Do you, really? There's an awful lot of women who post here, not to mention transgendered individuals who may identify as one, both, or neither of the traditional genders. With a gender-neutral name like "realityimpaired" how, exactly, do you "know" this? What is it that gives you a strong enough impression of my masculinity to make such a declaration?
And what about those of us who share names with celebrities, or things like that? The case of "Mike" Bolton from Office Space does actually happen in real life (case in point, if you google my name, you either come up with stories about somebody in Arizona who pissed off a Dell tech support agent, or you come up with somebody who's working as a model in the UK).
And that's to say nothing of people who've legally changed their names in protest, or because it's funny. I had a prof in University who changed his last name to Strangelove when he got his PhD. There's also been a fairly well publicized incident last year in Canada because somebody who had changed his last name to Nobody was arrested during the G20 protests, and got abused by cops who thought he was lying about his name.... What's going to happen when somebody with a name like that signs up to Google+?
I, for one, do *not* want to have to send them a copy of my driver's license just to prove that I am who I say I am. Frankly, it's not their fucking job to police anonymity on the Internet. I could sign up saying that I'm the Queen of Sheba, and they have no business asking me to prove that, because it's just an Internet site. If I was applying for a job, or wanting to run for public office, I could see the requirement for some proof of identity, but it's just a social network, and if they can't see the difference then I don't want to have anything to do with their stupidity.
Real names, I don't object to. I use my real name on Facebook, and that's not a problem. What I object to is that G+ insists that I make that public, and that I allow my profile to be public and searchable. I don't want it to be so, and as long as G+ insists on that, I'm not touching it.
And don't give me that bullshit about it just being your name and gender. Even that is too much information for me to be wanting to share with the random fucks around the world. And knowing Google, it's going to remain just your name and gender until they decide enough people have signed up, at which point it's going to become more than that. And with them deleting profiles of people who don't comply? No effing way. Not touching it.
How bad does it have to be that I think Facebook is a better option for my privacy?
You realize that you can easily remove the password prompt on the keyring by nuking your keyring and not entering a password when it asks for it the next time?
That said, I still have to enter my password on my laptop, despite using autologin, because I have it set to lock the screen on startup. (prefer entering password through locked screen, because the network and other services start up earlier).
Both McAfee and Symantec sell products other than antivirus, though... Kaspersky may suffer a little if viruses disappeared, as may AVG and Avast!, but McAfee and Norton wouldn't be hurt at all. Microsoft certainly wouldn't suffer if they had the opportunity to drop Defender... that one's a money pit for them, and their profits would actually go up.
But as others have pointed out, criminal syndicates who use viruses either to collect credit card info, or to launch DoS attacks for the purposes of either keeping competitors off the 'net or blackmailing companies have a *lot* more to gain than Antivirus makers. Antivirus makers are simply profiting off the need to fight back against the people who are actually writing the viruses.
I think you've done a good job of pointing out what's wrong with the phrase actually... those in a technical field, or those who took a moment to read the Wikipedia article (and yes, usual caveats about believing everything you read in Wikipedia, just ask Steven Colbert about elephants...), the phrase Embarrassingly Parallel has a specific meaning. A journalist or non-technical reader, however, will probably assume that it is an exclamation that doesn't actually add anything to the meaning, as though they're describing something as ridiculously easy.
That's the main problem with tech reporting though... wording something in a way that will be understood by your reader without insulting the intelligence of the people actually in the field.
people flying in and then transferring directly in the transfers area to an internal flight to another part of the UK
Every other airport I've seen keeps international travelers separate from domestic flights (you have to go through customs to reach the domestic terminal). Does Heathrow not have this arrangement?
No it doesn't. The UK (like the U.S. and Canada) doesn't have exit controls either, sure the airlines check you have a passport, but the government only checks on the way in.
That actually depends on where you're going, at least in the case of US/Canada. Both countries have reciprocal agreements with some countries, and the ability to pre-clear customs on the way out rather than on the way in. I know last time I flew to the states from Ottawa, I went through US customs/immigration before I even got on the plane, and did not have to go through a customs checkpoint upon landing. The same for the return trip, though the customs checkpoint was not at my point of departure, but at a changeover in Detroit. The same was not true when I went to France by air in 2004, but in that case, customs was more a case of "you landed on an Air France flight from Montreal, you have a Canadian passport, and you speak French, have a nice stay, and would you like a stamp on your passport from CDG to prove you were here?"
