So if I understand correctly, setting a bit requires some minimal energy requirement according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Does this necessarily mean that there's an absolute limit on how big a computer memory can go and there's no way around it without causing a catastrophic event on universal scale?
I remember when everyone were talking about IT. Even my mother who doesn't know a thing about technology asked me about it. I simply replied that it's probably another over-hyped piece of technology that won't see much use and much closer to junk, so don't hold her breath over it (no pun intended)
Boy I didn't know how close I was to the mark.
The average American is already fatter than two third-world country man combined. And we'll be using this instead of walking? I can imagine a city in the future HAS to be built around these because the population is so incredibly lazy and obese.
And he wants $5000 for this? No thanks, I'll walk.
Bah I already patented it, you just lost your billions to me, mate.
The scheme is very simple, anything can be compressed into only one bit: 0 means no data 1 means there's something but it's compressed and encrypted into 1.
See? Not even quantum computers can break my unbreakable encryption. Muhahahahahahaha
Man, if you're looking at the white iBook and you say it's too heavy then you're in for a trouble. At 2.2 kgs that thing is light enough, lighter than about 90% of laptops there is. There goes 90% of your choice.
Then you want one with long battery life, and most laptops nowadays have 2-3 hours. I approximate there goes another 70% of what's left of your choice.
Also you'd like one with USB, Firewire, ethernet, and wifi support. I think you can get USB and ethernet built in, and wifi is probably there too, but firewire is relatively new in the PC space, so you'll probably gonna need one in a PCMCIA card. The problem is usually PCCards are power hogs, so you won't get the full maximum battery life out of it. Beats me how iBook did it and still have a decent battery life. I approximate you lost another 60%-70% here.
The problem is you don't want to pay for windows at all. Most PC laptop manufacturer today simply don't want to bother refunding windows because most laptop devices require very specific driver to work. For example Toshiba doesn't even have a BIOS setup, all is done through an app in windows. The last laptop I've used that has a BIOS like in desktops (and you'll _definitely_ need one of it) is Dell. But none of Dell's models are lighter and smaller than the iBook.
So in conclusion: 1. Your choice is extremely small, if you did find one exactly like your spec, maybe it'll be just one machine with no other choice. 2. Some of your requirements are contradicting one another, try to loosen up in some area. 3. Even when you did find one, it'll probably be extremely expensive. Or, it'll be of very low quality from an unknown manufacturer.
I think your only choice is that iBook you're looking at in the first place. It's just a tad heavier and bigger than you like. The only other viable option is the Picture Book from Sony, but you'll have to swallow the windows license there.
I got the same problem before, as I already owned a Win2000 CD, and I needed to purchase two laptops. Mind you, I purchased them _in sequence_ and they blow up in sequence as well, so no two copies of them running at the same time, blah blah blah. In short me and my windows CD are perfectly law abiding. But no, I have to buy _another_ windows with each laptop I bought. Now I have multiple copies of 2000 and XP scattered around, and me end up paying MS tax multiple times.
It's pretty frustrating, I know, but trying to get what I wanted was extremely difficult (I needed a high performance one. Light, and small if possible) and the chance of finding it was small. In your case, it's very miniscule.
My suggestion is don't try to look for something that doesn't exist, you'll be wasting your time and energy getting frustrated. Get that damned iBook instead:)
I wonder, what will happen to the kernel source then? Surely this means that some part of the kernel is available as source while some other part isn't. If some distribution flatly refuse to incorporate Intel's patches to stay open source, then isn't it will inevitably split the kernel in two? One with BSD license and one with GPL?
It doesn't matter if a program writes to sector 33 or 0, or even 500. It is NOT supposed to do that. It's just plain wrong.
I don't know where do they got the idea to basically take over my computer for their paranoia mindset. What they're telling you is THEIR property matters, yours don't. Sounds ridiculous now if you let them calculate your taxes for you. After all they can just wash their hands if something is wrong with your forms.
It's amazing how much the software industry can get away with nowadays. Buggy products, no problem. Destroying someone's data, no problem. The almighty DMCA can protect them. What about us?
Since the stone age Toshiba laptops always had an analog volume control. At first I was quite concerned because you know how analog vol control tends to degrade over time as it becomes dirty, and my previous Dell laptop has a digital one (press Fn-PgUp or something to raise the volume).
After a while, I practically stopped using windows volume control altogether and rely solely on the analog dial. It's just so much better and faster than click-click-click-click required to lower the vol just in case someone is coming in the middle of a pr0n.
