Mainstream Linux users stopped caring about GNOME/KDE long ago. Most use what is default for their distro, which, more and more often, is GNOME. Fedora and RHEL ship with GNOME, as does Ubuntu, as does Novell Linux Desktop. Soon SuSe will be GNOME by default as well. Obviously, some distros support KDE more than GNOME (Mandriva, Slackware - though Dropline is available), and some are agnostic (Debian, Gentoo).
What we need is tighter integration. Neither GNOME nor KDE are going to go away any time soon. So we might as well start improving the way that GNOME and KDE apps interoperate. There have been steps forward (FD.Org Common Desktop, Notification icons, etc.), but it's not good enough. KDE apps running in GNOME don't feel "right". Nor do GNOME apps running in KDE.
Stop fighting and start cooperating. Today, 650 million computers will boot up Windows. Let's see if that can be changed.
Looks like your system crashed during a write and NTFS is unclean. Boot off a Windows CD. Press "R" to run the recovery console, log in, and type "chkdsk/f c:".
9 out of 10 times, chkdsk will be able to restore FS consistency. If not, do a "repair" operation to put down fresh OS files. Unplug the net until you enable the firewall, though.
If I'm saving up a million dollars to buy a date with Charlize Theron and I save 100 dollars, I'm not really that close, am I? Sigh, not very close at all.
10 / 1000 =.01 100 / 10^6 =.00001
Your analogy sucks - it's 10,000 out of a million, not 100.
This bit comes from the struggle between those who wish to cancel analog tv broadcasts and go digital completly (saves cost and avoids dragging the conversion on for decades) vs those who do not with to burden every household with the costs of a new expensive hd tv.
Repeat after me, digital TV doesn't mean HDTV. The transition to ATSC is mandated. The transition to HDTV is not.
No one is going to be "burdened" to buy a new TV - your NTSC tv will continue to work just fine, along with a low-cost converter box to recieve the ATSC signal.
RadioShack currently sells an ATSC reciever for $89. Considering the fact that an ATSC reciever is really no more complex than a DVD player, we can expect to see ATSC recievers in the $30-$50 range as soon as demand picks up.
"As if understanding computers opens anywhere near the possibilites that being able to read does."
As a matter of fact, it does. Being able to read does you very little good if you have nothing to read.
Computers are the next step beyond literacy. The library can only be so big, and few of us have the luxury of having the time to conduct research the traditional way.
The Internet provides everyone with a "virtual library" that dwarves anything that we are likely to be able to access elsewhere.
Literacy dramatically expands the universe of information that we have access to. The Internet does exactly the same thing.
"It can cause, like it did in me, a red flush over the upper half of the body and the face, and severe oil production by the Sebaceous glands, and a continual headach. It is associated with memory loss. My once nearly photographic memory is now gone."
The interesting thing about all of the websites that make threats about aspartame is the huge range of effects described:
abdominal pain, anxiety attacks, arthritis, asthma, asthmatic reactions, bloating/edema, blood sugar control problems (hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia), brain cancer (Pre-approval studies in animals), breathing difficulties, burning eyes or throat, burning urination, can't think straight, chest pains, chronic cough, chronic fatigue, confusion, death, depression, diarrhea, dizziness, excessive thirst or hunger, fatigue, feel 'unreal', flushing of face, hair loss (baldness) or thinning of hair, headaches/migraines, hearing loss, heart palpitations, hives (Urticaria), hypertension (high blood pressure), impotency and sexual problems, inability to concentrate, infection susceptibility, insomnia, irritability, itching, joint pains, laryngitis, "like thinking in a fog," marked personality changes, memory loss, menstrual problems or changes, muscle spasms, nausea or vomiting, numbness or tingling of extremities, other allergic-like reactions, panic attacks, phobias, poor memory, rapid heartbeat, rashes, seizures and convulsions, slurring of speech, swallowing pain, tachycardia, tremors, tinnitus, vertigo, vision loss, and weight gain
Wow! All that caused by two amino acids which are commonly found in other foods.
One of the biggest problems is that aspartame is trashed so frequently on the internet that it becomes a self-perpetuating "problem". It is difficult to tell whether or not there is a real problem simply because there are so many bogus anecdotal reports.