I know from experience, though, that Canada/US do pre-clear customs for each other on the way out, however it may depend on which airport you're flying from.
That's going to suck for people like me, who are incapable of passing a security camera without making silly faces at it (just to point out the silliness of actually having a camera in the first place)
Too bad they don't make a hybrid diesel power plant with regenerative braking so you could get some of that power back when you were braking to boost acceleration again.
I bet that could get over 60mpg.
You're setting your sights too low. A 30-year old Mercedes Benz diesel can easily pull out 35-40mpg anyway. Topping 60mpg is not difficult for a modern turbodiesel, especially in a light-weight car. If you built a hybrid turbodiesel and designed it right, 100mpg should be achievable.
I can see a reason to use 3 screens to develop software... not a good one, but I can see a reason... one screen has your library reference and algorithm outline up, one screen has your development environment, and one screen has compiler/output.
You and I could easily work with less screen real estate, but it's a question of convenience.
Extending the logic further, Windows 7 is actually 18 years old. It's based on NT, after all, and the first version of NT (3.1) was released in 1993.
But it isn't 18 years old. Just as the Linux system I'm typing this on isn't 20 years old. I am running a *much* more recent version of the kernel, and there have been some major revisions of key system components since then. The x.org I'm running is less than a year old, the e17 desktop environment is only a couple of weeks old. Where do you draw the line?
I would venture that XP is *three* years old, because SP3 was released in 2008. SP3 introduced enough major changes in the system that it could be considered a different operating system, just like SP2 and SP1 before it. Same UI and (mostly) backwards compatible, but with some very different workings under the hood.
I've seen a couple of dozen movies in IMAX 3D, and can count on one hand the number that are actually worth seeing in 3D. Most recently was Harry Potter 7, part 2, which I saw last Saturday.... the 3D was exceptionally well done. But there were only two scenes in the entire movie where it added anything noticeable, and I could easily have done without the 3D without affecting my enjoyment of the movie, and have no intention of buying the 3D version of the movie when it comes out on disc.
And it's the same story for basically any live action movie I've seen in 3D. All of the movies I can name where the 3D was actually good and added to the movie are movies which were 3D to begin with: computer animated movies like Shrek and Toy Story. Those movies make up a very small proportion of my DVD collection, and since I already have a 1080p 42" screen, I see absolutely no reason to upgrade my TV until it dies. (that was the impetus that finally got me to upgrade to Bluray). The jump from DVD to Bluray simply isn't as noticeable as the jump from VHS to DVD was, and most 3D movies simply aren't worth upgrading for.
No, they don't make sense, because you can buy a 20" screen for $100.
Seriously? Does that $100 monitor fit into the not especially huge laptop case? And how much does it weigh?
Good question. I haven't seen a 20" screen that'd fit comfortably into my laptop bag. That said, another poster did draw my attention to this, which would fit comfortably into my laptop bag, and only weighs 3lbs.
1. Those who absolutely need two monitors when travelling,
Fair enough. If I was having to frequently write large amounts of code on-site and was travelling by car, I would certainly consider such a laptop.
I wouldn't. I'd ask them to have a second display waiting for me at my destination. Anybody who can afford to have a consultant drive on site to do some coding for them can afford to provide said consultant with a workstation or a place to work. I can simply commandeer the monitor that's plugged into that workstation to run a dual display with my laptop.
2. Those who aren't willing to pack a second monitor with them but are will to pack a 4.5kg laptop, and
Well, that doesn't really shrink the set by much. The barrier for packing a second monitor and setting it up is far higher than packing a huge laptop.
No so much. As said in the link above, there are options out there for a second monitor you can pack with you that will fit in your laptop bag. Between that monitor and my existing 13" laptop, the total weight would be about 2.8kgs for a portable dual screen setup that would fit easily in my laptop bag, and at a total cost about 1/4 what the laptop in TFA is proposed to cost. (not to mention that the 2nd display is a one-time cost that isn't incurred when it comes time to retire/upgrade my old laptop).
3. Those who are moving around too much to justify buying a second monitor at their destination...or those whose destination is not so much under their control, or not in a place likely to have a spare monitor.
I have actually needed a very large screen luggable beast before (dual screens weren't available then) and they make perfect sense given the right condidions.
They do. I have a multi-display high resolution setup at home on my desk. I also have an ultraportable laptop that I use on the road. The ultraportable laptop is usable for almost everything I do on the main system, thanks to desktop switching. It's not as convenient, but it's certainly workable for a temporary solution such as would be the case on the road with a laptop.