Sometimes analog is not necessarily bad like what the tech industry tried to tell you. Toshiba seems to understand it for a long time. No laptop/desktop that I know of still includes an analog vol control and keeps doing it even in their highest end model.
It is sometimes very inconvenient because some of us do need more than one phone due to business use. You wouldn't want anyone caling on your private number, so you give everyone your business mobile number. That way, when your business cell phone rings at 2 am you can safely ignore it, while if your private phone rings at 2 am you know something is amiss. At least that's how most people do it in my country.
Add to those two cells a PDA, and you'll get one hell of a mess to carry around with you all the time. With THREE devices to carry, you'll bound to misplace one of them eventually.
Personally I love this kind of phones, the ones that combines a cell and a PDA. This will bring my total count of device luggage to two. If only the P800 can manage two SIM cards then I'll be more than happy to get that. Paired with the bluetooth headset, it's perfect.
So far there's a hack floating around that lets your small nokia 8210 (I think it's called 8290 is the US, not sure) to manage two SIM cards. It's quite a popular hack here.
This P800 could actually be useful, while some of Nokia's new phones are just plain ridiculous and looks more like a knee-jerk reaction to the P800 or Treo to fight for market share.
After all, I quit buying Nokia after some bad experiences with their marketing tactics that more and more looks like Microsoft with their selling a new untested handsets that crashes often, and gradually improving the ROM every month or so. This is a PHONE we're talking about, for God's sake. I don't want to lose all my contact numbers and have to pay for the software upgrade everytime Nokia screws up. Since T68 was released, Nokia was all downhill.
>High profit margins don't make you a monopoly...
>MS has priced their product (successfully, I'm sure) to maximise their profit
I couldn't agree more. But maybe a coke can analogy doesn't sit well with/. crowd. A better one is probably branded clothing.
Nike can charge ridiculously high amount of money for their apparel and stuff. They definitely didn't spend $50 for a piece of shirt. They can probably sell it for $5 and still make a profit. (that makes it a 1000% profit, excuse my math if it's incorrect)
An even better example is Gucci, Prada, LV, etc. Have you ever taken a stroll down fifth ave lately? What Nike charged for $50 they charge for $500 or so (makes a nice 10000% profit). You cannot believe the insane amount of money they ask for clothing. And they also make their extremely expensive clothing in third-world countries where they pay workers' wages by a handful of dollars per MONTH.
All this doesn't make Nike, or Gucci, or Prada a monopoly doesn't it? It's simply your usual economic law at work: highest profit for lowest cost.
Don't get me wrong, I hate MS just like the next guy, but trying to attack them from their windows pricing scheme is not IMHO the best way. They can easily dodge this.
This could be exactly what they want, so that they can stop giving NNTP service to their customers.
Lots of ISPs are already ignoring usenet, now this could be just the ticket so that RR can ban it with a reason. Why would they want to do that is probably purely economical.
I get the joke, but come on, since when does April fool's day become an all-out attempt to annoy the hell out of people. It's not funny for me and for some people here.
You all can laugh at me as I'm not quite sure if Linus quitting is a joke or not, although his post sounds like he's high on something, not his usual self. Me reason that it can also be he's extremely annoyed at something and seriously considering quitting. If it IS a joke, then I'm laughing at myself.
Someone making a joke at me I can laugh at, but someone annoying me is something totally different.
Although a ring-sized phone will be a practical impossibility, it can be used in a more practical way if it is combined with something else.
The current "best" PDA-phone combination is arguably the Nokia 9210 (or yet-to-be-released 9290 in the US). Although the size is perfectly ok for myself, the weight is not. A ring-sized phone embedded inside a PDA could be the planned direction for this miniaturization.
Palm is too bulky a unit to be used as a phone, contrary to whatever Handspring say about its Treo. The 9210 is too heavy and too thick for most people. Imagine a phone with Palm functionality, the integration of 9210, and the weight of 80g. This ring-phone technology could be the answer to our prayers.
Agreed. A ring-phone will be too much. I already have problem with newer, smaller nokia phones that got a keypad made for an alien with impossible angle in their fingers. That's not counting the engineering problem of where would you put the keypad? the speaker? the mic? the battery?
Of course, all can be solved with the mighty bluetooth. But having separate keypad and everything kinda defeats the purpose.
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So if I understand correctly, setting a bit requires some minimal energy requirement according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Does this necessarily mean that there's an absolute limit on how big a computer memory can go and there's no way around it without causing a catastrophic event on universal scale?
Emacs 5ux0rz, vi r0x0rz!!!!!! vi 0wnz j00!
Cities will be built around these?
