Well, there are three problems with windows update which IMO takes significant blame away from the users:
1. Microsoft's update system has been less than simple to date. Ex: Update 00dflkjsd_9 - fixes a flaw in some obscure dll which you have no idea if you use or even have installed. Only install this update if you are having problems with some arbitrary function after installing update fskjsdf_3. ( I have no idea what update fskjsdf_3 IS, never mind if I've had trouble with it. If I install this anyway, will it cause me trouble that it was trying to fix?) Yea, I made it up, but that's my impression of some items I've seen the few times I've had to update a windows machine. (I run OS X myself). This is compounded by MS's apparent refusal or inability to "roll up" updates in to "service packs" on a regular basis.
2. You have, until recently, been forced to launch MSIE and specifically visit WindowsUpdate to check for updates, Only MSIE works and there was no automated checking feature. To my knowledge auto-check is only available in XP. The large number of users in corporations don't have any need to upgrade from 2000, or 98/95 and don't have the auto-check feature.
3. Once you are at the site and see there are updates to install, you might have to reboot the system several times. MS is quite fond of "exclusive installers" where you can only choose the one update to install, then reboot and move on to others. From a clean install, this will usually require at least three reboots on an XP box. For a small home machine this may only take two minutes per reboot, but for self monitoring servers a reboot can take up to 10 minutes what with memory tests, system checks, RAID startup, clock syncing, etc.
The questions I have for Microsoft are:
Why can't you issue a service pack for XP already? All the patches are verified, just apply them cumulatively in a single unified installer. Why aren't the existing patches on the new CDs and systems that people are purchasing? Surely MS has the clout to force the integrators to apply existing patches before shipping a system. There's absolutely no reasonable excuse for a brand new system from HP, Dell, or Gateway to arrive with security holes that were identified and patched two years ago.
The fact that the worm was effective shows quite clearly that the worm spread faster than the patch. If the patch had spread faster than the worm, the worm would have little to no effect as most to all systems would be invulnerable. Which existed first has nothing to do with propagation.
I was just thinking again about the U.S. Constitution, specifically Article 1, section 8, clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Can one say that music is really "useful art"? Useful to me means things like, medical arts, architecture, educational texts, etc. The clause also does not seem to protect performers, distributors, or anyone but authors and inventors. EMI didn't author the song, so what right are they protecting?
iPhoto does handle that automatically. When imported, each file/image is provided with what should be a globally unique name as assigned by the device sending them.
there is really no need for globally unique names though, for manual browsing purposes iPhoto organizes image in to a tree: year#/month#/date/ within each of those date folders you'll find the current instance of the image (as edited within iPhoto), a data folder that maintains meta-data on the images, an "originals" folder where iPhoto keeps the imported image if you edit it later, and a "thumbs" folder that contains 128x128 pixel thumbnail images.
Unfortunately iPhoto's internal data structures show through in the data and thumbnail folders. While the file names are taken from the importing media, iPhoto assigns them a globally unique, sequentially incremented serial number starting with 1. It's these internal serial numbers that are used as file names in the data and thumbnail folders. iPhoto performs all of its internal handling with these numbers, such as album assignments.
fortunately some of the data for the images is stored in XML so it can be accessed easily by most applications. Other stuff such as the "comment" and all the EXIF data are stored in some sort of binary format that always as the string "typestream" at the start. That file format is, of course, undocumented, and there is no SDK for iPhoto yet.
To further add to confusion, the title of each image is initially set to the filename that is assigned at import. when you change the title of an image within iPhoto, the filename is not changed, so if you drag an an image from the iPhoto to the desktop it is assigned the numerical filename, not the image title.
But that's probably a lot more information that you wanted.
Not to mention, at least on my machine, the window opens so it only displays 1.5 columns of stuff, if you click on an item the item scrolls half way off the left side making it difficult to rename or select another item at the same level.
I've tried several times now to get the windows to open up with at least 3 columns visible but it just won't go.
Representative democracy, to me, is a contradiction in terms; like saying free prisoner, or dry water.