So, the next time you feel like posting your warning about the dangers of aspartame, post some actual scientific studies (and link to them). Claiming that the government conspired to approve aspartame - without providing evidence - and posting an anecdotal report about how your "near photographic memory" is now gone simply makes you look like a quack.
Denver's RTD already has a pretty decent trip planner on its website, though I find it to produce results much like computerized driving directions - they may be the fastest method, but I'd rather take two busses and have a one hour trip than take five busses and have a 45 minute trip.
"Now, looking for the nearest Pizza Hut isn't that big of a deal but when somebodies life is involved, I wouldn't trust any other search provider."
When someone's life is involved, why the fuck would you be on the internet trying to find a hospital. We have a number for that, 911. If you're in Europe, 112.
I waited outside Best Buy for 5 hours on Black Friday (for the $380 laptop and $150 PC/monitor). Quantities of unbundled items were very limited (the minimum specified in the advertisement) and the employees were trying to sell extremely overpriced "bundles" to drive up the price.
Best Buy is all about upselling - from extended warranties to cables to services, their whole strategy to increase margin is to bundle overpriced junk with anything you buy.
Best Buy is fine as long as you remember one thing - don't believe their lies.
As the creator and administrator of a Wiki service myself (Wikinote), I have to wonder what Wikipedia is truly thinking.
Wikinote and its sister website, Shortify, have seen their share of abuse. Most of the time it's SSH password-cracking scripts that try millions of usernames and passwords (and make 1GB logfiles with the auth failures - password authentication is disabled on WikinoteShortify). Sometimes you get a user who will try to fill the DB with random garbage.
On WikinoteShortify, disk space is extremely limited, so the major focus of our anti-abuse methods are in limiting the size of individual pages (64KB). Abuse still happens, though.
I've often thought of using CAPATCHAs or email verification to slow down the tide of bogus signups. But, realistically, that would cause more trouble for my users than it would for the spammers.
Abuse is going to happen. Do what you can to limit it. But don't stomp on your users while you are doing it.
That's the problem with limiting page creation to signed-in users. Spammers will create an account (or many, through a script) and attack. The extra step of an HTTP POST to get a new account is nothing for a Python script (nor, mind you, is the block on Python's user-agent). If you think you're accomplishing something, you're not - people will still find a way to vandalize Wikipedia.
The real question is why it is so difficult to detect bogus page creation. Wikipedia has always relied on human intervention to prevent abuse. There's always someone watching. Why is page creation any harder to audit than editing?
People just don't know where to look or realize that sometimes, programs like mutt, fetchmail and all the other "do one thing well" programs are a better solution than having a large bloaty email app.
That kind of bullshit doesn't fly in a corporate environment. Perhaps you've never worked in a corporation that uses groupware effectively.
And "mutt" being better than Outlook? What are you smoking! 90% of the people in a corporate environment can barely use Outlook - there is no way that you are ever going to get them to use mutt.
How about things like HTML email, shared calendaring, or any of the other things that you can do with Evolution / Outlook?
Before you go pissing all over the IS departments of major corporations, you should at least have the courtesy to think why Exchange/Outlook might be so popular:
- Active Directory integration - Single server / desktop program for calendaring, email, contacts, etc. - Distribution lists, polls, meeting requests and other features that are simple enough for the typical office user to use - Integrated server solution (don't need different programs for IMAP, SMTP, webmail, etc.) - Excellent webmail experience using AJAX - Contact / Calendar / Task / Mail integration with PocketPC, Palm, and BlackBerry
After spending multiple hours mucking with different (poorly documented) configuration formats, multiple different daemons, mucking with the DB - it's really clear that Linux just isn't there. Exchange is easier to install, easier to configure, and easier to manage.
"The Pentium IV could easily beat the Opteron by cranking itself up to 6GHz if there was any practical way to extract 200W from a small core with no hot spots."
Not the case. Among other things, modern code is highly dependant on memory latency. P4 as of late hasn't even been getting 60% of clock; Opteron gets nearly 95%.
Your whole argument is why Intel developed the Itanium. The idea of producing a simpler CPU that is thermally more efficent is a novel one, but time and again we find that you can't erase the last 15 years of CPU innovation. We're still driving gasoline cars, we're still using paper money, and the Opteron still remians highly competitive with the Itanium at a fraction of the transistor count.