I remember when everyone were talking about IT. Even my mother who doesn't know a thing about technology asked me about it. I simply replied that it's probably another over-hyped piece of technology that won't see much use and much closer to junk, so don't hold her breath over it (no pun intended)
Boy I didn't know how close I was to the mark.
The average American is already fatter than two third-world country man combined. And we'll be using this instead of walking? I can imagine a city in the future HAS to be built around these because the population is so incredibly lazy and obese.
And he wants $5000 for this? No thanks, I'll walk.
Bah I already patented it, you just lost your billions to me, mate.
The scheme is very simple, anything can be compressed into only one bit:
0 means no data
1 means there's something but it's compressed and encrypted into 1.
See? Not even quantum computers can break my unbreakable encryption. Muhahahahahahaha
Man, if you're looking at the white iBook and you say it's too heavy then you're in for a trouble. At 2.2 kgs that thing is light enough, lighter than about 90% of laptops there is. There goes 90% of your choice.
:)
Then you want one with long battery life, and most laptops nowadays have 2-3 hours. I approximate there goes another 70% of what's left of your choice.
Also you'd like one with USB, Firewire, ethernet, and wifi support. I think you can get USB and ethernet built in, and wifi is probably there too, but firewire is relatively new in the PC space, so you'll probably gonna need one in a PCMCIA card. The problem is usually PCCards are power hogs, so you won't get the full maximum battery life out of it. Beats me how iBook did it and still have a decent battery life. I approximate you lost another 60%-70% here.
The problem is you don't want to pay for windows at all. Most PC laptop manufacturer today simply don't want to bother refunding windows because most laptop devices require very specific driver to work. For example Toshiba doesn't even have a BIOS setup, all is done through an app in windows. The last laptop I've used that has a BIOS like in desktops (and you'll _definitely_ need one of it) is Dell. But none of Dell's models are lighter and smaller than the iBook.
So in conclusion:
1. Your choice is extremely small, if you did find one exactly like your spec, maybe it'll be just one machine with no other choice.
2. Some of your requirements are contradicting one another, try to loosen up in some area.
3. Even when you did find one, it'll probably be extremely expensive. Or, it'll be of very low quality from an unknown manufacturer.
I think your only choice is that iBook you're looking at in the first place. It's just a tad heavier and bigger than you like. The only other viable option is the Picture Book from Sony, but you'll have to swallow the windows license there.
I got the same problem before, as I already owned a Win2000 CD, and I needed to purchase two laptops. Mind you, I purchased them _in sequence_ and they blow up in sequence as well, so no two copies of them running at the same time, blah blah blah. In short me and my windows CD are perfectly law abiding. But no, I have to buy _another_ windows with each laptop I bought. Now I have multiple copies of 2000 and XP scattered around, and me end up paying MS tax multiple times.
It's pretty frustrating, I know, but trying to get what I wanted was extremely difficult (I needed a high performance one. Light, and small if possible) and the chance of finding it was small. In your case, it's very miniscule.
My suggestion is don't try to look for something that doesn't exist, you'll be wasting your time and energy getting frustrated. Get that damned iBook instead
I wonder, what will happen to the kernel source then? Surely this means that some part of the kernel is available as source while some other part isn't. If some distribution flatly refuse to incorporate Intel's patches to stay open source, then isn't it will inevitably split the kernel in two? One with BSD license and one with GPL?
Wonder what RMS will shout about this.
Error. Your #16 should use three exclamation marks.
...
15)
16) Profit!!!
Remember that. After all, we're in Soviet Russia. Profit has to be written with three exclamation marks.
Then it maybe is.
It doesn't matter if a program writes to sector 33 or 0, or even 500. It is NOT supposed to do that. It's just plain wrong.
I don't know where do they got the idea to basically take over my computer for their paranoia mindset. What they're telling you is THEIR property matters, yours don't. Sounds ridiculous now if you let them calculate your taxes for you. After all they can just wash their hands if something is wrong with your forms.
It's amazing how much the software industry can get away with nowadays. Buggy products, no problem. Destroying someone's data, no problem. The almighty DMCA can protect them. What about us?
Since the stone age Toshiba laptops always had an analog volume control. At first I was quite concerned because you know how analog vol control tends to degrade over time as it becomes dirty, and my previous Dell laptop has a digital one (press Fn-PgUp or something to raise the volume).
After a while, I practically stopped using windows volume control altogether and rely solely on the analog dial. It's just so much better and faster than click-click-click-click required to lower the vol just in case someone is coming in the middle of a pr0n.