The people in the US democratic methods to elect leaders (with the exception of the) President). Those elected leaders (again with exception to the President who operates more as a Totalitarian) then use democratic methods within their groups to make decisions, but those decisions are subject to totalitarian veto by the President. Courts may also make or veto laws, some courts are totalitarian with only one judge ruling, others are more democratic with up to 13 judges ruling.
Let's not even get in to the mix of economic systems in use in the US, because capitalist doesn't even begin to cover it.
As to your comment about the US "two party system". The US has no such system in place officially, this is simply the what things have devolved in to. There may be only two major parties who get any press time or major contributions but there are numerous political parties in the US: Libertarian, Green, Labor, Nazi, Reform, American, Socialist, Pot, Communist, etc. I would bet a tidy sum that the majority of people in the US don't hold the views of their party and that if they were quizzed/polled you would find that most people actually fall in to one of the smaller political parties. The reason for the two major parties is that it's simple to most people. The majority of people like to have all power vested in one "leader" and have all contests between two parties/teams. Broadcasters like this because it gives them celebrities that are easy to track and follow.
The Unites states has undertaken operations with both tactics.
1. Economic/trade embargoes (such as with Cuba) are known to not affect the leadership. Their intended effect is to target the general population with hardship (often causing death from starvation or lack of medical supplie) so they will overthrow the leadership. Beyond that, how many times has the U.S. deliberately sent a bomb/missile in to a known residential area knowing that noncombatants were in the area? If that doesn't qualify as targeting non-combatants then we need to discuss that term also.
2.: The CIA routinely conducts such operations in South America, using agents that hide amongst the people being targeted, then using that knowledge for ambush at a later time. "low level warfare" was essentially invented by the US in the revolutionary war, the tactics were considerer improper and essentially "terrorist" by the British whom were were fighting.
Anyone who doesn't consider the U.S. Military a terrorist organization is truly distorting the definition of the word.
I'd asked this one other time in another discussion and never got a good answer:
Can you please define the work "terrorist" in a manner that does not include the United States? The answer "you just know" is not acceptable, and the answer must be universal not something like "people who do things we don't like" because "we" are only 5% of the world population.
We aren't a democracy and the voters don't rule the country.
We are a republic and the voters elect people to rule the country, after the election the people have NO say in what those elected officials do, despite all of the "popular opinion" polls we see.
Under the "you don't really know" thing... what's to say the the CIA or secret service didn't join the group and post messages in an attempt to draw out any potential terrorists, much the way police catch kiddy porn people?
Power over power has been a long time coming and there is still significant resistance to it. While I would love to see it happen I don't think it will any time soon. Why? because the resistance is coming from the TV and radio broadcasters who fear the system MAY reduce their transmission range (hence audience for advertising $$).
You've left out the various wireless carriers. Several companies offer microwave or similar wireless LOS connections to residences. In my area these prices are comparable to cable or DSL, though do carry a premium because of the small market penetration at this point.
You are intermixing the timelines of your cost analysis.
That you always pay more for better computers is almost always true at any given time. You'll pay more for a P4 3.2Ghz or a PowerMac 2x.5 than say a P3 1Ghz or a PowerMac G4. This is simple economics. You pay a premium for a premium product.
Now... over time, yes technology prices (most non supply restricted) tend to go lower for the same commodity. Ie: that P4 3.2Ghz system that today costs $3500 will next year cosy $1500.
This has also been true of artificially sustained prices when the restrictions and monopolies in those markets are removed. Long distance telephone service was reserved for special occasions or the quite wealthy just 15 years ago. Today you get unlimited long distance and local calls for $40/month, less than many were paying for local service alone 15 years ago.
So yes, broadband prices will drop, they will always remain higher than dialup because you get more so you pay more.
Free WiFi hotspots will not be the driving factor. There is bandwidth being paid for and I'll bet it being paid for at higher commercial rates, not lower consumer rates. By that I mean that consumer broadband rates are artificially lower in dollars per Mb/s because almost all consumer broadband at this point as severe restrictions placed on it (asymmetric allocation, no servers allowed, NATed, etc) and has potential bottlenecks at or near the headend/central office. I've yet to see a residential ISP that doesn't oversell their backbone connection to significantly higher multiples that a commercial ISP. With residential you also have no SLA, you get UPTO the stated speed, usually less, sometimes a lot less. With commercial you get what you pay for or you get refunds and eventually switch to a carrier that can meet the SLA.