The article says the designer came up with the idea "when he needed a video editing workstation on a 6 month working holiday in Hawaii."
Yeah, well, that's nutso. Especially the bit about "working holiday".
But it makes perfect sense for anyone doing enough work off site that this is prefereable to lugging a desktop. Just because you don't need that, doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. After all, you probably don't need a toughbook or a PC/104 machine either...
No, I don't think it really does. It's a *lot* of money to spend on a laptop when there's alternative solutions available to you that are much less expensive, especially in the long run. My experience is that most people who use multi-display systems don't actually need 2 or 3 or 4+ monitors to do what they want to do, they simply find it more convenient to not have to desktop switch or alt-tab between windows. And I say that as somebody who uses a multi-display system almost daily. but even if you are among the few who actually *need* multiple displays, there's other options out there for you to have multiple displays on the road.
If I hadn't already posted, I could mod this one....
Only downside I see to it is that it's 1366x768. It'd be nice if it had a higher resolution. That said, it's plenty adequate for what it is, and would easily fit in my laptop bag alongside my laptop. Not only would it weigh less (1.3kg for the extra monitor, and 1.5kg for my laptop), it would cost significantly less ($200 for the monitor, and $400 for the laptop). That said, does it work in Linux?
A properly designed laptop bag can make that 4.5kg seem completely weightless, though. It's about weight distribution, and how you're carrying that weight. If it's in a briefcase at the end of your arm, then it'll suck. If it's in a shoulder bag that you're wearing on one shoulder, then it'll start to suck after a few hours. If it's in a proper backpack, or at least an across-the-chest messenger bag, then most humans can easily go all day without noticing the extra weight. 4.5kg really isn't that much.
That said, I'm typing this on a 1.5kg ultraportable 13.3" laptop. My main system at home is my former laptop... 17" 1920x1080 with a second 24" 1920x1080 acting as the main screen. The main reason I turned it into a desktop was because it's such a pain in the ass to simply close the lid and carry it somewhere... way too heavy. It's fine when it's all packed away in a laptop bag, but it's a behemoth when you want to just carry it under your arm. So I put the heavy duty desktop replacement laptop as a desktop, and do all my gaming and main development on it, and I bought what's basically an overgrown netbook with a real keyboard to do all the portable stuff on.
Of course... wouldn't the *real* portable solution to this problem be to use an operating system that lets you have multiple desktops, and easily switch between them? I mean, it's not as good as having a multiple screen display, but your eyes can only look at one screen at a time anyway. Since this isn't your permanent work environment, it's a laptop, why not simply alt-tab between the windows containing the information you want, or failing that, keep the windows arranged as you like it on a different desktop that you can switch to using ctrl-alt-left or ctrl-alt-right. Seems a much cheaper way of achieving the same goal, and even if you're stuck in Windows-land there are extensions available to the OS that enable desktop switching. Some of them are even free.
Fortunately, my bank's website works perfectly with Firefox, and I can pay my phone bill by adding the phone company to the list of payees through the bank.
As long as you have a noscript version of the site, you're fine. IE still renders plain HTML properly (well, some idiosyncracies with how it handles margins and css divs, but nothing the average user would ever notice). The problem is when you want to start adding fancy JavaScript, AJAX, or other Web 2.0 bling that IE 6 starts to gak. Present IE6 users with a one-time (per session) warning at the top advising them that they really should upgrade to something like Firefox or Chrome (or even a more recent version of IE), and then give them a non-AJAX version of the site, and they won't bitch about the fact that your site doesn't work for them.
As an added bonus, your site will also be usable to more mobile devices, as well as to more non-mainstream browsers, which in turn will increase the usability of your site overall.
I wouldn't trust the Gibson. It got hacked by a high school kid in 1995....
He is right about length trumping entropy when you're going against a hash or a dictionary attack, though. Personally, I'll take a phrase, translate it into some other language (preferably one that isn't written with the latin alphabet), romanize it, and then deliberately misspell it with leetspeak. The result is usually a password that's very long, resilient against dictionary attacks, and is easy enough to regenerate that you don't have to remember the actual password.