Sometimes analog is not necessarily bad like what the tech industry tried to tell you. Toshiba seems to understand it for a long time. No laptop/desktop that I know of still includes an analog vol control and keeps doing it even in their highest end model.
It is sometimes very inconvenient because some of us do need more than one phone due to business use. You wouldn't want anyone caling on your private number, so you give everyone your business mobile number. That way, when your business cell phone rings at 2 am you can safely ignore it, while if your private phone rings at 2 am you know something is amiss. At least that's how most people do it in my country.
Add to those two cells a PDA, and you'll get one hell of a mess to carry around with you all the time. With THREE devices to carry, you'll bound to misplace one of them eventually.
Personally I love this kind of phones, the ones that combines a cell and a PDA. This will bring my total count of device luggage to two. If only the P800 can manage two SIM cards then I'll be more than happy to get that. Paired with the bluetooth headset, it's perfect.
So far there's a hack floating around that lets your small nokia 8210 (I think it's called 8290 is the US, not sure) to manage two SIM cards. It's quite a popular hack here.
This P800 could actually be useful, while some of Nokia's new phones are just plain ridiculous and looks more like a knee-jerk reaction to the P800 or Treo to fight for market share.
After all, I quit buying Nokia after some bad experiences with their marketing tactics that more and more looks like Microsoft with their selling a new untested handsets that crashes often, and gradually improving the ROM every month or so. This is a PHONE we're talking about, for God's sake. I don't want to lose all my contact numbers and have to pay for the software upgrade everytime Nokia screws up. Since T68 was released, Nokia was all downhill.
In Soviet Russia, Ultima Online sells YOU!
Wait a sec, didn't it happen in the US too? OMG.
Get a life, people, or else STAY IN SOVIET RUSSIA like you deserve. Bwahaha
>High profit margins don't make you a monopoly ...
>MS has priced their product (successfully, I'm sure) to maximise their profit
I couldn't agree more. But maybe a coke can analogy doesn't sit well with /. crowd. A better one is probably branded clothing.
Nike can charge ridiculously high amount of money for their apparel and stuff. They definitely didn't spend $50 for a piece of shirt. They can probably sell it for $5 and still make a profit. (that makes it a 1000% profit, excuse my math if it's incorrect)
An even better example is Gucci, Prada, LV, etc. Have you ever taken a stroll down fifth ave lately? What Nike charged for $50 they charge for $500 or so (makes a nice 10000% profit). You cannot believe the insane amount of money they ask for clothing. And they also make their extremely expensive clothing in third-world countries where they pay workers' wages by a handful of dollars per MONTH.
All this doesn't make Nike, or Gucci, or Prada a monopoly doesn't it? It's simply your usual economic law at work: highest profit for lowest cost.
Don't get me wrong, I hate MS just like the next guy, but trying to attack them from their windows pricing scheme is not IMHO the best way. They can easily dodge this.
This could be exactly what they want, so that they can stop giving NNTP service to their customers.
Lots of ISPs are already ignoring usenet, now this could be just the ticket so that RR can ban it with a reason. Why would they want to do that is probably purely economical.
I get the joke, but come on, since when does April fool's day become an all-out attempt to annoy the hell out of people. It's not funny for me and for some people here.
You all can laugh at me as I'm not quite sure if Linus quitting is a joke or not, although his post sounds like he's high on something, not his usual self. Me reason that it can also be he's extremely annoyed at something and seriously considering quitting. If it IS a joke, then I'm laughing at myself.
Someone making a joke at me I can laugh at, but someone annoying me is something totally different.
Although a ring-sized phone will be a practical impossibility, it can be used in a more practical way if it is combined with something else.
The current "best" PDA-phone combination is arguably the Nokia 9210 (or yet-to-be-released 9290 in the US). Although the size is perfectly ok for myself, the weight is not. A ring-sized phone embedded inside a PDA could be the planned direction for this miniaturization.
Palm is too bulky a unit to be used as a phone, contrary to whatever Handspring say about its Treo. The 9210 is too heavy and too thick for most people. Imagine a phone with Palm functionality, the integration of 9210, and the weight of 80g. This ring-phone technology could be the answer to our prayers.
Agreed. A ring-phone will be too much. I already have problem with newer, smaller nokia phones that got a keypad made for an alien with impossible angle in their fingers. That's not counting the engineering problem of where would you put the keypad? the speaker? the mic? the battery?
Of course, all can be solved with the mighty bluetooth. But having separate keypad and everything kinda defeats the purpose.
during talking to your ring you accidentally swallow it. I wonder what will the other person hear.