Overall you attempted to make some insightful comments, but wound up missing the mark by a wide margin with your lack of understanding.
Two at the moment with a third company vying for a contract. Currently I have access to COX and Cable America. COX, I think everyone knows, CA serves only parts of AZ and MO, but they do it mostly well without all the extra political and marketing bullshit that I had when with COX.
Of course this also ignores that my local telco provides DLS, T1 and digital cable. Both my cable providers also provide ISP, digital cable and telephone services.
I use my cable for ISP, telco for dialtone, and satellite for TV, THAT'S competition.
I'm going to respond to both replies (as of this time) here instead of each in turn as they both say substantively the same things.
I am not suggesting that the system be open like slashdot is; the slashcode itself supports many features and limits not included in slashdot. For one, such a peer review system would not allow open anonymous posting and would very likely have a membership restriction to prevent anyone who stumbled by from getting an account.
In that, I don't mean that only professors and such should have access, but you should have to jump through some hoop(s) before being allowed to post comments on a topic or in general. Perhaps you need to take an on-line timed quiz and answer 5 moderate level questions on a topic within 10 minutes before being allowed to post your comments.
Alternatively there could be an "apprenticeship" system where new members posts are fist reviewed in a meta moderation system, or by a person or group of persons. Only when a post is deemed contributory is it placed in the general discussion. After some number of successful posts, or based on a ratio of well rated posts to poorly rated, a member may bypass the pre-moderation system and post directly. The "elite" karma holders might comprise the reviewers.
An open slashdot like forum seems an ideal mechanism for the give and take that is part of the peer review process, it also allows other reviewers to benefit from the ideas of others, perhaps reducing the amount of redundant critique that the current system fosters. It certainly minimized the timeline compared to physical or e- mail.
Yes the world is mostly populated by people with IQs below 120, and most good science is done by those who have IQs above 120, but I don't think that inherently disqualifies the one group from providing thoughtful responses to the work of the other. When you look at issues as complex many papers do, it can be easy to miss a "simple" solution or problem. How many advanced calculations went awry because of a simple addition error?
And before anyone else goes there, yes there are ways to abuse the system. For any system there are ways around it and ways to abuse it, that's a fact of life. At some point you come down to simple trust.
Am I the only one who sees the irony in an article wondering about on-line peer reviewed papers being feasible being discussed on what is probably the ultimate instance of on-line peer reviewing of publications?
All someone has to do is use slashcode, post the articles for review as articles and allow the reviewing, commenting and moderating, though I think the moderation names would need to be changed.
If peer review is a good thing, I think an open and transparent peer review would be even better.
The entity that runs the site could run on donations or subscription fees.
Apple has already proved that it can it can create high quality, on-off hardcover books for a reasonable price with the iPhoto book ordering system.To print only plain black text and some simply line art would cost even less.
Or you could use a laser printer to print the book locally and put it in your own binding (hardcover or three-ring).
I think you must be referring to the artist rendition on the design page at Apple's site. I really don't think we can draw any real conclusions about the cooling fluid route from that, it looks like it was drawn to make people go "oooh, aaah", not be a definitive engineering layout. My rough guess would be that the route splits and runs to the CPUs in parallel, then recombines and goes through the heat exchanger.
Actually the airflow around a notebook (unless driven by a fan) is probably less of a factor in cooling a NB than the surface it sits on, even wood. Air does not conduct heat well at all, that's why it's used to insulate so many things like homes*. Unless you can cause a flow (convective or forced), air won't cool anything well.
The ideal "lap pad" would be insulated against transfer to the user but highly conductive to heat transfer from the computer. An air gap between the two (potentially with a radiator/heat sink) would be the overall best portable design.
Such a design allows the computer to conduct heat out, the radiator to support convective cooling and the insulation to keep the heat away from the computer. All told you could get this done in under 1/2 inch of thickness I think.