Did you hear that whooshing sound? He was being facetious, knowing his audience already knows of many legitimate uses for torrenting that have nothing to do with piracy, and was just waiting for some pedant to point one of them out.:) (and hey, it was either somebody talking about a Linux distro, or some WoW player pointing out that they get their updates through torrents)
To play devil's advocate though, most of the legitimate torrent users run their own tracker, rather than using a centralized tracker like TPB, specifically because of the not-so-legitimate uses that allegedly happen there....:)
Want to copy contact across - Orange suggest copying all contacts onto SIM (confirmed SIM supports multiple numbers per contact). When imported from SIM onto Blackberry it only copied the first number for each contact. I then plugged the SIM into my phone, and confirmed that all the contacts details had been copied onto the SIM correctly. Compare this to a HTC Desire - It asks you what the old phone is, if it has bluetooth it provides instructions on how to activate it - then it sucks all the contacts, calendar entries & text messages off the old phone, job was done in 2 minutes.
Not just that... now that you're on an Android platform, you don't need to synch your contacts across phones as long as you are moving to an Android phone. You turn the phone on, plug in your Google account details, and there's all your contacts, calendar, your email is set up, etc.. You can also log in to GMail or Google Calendar and modify it all directly from a PC. That is one thing that iOS and Blackberry are both sorely lacking. Blackberry has it to some degree, if you have an Exchange server you can set up, as Blackberry can pull phone contacts from the Outlook contact list, but have you ever tried that when there's 60,000+ contacts in the directory?
If they're listed at all on an American market, they are affected by it. I work for a Canadian company that has a secondary listing on NYSE, primary listing on TSX, and we still have to comply with Sarbox.
Considering the rules set out by Sarbox, I would actually trust Samsung a hell of a lot more than I would TSMC not to sell or reuse those designs for another product. Because they're in direct competition, Samsung could find themselves delisted from the stock exchanges, which would hurt their business a hell of a lot more than any profit they could garner from it, meaning that Samsung is likely to be significantly more open about how they're treating Apple's proprietary designs.
My guess is it has more to do with capacity, and switching from a 45nm to a 28nm fab than it does blocking out the competition. Building their i-somethings on a 28nm fab will mean less loss to heat, which means less power consumption, and longer battery life.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you, really? There's an awful lot of women who post here, not to mention transgendered individuals who may identify as one, both, or neither of the traditional genders. With a gender-neutral name like "realityimpaired" how, exactly, do you "know" this? What is it that gives you a strong enough impression of my masculinity to make such a declaration?
And what about those of us who share names with celebrities, or things like that? The case of "Mike" Bolton from Office Space does actually happen in real life (case in point, if you google my name, you either come up with stories about somebody in Arizona who pissed off a Dell tech support agent, or you come up with somebody who's working as a model in the UK).
And that's to say nothing of people who've legally changed their names in protest, or because it's funny. I had a prof in University who changed his last name to Strangelove when he got his PhD. There's also been a fairly well publicized incident last year in Canada because somebody who had changed his last name to Nobody was arrested during the G20 protests, and got abused by cops who thought he was lying about his name.... What's going to happen when somebody with a name like that signs up to Google+?
I, for one, do *not* want to have to send them a copy of my driver's license just to prove that I am who I say I am. Frankly, it's not their fucking job to police anonymity on the Internet. I could sign up saying that I'm the Queen of Sheba, and they have no business asking me to prove that, because it's just an Internet site. If I was applying for a job, or wanting to run for public office, I could see the requirement for some proof of identity, but it's just a social network, and if they can't see the difference then I don't want to have anything to do with their stupidity.
Real names, I don't object to. I use my real name on Facebook, and that's not a problem. What I object to is that G+ insists that I make that public, and that I allow my profile to be public and searchable. I don't want it to be so, and as long as G+ insists on that, I'm not touching it.
And don't give me that bullshit about it just being your name and gender. Even that is too much information for me to be wanting to share with the random fucks around the world. And knowing Google, it's going to remain just your name and gender until they decide enough people have signed up, at which point it's going to become more than that. And with them deleting profiles of people who don't comply? No effing way. Not touching it.
How bad does it have to be that I think Facebook is a better option for my privacy?
You realize that you can easily remove the password prompt on the keyring by nuking your keyring and not entering a password when it asks for it the next time?
That said, I still have to enter my password on my laptop, despite using autologin, because I have it set to lock the screen on startup. (prefer entering password through locked screen, because the network and other services start up earlier).