Re:Shouldn't the cell phone companies provide this
on
Vonage 911 Deadline Passed
·
· Score: 3, Informative
"In order to implement E911, GPS is necessary."
Not the case. While CDMA and iDEN phones do need GPS to provide reliable triangulation, GSM triangulation systems exist that provide position with sufficent accuracy to meet E911 requirements:
When I buy a PC, any PC, I have Windows preinstalled.
Have you been living under a rock for the last five years? Dell, HP, and thousands of independant system builders are happy to sell you a PC without Windows. Even Fry's and Wal-Mart have PCs without Windows.
The fact that those products sell poorly indicates that people want Windows.
Anyone out there who could shed some insight into why aluminum is preferred over well-designed plastic?
Aluminum tends to bend in situations where plastic would crack or shatter.
But, that said, we're talking about a light, farily small product here. I throw my iPod Shuffle accross the room at the wall to freak people out, and it has held up fine.
IBM's PPC970 is known to produce vast quantities of heat, particularly with three cores. And ATI's modern GPUs are hot potatoes as well - particularly when you consider that the ATI GPU in the XBOX is also serving as the northbridge.
By all accounts, the system produces ~180W of heat while playing games. That's a lot to handle with only two 60mm fans.
Microsoft is not alone with this problem - the PS3 has an NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX derivitive that is clocked very high; it will produce at least 80W, and Cell will likely produce ~80W. More problematic for Sony is the fact that the current PS3 case has very few vent holes.
Make no mistake - heat is an issue that will be problematic for all next generation consoles. The days of 25W desktop CPUs are over, as are the days of 30W performance GPUs.
I'm just surprised that no one was smart enough to put a bloody Sempron in one of these consoles...
Re:Which is actually cheaper, soda or ice?
on
Ask The Mythbusters
·
· Score: 1
A quick cursory search on Google found that 5 gal of Coca-Cola syrup can be had for $40.00.
You can bet that McDonalds franchises don'y pay anywhere near $40 for 5 gal of syrup.
The checkerboard pattern indicates a bad GPU quad - it's a hardware problem that happens sometimes. Usually it's caught in QA, but it appears that TSMC has been slacking off as of late.
Many GPUs are sold with a disabled quad as a "value" edition - the Radeon 9500, 9800SE, x800 Pro/LE, and a number NVIDIA products are all parts with the broken quad (or quads) disabled.
"Maybe Microsoft could make some money off the machine if they knew how to actually design hardware rather than slapping a new case on a PC."
The 360 is no more a PC than the GameCube or PS2. It has a custom PowerPC CPU, a custom GPU, and a unified memory architecture that is very unlike what you find in a PC.
The GPU is the center of the 360, unlike in a PC - GPU memory (512M of GDDR3 at 700MHz) is the system memory.
There is also no PC-style BIOS, no PCI/PCIe, no parallel ATA, no legacy I/O - the list goes on.
As for manufacturing, I'd place the 360 "Core System" right around $300 to manufacture. There just isn't that much in the system that is expensive.
I guess really what Im saying is I would perfer a Mac Mini:o)
The Mini is a nice box, but it's not an HTPC box, despite what Slashdot users want to think.
Things you might want in an HTPC that the Mini doesn't have:
Lots of disk space. TV, ripped DVDs, and music all take up space. Notebook drives aren't going to cut it, and your only option for adding drives to the Mini is to buy external FireWire drives/enclosures - another added expense.
Multichannel / Digital audio. I'm sure that there is some USB gadget that you can buy, but, again, we're talking more gizmos sticking off the back of the Mini and more added expense. Lots of PC motherboards have optical/multichannel audio, ora decent PCI sound card (e.g. Audigy 2) runs around $40.
Component video. If you have a TV that will accept a DVI input, you're lucky. Most TVs won't accept DVI, and they only accept the encrypted DRM variant of HDMI. That leaves component output - which is available on many different video cards, often for less than $60.