* Yes, most people would say fiberglass cellulose insulation is used, but all forms of home insulation are designed to trap small pockets of air which do the actual insulating. The more air, and the smaller the pockets, the higher the insulation value. Fiberglass and cellulose are used because they are also slow conductors of heat, but they actually conduct more heat than he air they trap. Foam is now becoming popular and is the best insulator of the three because of how little mass is used to full a volume.
So.. really nifty little device. The one glaring omission: a remote control.
The solution: I'm betting a WiFi module/adapter for the iPod. You can either stream music from the iPod to the AE, or you can use the iPod's controls and display to control (the possibly larger) library on your computer.
... is there a way to prevent students from saving things on the hard drive (thus forcing them to use a diskette and/or the CD drive?), and/or a 'Simple Finder' interface extant for OS X? Is there existing software that makes this easier or more configurable, or is it all inside the OS?...
With due respect, from the questions you are asking, you've not spent much or any time using OS X in anything but basic "newbie" user mode and certainly spend about zero time configuring it in any way.
You should donate the computer to whomever you like and leave administration to them, or find someone knowledgeable in OS X and let them donate the time to configure and administer the computer.
Your sanity and the usefulness of the computer will be greatly benefited.
I fully agree with the self-taught, poking-around method in general, it's how I learned the bulk of what I know. I do however specifically disagree with the idea when you are talking about a publicly accessible production system. If this system is not configured properly the cafe/church could be open to legal suits from parents of users or the government if "objectionable" material is found on it, or sent to/from it. An insecure (read improperly configured) system could be a haven for pirates, porn (kiddie or otherwise), spam, etc. In an instance such as this you don't want to learn as you go along, you want to have it right the first time. The "play and learn" approach here could have significant consequences. Am I being over cautious or dramatic? In an age where a person can sue a store for selling hot coffee, or you can sue a manufacturer for injury when you use a product in a manner not intended... no.
I don't know where you get "library" from, the poster specifically stated this was for "...a local church-run non-profit coffeehouse for teenagers...". If the church is large enough to run a coffee shop, then they are probably large enough to have in the ranks, or once or twice removed, a person who knows much more about Macs, and is willing to donate the few hours a month needed to set up an maintain the system.
You negative mod would have been a poor choice. The mod system is not supposed to be about wether you agree or not with the poster, but whether the post is topical, brings sound facts or opinion to the discussion. My post was not off-topic, nor flame-bait or troll, "overrated" is a wimpy way to moderate. To quote from the moderator guidelines: Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting. The real goal here is to find the juicy good stuff and let others read it. Do not promote personal agendas. Do not let your opinions factor in. Try to be impartial about this. Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down. Likewise, agreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it up. The goal here is to share ideas. To sift through the haystack and find needles. And to keep the children who like to spam Slashdot in check. Emphasis mine.
... is there a way to prevent students from saving things on the hard drive (thus forcing them to use a diskette and/or the CD drive?), and/or a 'Simple Finder' interface extant for OS X? Is there existing software that makes this easier or more configurable, or is it all inside the OS?...
With due respect, from the questions you are asking, you've not spent much or any time using OS X in anything but basic "newbie" user mode and certainly spend about zero time configuring it in any way.
You should donate the computer to whomever you like and leave administration to them, or find someone knowledgeable in OS X and let them donate the time to configure and administer the computer.
Your sanity and the usefulness of the computer will be greatly benefited.
I think the last think the government wants to do in encourage MORE of it's citizenry to start communicating via encrypted mechanisms. The police would never allow such a policy to be enacted, it would severely limit their ability to "gather information to prevent terrorist and criminal activity" or some such bullshit.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there are three problems with windows update which IMO takes significant blame away from the users:
1. Microsoft's update system has been less than simple to date. Ex:
Update 00dflkjsd_9 - fixes a flaw in some obscure dll which you have no idea if you use or even have installed. Only install this update if you are having problems with some arbitrary function after installing update fskjsdf_3. ( I have no idea what update fskjsdf_3 IS, never mind if I've had trouble with it. If I install this anyway, will it cause me trouble that it was trying to fix?)