Both McAfee and Symantec sell products other than antivirus, though... Kaspersky may suffer a little if viruses disappeared, as may AVG and Avast!, but McAfee and Norton wouldn't be hurt at all. Microsoft certainly wouldn't suffer if they had the opportunity to drop Defender... that one's a money pit for them, and their profits would actually go up.
But as others have pointed out, criminal syndicates who use viruses either to collect credit card info, or to launch DoS attacks for the purposes of either keeping competitors off the 'net or blackmailing companies have a *lot* more to gain than Antivirus makers. Antivirus makers are simply profiting off the need to fight back against the people who are actually writing the viruses.
Technically, though, having a virus-infected PC is both storing and distributing viruses....
I think you've done a good job of pointing out what's wrong with the phrase actually... those in a technical field, or those who took a moment to read the Wikipedia article (and yes, usual caveats about believing everything you read in Wikipedia, just ask Steven Colbert about elephants...), the phrase Embarrassingly Parallel has a specific meaning. A journalist or non-technical reader, however, will probably assume that it is an exclamation that doesn't actually add anything to the meaning, as though they're describing something as ridiculously easy.
That's the main problem with tech reporting though... wording something in a way that will be understood by your reader without insulting the intelligence of the people actually in the field.
people flying in and then transferring directly in the transfers area to an internal flight to another part of the UK
Every other airport I've seen keeps international travelers separate from domestic flights (you have to go through customs to reach the domestic terminal).
Does Heathrow not have this arrangement?
No it doesn't. The UK (like the U.S. and Canada) doesn't have exit controls either, sure the airlines check you have a passport, but the government only checks on the way in.
That actually depends on where you're going, at least in the case of US/Canada. Both countries have reciprocal agreements with some countries, and the ability to pre-clear customs on the way out rather than on the way in. I know last time I flew to the states from Ottawa, I went through US customs/immigration before I even got on the plane, and did not have to go through a customs checkpoint upon landing. The same for the return trip, though the customs checkpoint was not at my point of departure, but at a changeover in Detroit. The same was not true when I went to France by air in 2004, but in that case, customs was more a case of "you landed on an Air France flight from Montreal, you have a Canadian passport, and you speak French, have a nice stay, and would you like a stamp on your passport from CDG to prove you were here?"
I know from experience, though, that Canada/US do pre-clear customs for each other on the way out, however it may depend on which airport you're flying from.
That's going to suck for people like me, who are incapable of passing a security camera without making silly faces at it (just to point out the silliness of actually having a camera in the first place)
Too bad they don't make a hybrid diesel power plant with regenerative braking so you could get some of that power back when you were braking to boost acceleration again.
I bet that could get over 60mpg.
You're setting your sights too low. A 30-year old Mercedes Benz diesel can easily pull out 35-40mpg anyway. Topping 60mpg is not difficult for a modern turbodiesel, especially in a light-weight car. If you built a hybrid turbodiesel and designed it right, 100mpg should be achievable.
e17 ftw. :) Lighter than XFCE, even more customizable. Don't regret installing it for a moment. :)
I can see a reason to use 3 screens to develop software... not a good one, but I can see a reason... one screen has your library reference and algorithm outline up, one screen has your development environment, and one screen has compiler/output.
You and I could easily work with less screen real estate, but it's a question of convenience.
Extending the logic further, Windows 7 is actually 18 years old. It's based on NT, after all, and the first version of NT (3.1) was released in 1993.
But it isn't 18 years old. Just as the Linux system I'm typing this on isn't 20 years old. I am running a *much* more recent version of the kernel, and there have been some major revisions of key system components since then. The x.org I'm running is less than a year old, the e17 desktop environment is only a couple of weeks old. Where do you draw the line?
I would venture that XP is *three* years old, because SP3 was released in 2008. SP3 introduced enough major changes in the system that it could be considered a different operating system, just like SP2 and SP1 before it. Same UI and (mostly) backwards compatible, but with some very different workings under the hood.
I've seen a couple of dozen movies in IMAX 3D, and can count on one hand the number that are actually worth seeing in 3D. Most recently was Harry Potter 7, part 2, which I saw last Saturday.... the 3D was exceptionally well done. But there were only two scenes in the entire movie where it added anything noticeable, and I could easily have done without the 3D without affecting my enjoyment of the movie, and have no intention of buying the 3D version of the movie when it comes out on disc.
