiophiles have found the same.
Why are some people, who have obviously never had the experience, complaining about others enjoying music at something closely approximating the way the musicians played it?
Bill Gates has made this point in some speeches. Geeks might not like it, but he's right. And Gates operates a business: he is giving the customer what the customer wants. This definitely contributes Microsoft's success.
I don't work for Twinhead, and have no affiliation, but I can recommend them. Curiously, their advertising makes no mention of their computers being fanless.
______________________________________________I may have said something yesterday, changed it today, and will change it tomorrow. This does not mean that simply because I made a statement yesterday, I should adhere to it." --Ayatollah Khomeini
"
Does anyone know what would happen if source code that violated those patents was produced in Europe (where there are no software patents), and then the object code was distributed to the Land of the Free (over the 'net)?
Also, has anyone tried contacting IBM etc. about using those patents? I know nothing here, but it might be that some of those patents are purely defensive--i.e. just to prevent others patenting them. So IBM might let GNU use them.
There has been preliminary approval of a settlement. The court is scheduled to hold a "fairness hearing" on 27 July 2001. It looks like Alexa will lose a couple million dollars. Is this enough to deter others from trying such tricks?
Like many folks, I spend hours a day on a laptop. The big problem is posture--because the screen should be higher. I think that this is great.
________________________________________
Don't blame Windows--if you were a Microsoft operating system, you'd have problems too.
A likely scenario has been suggested by Hermann Burchard (at okstate.edu):
To summarize the above--a comet crashed into Earth, which triggered massive volcanism, which in turn led to extinctions._______________________________________
Don't blame Windows--if you were a Microsoft operating system, you'd have problems too.
The work is being undertaken by the Raelian-backed Bahamas-based Clonaid company, which is charging a few hundred thousand dollars. Clonaid says that if it's successful, they intend to make it a business. Some independent scientists who have examined the Clonaid methodology say that it will "probably" work.
Cloning a dead adult is not the same as bringing the adult back to life, because the clone would not have the dead person's memories. But cloning an infant seems different. Clonaid actually refers to their work as "bringing back to life a 10-month old child". (Even a new-born infant has some memories from its mother's womb, though--as well as some affects from the womb environment.)
The London Sunday Times has the story. Brave New World, here we come!
______________________________________________
Don't blame Windows--if you were a Microsoft operating system, you'd have problems too.
So access times are much slower than for a conventional hard disk.
The Economist also includes a review of World War 3.0: Microsoft and its enemies by Ken Auletta. In comparing the two books, they say that "Mr Auletta gives a top-down view, placing the Microsoft trial in the broader context of the telecommunications, technology and media industries, [whereas] Mr Heilemann ... gives the bottom-up view from Silicon Valley ... Anyone looking for the behind-the-scenes story of the Microsoft trial will have to read both books to get the full picture. Mr Heilemann's account is the more entertaining and faster-paced of the two, whereas Mr Auletta's is more substantial."
The conclusion from the twin reviews is worth quoting:
_________________________________________
"Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?" --prosecuting lawyer, for the British government, arguing against permitting publication of D. H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterly's Lover" (1960)