Yea, I made it up, but that's my impression of some items I've seen the few times I've had to update a windows machine. (I run OS X myself). This is compounded by MS's apparent refusal or inability to "roll up" updates in to "service packs" on a regular basis.
2. You have, until recently, been forced to launch MSIE and specifically visit WindowsUpdate to check for updates, Only MSIE works and there was no automated checking feature. To my knowledge auto-check is only available in XP. The large number of users in corporations don't have any need to upgrade from 2000, or 98/95 and don't have the auto-check feature.
3. Once you are at the site and see there are updates to install, you might have to reboot the system several times. MS is quite fond of "exclusive installers" where you can only choose the one update to install, then reboot and move on to others. From a clean install, this will usually require at least three reboots on an XP box. For a small home machine this may only take two minutes per reboot, but for self monitoring servers a reboot can take up to 10 minutes what with memory tests, system checks, RAID startup, clock syncing, etc.
The questions I have for Microsoft are:
Why can't you issue a service pack for XP already? All the patches are verified, just apply them cumulatively in a single unified installer.
Why aren't the existing patches on the new CDs and systems that people are purchasing? Surely MS has the clout to force the integrators to apply existing patches before shipping a system. There's absolutely no reasonable excuse for a brand new system from HP, Dell, or Gateway to arrive with security holes that were identified and patched two years ago.
The fact that the worm was effective shows quite clearly that the worm spread faster than the patch.
If the patch had spread faster than the worm, the worm would have little to no effect as most to all systems would be invulnerable.
Which existed first has nothing to do with propagation.
I was just thinking again about the U.S. Constitution, specifically Article 1, section 8, clause 8:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Can one say that music is really "useful art"? Useful to me means things like, medical arts, architecture, educational texts, etc.
The clause also does not seem to protect performers, distributors, or anyone but authors and inventors. EMI didn't author the song, so what right are they protecting?
iPhoto does handle that automatically. When imported, each file/image is provided with what should be a globally unique name as assigned by the device sending them.
there is really no need for globally unique names though, for manual browsing purposes iPhoto organizes image in to a tree: year#/month#/date/ within each of those date folders you'll find the current instance of the image (as edited within iPhoto), a data folder that maintains meta-data on the images, an "originals" folder where iPhoto keeps the imported image if you edit it later, and a "thumbs" folder that contains 128x128 pixel thumbnail images.
Unfortunately iPhoto's internal data structures show through in the data and thumbnail folders. While the file names are taken from the importing media, iPhoto assigns them a globally unique, sequentially incremented serial number starting with 1. It's these internal serial numbers that are used as file names in the data and thumbnail folders. iPhoto performs all of its internal handling with these numbers, such as album assignments.
fortunately some of the data for the images is stored in XML so it can be accessed easily by most applications. Other stuff such as the "comment" and all the EXIF data are stored in some sort of binary format that always as the string "typestream" at the start. That file format is, of course, undocumented, and there is no SDK for iPhoto yet.
To further add to confusion, the title of each image is initially set to the filename that is assigned at import. when you change the title of an image within iPhoto, the filename is not changed, so if you drag an an image from the iPhoto to the desktop it is assigned the numerical filename, not the image title.
But that's probably a lot more information that you wanted.
Not to mention, at least on my machine, the window opens so it only displays 1.5 columns of stuff, if you click on an item the item scrolls half way off the left side making it difficult to rename or select another item at the same level.
I've tried several times now to get the windows to open up with at least 3 columns visible but it just won't go.
Representative democracy, to me, is a contradiction in terms; like saying free prisoner, or dry water.
The people in the US democratic methods to elect leaders (with the exception of the) President). Those elected leaders (again with exception to the President who operates more as a Totalitarian) then use democratic methods within their groups to make decisions, but those decisions are subject to totalitarian veto by the President. Courts may also make or veto laws, some courts are totalitarian with only one judge ruling, others are more democratic with up to 13 judges ruling.
Let's not even get in to the mix of economic systems in use in the US, because capitalist doesn't even begin to cover it.