And it's the same story for basically any live action movie I've seen in 3D. All of the movies I can name where the 3D was actually good and added to the movie are movies which were 3D to begin with: computer animated movies like Shrek and Toy Story. Those movies make up a very small proportion of my DVD collection, and since I already have a 1080p 42" screen, I see absolutely no reason to upgrade my TV until it dies. (that was the impetus that finally got me to upgrade to Bluray). The jump from DVD to Bluray simply isn't as noticeable as the jump from VHS to DVD was, and most 3D movies simply aren't worth upgrading for.
No, they don't make sense, because you can buy a 20" screen for $100.
Seriously? Does that $100 monitor fit into the not especially huge laptop case? And how much does it weigh?
Good question. I haven't seen a 20" screen that'd fit comfortably into my laptop bag. That said, another poster did draw my attention to this, which would fit comfortably into my laptop bag, and only weighs 3lbs.
1. Those who absolutely need two monitors when travelling,
Fair enough. If I was having to frequently write large amounts of code on-site and was travelling by car, I would certainly consider such a laptop.
I wouldn't. I'd ask them to have a second display waiting for me at my destination. Anybody who can afford to have a consultant drive on site to do some coding for them can afford to provide said consultant with a workstation or a place to work. I can simply commandeer the monitor that's plugged into that workstation to run a dual display with my laptop.
2. Those who aren't willing to pack a second monitor with them but are will to pack a 4.5kg laptop, and
Well, that doesn't really shrink the set by much. The barrier for packing a second monitor and setting it up is far higher than packing a huge laptop.
No so much. As said in the link above, there are options out there for a second monitor you can pack with you that will fit in your laptop bag. Between that monitor and my existing 13" laptop, the total weight would be about 2.8kgs for a portable dual screen setup that would fit easily in my laptop bag, and at a total cost about 1/4 what the laptop in TFA is proposed to cost. (not to mention that the 2nd display is a one-time cost that isn't incurred when it comes time to retire/upgrade my old laptop).
3. Those who are moving around too much to justify buying a second monitor at their destination. ..or those whose destination is not so much under their control, or not in a place likely to have a spare monitor.
I have actually needed a very large screen luggable beast before (dual screens weren't available then) and they make perfect sense given the right condidions.
They do. I have a multi-display high resolution setup at home on my desk. I also have an ultraportable laptop that I use on the road. The ultraportable laptop is usable for almost everything I do on the main system, thanks to desktop switching. It's not as convenient, but it's certainly workable for a temporary solution such as would be the case on the road with a laptop.
The article says the designer came up with the idea "when he needed a video editing workstation on a 6 month working holiday in Hawaii."
Yeah, well, that's nutso. Especially the bit about "working holiday".
But it makes perfect sense for anyone doing enough work off site that this is prefereable to lugging a desktop. Just because you don't need that, doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. After all, you probably don't need a toughbook or a PC/104 machine either...
No, I don't think it really does. It's a *lot* of money to spend on a laptop when there's alternative solutions available to you that are much less expensive, especially in the long run. My experience is that most people who use multi-display systems don't actually need 2 or 3 or 4+ monitors to do what they want to do, they simply find it more convenient to not have to desktop switch or alt-tab between windows. And I say that as somebody who uses a multi-display system almost daily. but even if you are among the few who actually *need* multiple displays, there's other options out there for you to have multiple displays on the road.
If I hadn't already posted, I could mod this one....
Only downside I see to it is that it's 1366x768. It'd be nice if it had a higher resolution. That said, it's plenty adequate for what it is, and would easily fit in my laptop bag alongside my laptop. Not only would it weigh less (1.3kg for the extra monitor, and 1.5kg for my laptop), it would cost significantly less ($200 for the monitor, and $400 for the laptop). That said, does it work in Linux?
A properly designed laptop bag can make that 4.5kg seem completely weightless, though. It's about weight distribution, and how you're carrying that weight. If it's in a briefcase at the end of your arm, then it'll suck. If it's in a shoulder bag that you're wearing on one shoulder, then it'll start to suck after a few hours. If it's in a proper backpack, or at least an across-the-chest messenger bag, then most humans can easily go all day without noticing the extra weight. 4.5kg really isn't that much.
That said, I'm typing this on a 1.5kg ultraportable 13.3" laptop. My main system at home is my former laptop... 17" 1920x1080 with a second 24" 1920x1080 acting as the main screen. The main reason I turned it into a desktop was because it's such a pain in the ass to simply close the lid and carry it somewhere... way too heavy. It's fine when it's all packed away in a laptop bag, but it's a behemoth when you want to just carry it under your arm. So I put the heavy duty desktop replacement laptop as a desktop, and do all my gaming and main development on it, and I bought what's basically an overgrown netbook with a real keyboard to do all the portable stuff on.