As to your comment about the US "two party system". The US has no such system in place officially, this is simply the what things have devolved in to. There may be only two major parties who get any press time or major contributions but there are numerous political parties in the US: Libertarian, Green, Labor, Nazi, Reform, American, Socialist, Pot, Communist, etc. I would bet a tidy sum that the majority of people in the US don't hold the views of their party and that if they were quizzed/polled you would find that most people actually fall in to one of the smaller political parties.
The reason for the two major parties is that it's simple to most people. The majority of people like to have all power vested in one "leader" and have all contests between two parties/teams. Broadcasters like this because it gives them celebrities that are easy to track and follow.
The Unites states has undertaken operations with both tactics.
1. Economic/trade embargoes (such as with Cuba) are known to not affect the leadership. Their intended effect is to target the general population with hardship (often causing death from starvation or lack of medical supplie) so they will overthrow the leadership. Beyond that, how many times has the U.S. deliberately sent a bomb/missile in to a known residential area knowing that noncombatants were in the area? If that doesn't qualify as targeting non-combatants then we need to discuss that term also.
2.: The CIA routinely conducts such operations in South America, using agents that hide amongst the people being targeted, then using that knowledge for ambush at a later time. "low level warfare" was essentially invented by the US in the revolutionary war, the tactics were considerer improper and essentially "terrorist" by the British whom were were fighting.
Anyone who doesn't consider the U.S. Military a terrorist organization is truly distorting the definition of the word.
I'd asked this one other time in another discussion and never got a good answer:
Can you please define the work "terrorist" in a manner that does not include the United States?
The answer "you just know" is not acceptable, and the answer must be universal not something like "people who do things we don't like" because "we" are only 5% of the world population.
We aren't a democracy and the voters don't rule the country.
We are a republic and the voters elect people to rule the country, after the election the people have NO say in what those elected officials do, despite all of the "popular opinion" polls we see.
Under the "you don't really know" thing... what's to say the the CIA or secret service didn't join the group and post messages in an attempt to draw out any potential terrorists, much the way police catch kiddy porn people?
Telephony.. once all thus VoIP taxation/regulation stuff gets worked out.
Video conferencing: This has been promised for so long it isn't funny, ubiquitous BB makes it possible
Video on Demand: Downloading fill length movies to watch as you please or watching them streamed real-time.
Advertising: adverts will take new forms and find new ways in to our homes via out Internet connections.
I think that the bandwidth used by any of these will dwarf the bandwidth used by pirates or file sharers.
Power over power has been a long time coming and there is still significant resistance to it. While I would love to see it happen I don't think it will any time soon. Why? because the resistance is coming from the TV and radio broadcasters who fear the system MAY reduce their transmission range (hence audience for advertising $$).
You've left out the various wireless carriers. Several companies offer microwave or similar wireless LOS connections to residences. In my area these prices are comparable to cable or DSL, though do carry a premium because of the small market penetration at this point.
You are intermixing the timelines of your cost analysis.
That you always pay more for better computers is almost always true at any given time. You'll pay more for a P4 3.2Ghz or a PowerMac 2x.5 than say a P3 1Ghz or a PowerMac G4. This is simple economics. You pay a premium for a premium product.
Now... over time, yes technology prices (most non supply restricted) tend to go lower for the same commodity. Ie: that P4 3.2Ghz system that today costs $3500 will next year cosy $1500.
This has also been true of artificially sustained prices when the restrictions and monopolies in those markets are removed. Long distance telephone service was reserved for special occasions or the quite wealthy just 15 years ago. Today you get unlimited long distance and local calls for $40/month, less than many were paying for local service alone 15 years ago.
So yes, broadband prices will drop, they will always remain higher than dialup because you get more so you pay more.
Free WiFi hotspots will not be the driving factor. There is bandwidth being paid for and I'll bet it being paid for at higher commercial rates, not lower consumer rates. By that I mean that consumer broadband rates are artificially lower in dollars per Mb/s because almost all consumer broadband at this point as severe restrictions placed on it (asymmetric allocation, no servers allowed, NATed, etc) and has potential bottlenecks at or near the headend/central office. I've yet to see a residential ISP that doesn't oversell their backbone connection to significantly higher multiples that a commercial ISP. With residential you also have no SLA, you get UPTO the stated speed, usually less, sometimes a lot less. With commercial you get what you pay for or you get refunds and eventually switch to a carrier that can meet the SLA.
Overall you attempted to make some insightful comments, but wound up missing the mark by a wide margin with your lack of understanding.
Two at the moment with a third company vying for a contract.
Currently I have access to COX and Cable America. COX, I think everyone knows, CA serves only parts of AZ and MO, but they do it mostly well without all the extra political and marketing bullshit that I had when with COX.
Of course this also ignores that my local telco provides DLS, T1 and digital cable. Both my cable providers also provide ISP, digital cable and telephone services.
I use my cable for ISP, telco for dialtone, and satellite for TV, THAT'S competition.
I'm going to respond to both replies (as of this time) here instead of each in turn as they both say substantively the same things.
I am not suggesting that the system be open like slashdot is; the slashcode itself supports many features and limits not included in slashdot. For one, such a peer review system would not allow open anonymous posting and would very likely have a membership restriction to prevent anyone who stumbled by from getting an account.
In that, I don't mean that only professors and such should have access, but you should have to jump through some hoop(s) before being allowed to post comments on a topic or in general. Perhaps you need to take an on-line timed quiz and answer 5 moderate level questions on a topic within 10 minutes before being allowed to post your comments.
Alternatively there could be an "apprenticeship" system where new members posts are fist reviewed in a meta moderation system, or by a person or group of persons. Only when a post is deemed contributory is it placed in the general discussion. After some number of successful posts, or based on a ratio of well rated posts to poorly rated, a member may bypass the pre-moderation system and post directly. The "elite" karma holders might comprise the reviewers.
An open slashdot like forum seems an ideal mechanism for the give and take that is part of the peer review process, it also allows other reviewers to benefit from the ideas of others, perhaps reducing the amount of redundant critique that the current system fosters. It certainly minimized the timeline compared to physical or e- mail.
Yes the world is mostly populated by people with IQs below 120, and most good science is done by those who have IQs above 120, but I don't think that inherently disqualifies the one group from providing thoughtful responses to the work of the other. When you look at issues as complex many papers do, it can be easy to miss a "simple" solution or problem. How many advanced calculations went awry because of a simple addition error?
And before anyone else goes there, yes there are ways to abuse the system. For any system there are ways around it and ways to abuse it, that's a fact of life. At some point you come down to simple trust.
Am I the only one who sees the irony in an article wondering about on-line peer reviewed papers being feasible being discussed on what is probably the ultimate instance of on-line peer reviewing of publications?
All someone has to do is use slashcode, post the articles for review as articles and allow the reviewing, commenting and moderating, though I think the moderation names would need to be changed.
If peer review is a good thing, I think an open and transparent peer review would be even better.
The entity that runs the site could run on donations or subscription fees.
Apple has already proved that it can it can create high quality, on-off hardcover books for a reasonable price with the iPhoto book ordering system.To print only plain black text and some simply line art would cost even less.
Or you could use a laser printer to print the book locally and put it in your own binding (hardcover or three-ring).
I think you must be referring to the artist rendition on the design page at Apple's site. I really don't think we can draw any real conclusions about the cooling fluid route from that, it looks like it was drawn to make people go "oooh, aaah", not be a definitive engineering layout.
My rough guess would be that the route splits and runs to the CPUs in parallel, then recombines and goes through the heat exchanger.
Actually the airflow around a notebook (unless driven by a fan) is probably less of a factor in cooling a NB than the surface it sits on, even wood. Air does not conduct heat well at all, that's why it's used to insulate so many things like homes*. Unless you can cause a flow (convective or forced), air won't cool anything well.
The ideal "lap pad" would be insulated against transfer to the user but highly conductive to heat transfer from the computer. An air gap between the two (potentially with a radiator/heat sink) would be the overall best portable design.
Such a design allows the computer to conduct heat out, the radiator to support convective cooling and the insulation to keep the heat away from the computer. All told you could get this done in under 1/2 inch of thickness I think.