Of course... wouldn't the *real* portable solution to this problem be to use an operating system that lets you have multiple desktops, and easily switch between them? I mean, it's not as good as having a multiple screen display, but your eyes can only look at one screen at a time anyway. Since this isn't your permanent work environment, it's a laptop, why not simply alt-tab between the windows containing the information you want, or failing that, keep the windows arranged as you like it on a different desktop that you can switch to using ctrl-alt-left or ctrl-alt-right. Seems a much cheaper way of achieving the same goal, and even if you're stuck in Windows-land there are extensions available to the OS that enable desktop switching. Some of them are even free.
Fortunately, my bank's website works perfectly with Firefox, and I can pay my phone bill by adding the phone company to the list of payees through the bank.
As long as you have a noscript version of the site, you're fine. IE still renders plain HTML properly (well, some idiosyncracies with how it handles margins and css divs, but nothing the average user would ever notice). The problem is when you want to start adding fancy JavaScript, AJAX, or other Web 2.0 bling that IE 6 starts to gak. Present IE6 users with a one-time (per session) warning at the top advising them that they really should upgrade to something like Firefox or Chrome (or even a more recent version of IE), and then give them a non-AJAX version of the site, and they won't bitch about the fact that your site doesn't work for them.
As an added bonus, your site will also be usable to more mobile devices, as well as to more non-mainstream browsers, which in turn will increase the usability of your site overall.
I wouldn't trust the Gibson. It got hacked by a high school kid in 1995....
He is right about length trumping entropy when you're going against a hash or a dictionary attack, though. Personally, I'll take a phrase, translate it into some other language (preferably one that isn't written with the latin alphabet), romanize it, and then deliberately misspell it with leetspeak. The result is usually a password that's very long, resilient against dictionary attacks, and is easy enough to regenerate that you don't have to remember the actual password.
Did you hear that whooshing sound? He was being facetious, knowing his audience already knows of many legitimate uses for torrenting that have nothing to do with piracy, and was just waiting for some pedant to point one of them out. :) (and hey, it was either somebody talking about a Linux distro, or some WoW player pointing out that they get their updates through torrents)
To play devil's advocate though, most of the legitimate torrent users run their own tracker, rather than using a centralized tracker like TPB, specifically because of the not-so-legitimate uses that allegedly happen there.... :)
Want to copy contact across - Orange suggest copying all contacts onto SIM (confirmed SIM supports multiple numbers per contact). When imported from SIM onto Blackberry it only copied the first number for each contact. I then plugged the SIM into my phone, and confirmed that all the contacts details had been copied onto the SIM correctly.
Compare this to a HTC Desire - It asks you what the old phone is, if it has bluetooth it provides instructions on how to activate it - then it sucks all the contacts, calendar entries & text messages off the old phone, job was done in 2 minutes.
Not just that... now that you're on an Android platform, you don't need to synch your contacts across phones as long as you are moving to an Android phone. You turn the phone on, plug in your Google account details, and there's all your contacts, calendar, your email is set up, etc.. You can also log in to GMail or Google Calendar and modify it all directly from a PC. That is one thing that iOS and Blackberry are both sorely lacking. Blackberry has it to some degree, if you have an Exchange server you can set up, as Blackberry can pull phone contacts from the Outlook contact list, but have you ever tried that when there's 60,000+ contacts in the directory?
If they're listed at all on an American market, they are affected by it. I work for a Canadian company that has a secondary listing on NYSE, primary listing on TSX, and we still have to comply with Sarbox.
Considering the rules set out by Sarbox, I would actually trust Samsung a hell of a lot more than I would TSMC not to sell or reuse those designs for another product. Because they're in direct competition, Samsung could find themselves delisted from the stock exchanges, which would hurt their business a hell of a lot more than any profit they could garner from it, meaning that Samsung is likely to be significantly more open about how they're treating Apple's proprietary designs.
My guess is it has more to do with capacity, and switching from a 45nm to a 28nm fab than it does blocking out the competition. Building their i-somethings on a 28nm fab will mean less loss to heat, which means less power consumption, and longer battery life.
Sooner or later it'll be available to regular consumers. Probably with a 50GB/mo usage cap.