* Yes, most people would say fiberglass cellulose insulation is used, but all forms of home insulation are designed to trap small pockets of air which do the actual insulating. The more air, and the smaller the pockets, the higher the insulation value. Fiberglass and cellulose are used because they are also slow conductors of heat, but they actually conduct more heat than he air they trap. Foam is now becoming popular and is the best insulator of the three because of how little mass is used to full a volume.
Except that contact doesn't have a temperature, things have temperatures.
"provides up to a 57 degree (F) reduction in contact surface temperature"
If we want to be more grammatically and scientifically correct.
So.. really nifty little device. The one glaring omission: a remote control.
The solution: I'm betting a WiFi module/adapter for the iPod. You can either stream music from the iPod to the AE, or you can use the iPod's controls and display to control (the possibly larger) library on your computer.
iPod -> WiFi -> Airport Express
or
iPod -> WiFi -> Computer w/ iTunes -> WiFi -> Airport Express
Since you'd be using it around the house/office/hotel, the lessened run time of the iPod from powering the WiFi adapter would not be an issue.
As an ancillary benefit, the iPod would also function as a remote control for iPhoto and Keynote.
iBook, iPod and Airport Express, your total wireless presentation system.
... is there a way to prevent students from saving things on the hard drive (thus forcing them to use a diskette and/or the CD drive?), and/or a 'Simple Finder' interface extant for OS X? Is there existing software that makes this easier or more configurable, or is it all inside the OS?...
With due respect, from the questions you are asking, you've not spent much or any time using OS X in anything but basic "newbie" user mode and certainly spend about zero time configuring it in any way.
You should donate the computer to whomever you like and leave administration to them, or find someone knowledgeable in OS X and let them donate the time to configure and administer the computer.
Your sanity and the usefulness of the computer will be greatly benefited.
I fully agree with the self-taught, poking-around method in general, it's how I learned the bulk of what I know. I do however specifically disagree with the idea when you are talking about a publicly accessible production system. If this system is not configured properly the cafe/church could be open to legal suits from parents of users or the government if "objectionable" material is found on it, or sent to/from it.
An insecure (read improperly configured) system could be a haven for pirates, porn (kiddie or otherwise), spam, etc. In an instance such as this you don't want to learn as you go along, you want to have it right the first time. The "play and learn" approach here could have significant consequences. Am I being over cautious or dramatic? In an age where a person can sue a store for selling hot coffee, or you can sue a manufacturer for injury when you use a product in a manner not intended... no.
I don't know where you get "library" from, the poster specifically stated this was for "...a local church-run non-profit coffeehouse for teenagers...". If the church is large enough to run a coffee shop, then they are probably large enough to have in the ranks, or once or twice removed, a person who knows much more about Macs, and is willing to donate the few hours a month needed to set up an maintain the system.
You negative mod would have been a poor choice. The mod system is not supposed to be about wether you agree or not with the poster, but whether the post is topical, brings sound facts or opinion to the discussion. My post was not off-topic, nor flame-bait or troll, "overrated" is a wimpy way to moderate.
To quote from the moderator guidelines:
Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting. The real goal here is to find the juicy good stuff and let others read it. Do not promote personal agendas. Do not let your opinions factor in. Try to be impartial about this. Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down. Likewise, agreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it up. The goal here is to share ideas. To sift through the haystack and find needles. And to keep the children who like to spam Slashdot in check. Emphasis mine.
... is there a way to prevent students from saving things on the hard drive (thus forcing them to use a diskette and/or the CD drive?), and/or a 'Simple Finder' interface extant for OS X? Is there existing software that makes this easier or more configurable, or is it all inside the OS?...
With due respect, from the questions you are asking, you've not spent much or any time using OS X in anything but basic "newbie" user mode and certainly spend about zero time configuring it in any way.
You should donate the computer to whomever you like and leave administration to them, or find someone knowledgeable in OS X and let them donate the time to configure and administer the computer.
Your sanity and the usefulness of the computer will be greatly benefited.
I think the last think the government wants to do in encourage MORE of it's citizenry to start communicating via encrypted mechanisms. The police would never allow such a policy to be enacted, it would severely limit their ability to "gather information to prevent terrorist and criminal activity" or some such bullshit.