A TV tuner. Sure, there are USB and FireWire solutions, but it's another thing sticking off the back. And more money - PCI tuners with MPEG-2 encoding run less than $70
So, yeah, if you get a Mini and add: - FireWire disk - USB Optical Audio adaptor - USB TV tuner - USB IR reciever - A USB 2.0 hub (only 2 ports on the Mini)
Then you may have an HTPC. All you need to do now is piece together an integrated solution to browse your media on the TV.
so one can reasonably expect it to be served at any temperature up to boiling. Simple physics limits the maximum temperature. McDonald's is not, and cannot be, at fault for serving "too hot" coffee, regardless of the serving temperature others use. The OP burned themselves.
No, one can reasonably expect it to be at a temperature fit for consumption and at a temperature that is reasonably safe.
You don't assume that the hot water coming out of a faucet is going to be 95C. Such a temperature is extremely dangerous for water that will likely come into contact with skin.
Coffee spills happen, particularly when you serve coffee in styrofoam cups with lids that frequently pop off (causing the cup to deform and spill liquid). As such, it is up to McDonalds to ensure that their product is safe if spilled. They aren't selling concentrated hydrochloric acid, they are selling a beverage.
Slashdot Mirror
Mainstream Linux users stopped caring about GNOME/KDE long ago. Most use what is default for their distro, which, more and more often, is GNOME. Fedora and RHEL ship with GNOME, as does Ubuntu, as does Novell Linux Desktop. Soon SuSe will be GNOME by default as well. Obviously, some distros support KDE more than GNOME (Mandriva, Slackware - though Dropline is available), and some are agnostic (Debian, Gentoo).
What we need is tighter integration. Neither GNOME nor KDE are going to go away any time soon. So we might as well start improving the way that GNOME and KDE apps interoperate. There have been steps forward (FD.Org Common Desktop, Notification icons, etc.), but it's not good enough. KDE apps running in GNOME don't feel "right". Nor do GNOME apps running in KDE.
Stop fighting and start cooperating. Today, 650 million computers will boot up Windows. Let's see if that can be changed.
Looks like your system crashed during a write and NTFS is unclean. Boot off a Windows CD. Press "R" to run the recovery console, log in, and type "chkdsk /f c:".
9 out of 10 times, chkdsk will be able to restore FS consistency. If not, do a "repair" operation to put down fresh OS files. Unplug the net until you enable the firewall, though.
If I'm saving up a million dollars to buy a date with Charlize Theron and I save 100 dollars, I'm not really that close, am I?
.01 .00001
Sigh, not very close at all.
10 / 1000 =
100 / 10^6 =
Your analogy sucks - it's 10,000 out of a million, not 100.
This bit comes from the struggle between those who wish to cancel analog tv broadcasts and go digital completly (saves cost and avoids dragging the conversion on for decades) vs those who do not with to burden every household with the costs of a new expensive hd tv.
Repeat after me, digital TV doesn't mean HDTV. The transition to ATSC is mandated. The transition to HDTV is not.
No one is going to be "burdened" to buy a new TV - your NTSC tv will continue to work just fine, along with a low-cost converter box to recieve the ATSC signal.
RadioShack currently sells an ATSC reciever for $89. Considering the fact that an ATSC reciever is really no more complex than a DVD player, we can expect to see ATSC recievers in the $30-$50 range as soon as demand picks up.
They aren't. By including the private flag in their torrent file they expect it to be a private p2p network.
And that's the problem. A flag cannot be - and should not be - responsible for the privacy of a network.
"As if understanding computers opens anywhere near the possibilites that being able to read does."
As a matter of fact, it does. Being able to read does you very little good if you have nothing to read.
Computers are the next step beyond literacy. The library can only be so big, and few of us have the luxury of having the time to conduct research the traditional way.
The Internet provides everyone with a "virtual library" that dwarves anything that we are likely to be able to access elsewhere.
Literacy dramatically expands the universe of information that we have access to. The Internet does exactly the same thing.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/food/fs/sc/scf/out155_e
The interesting thing about all of the websites that make threats about aspartame is the huge range of effects described:
Wow! All that caused by two amino acids which are commonly found in other foods.
One of the biggest problems is that aspartame is trashed so frequently on the internet that it becomes a self-perpetuating "problem". It is difficult to tell whether or not there is a real problem simply because there are so many bogus anecdotal reports.
So, the next time you feel like posting your warning about the dangers of aspartame, post some actual scientific studies (and link to them). Claiming that the government conspired to approve aspartame - without providing evidence - and posting an anecdotal report about how your "near photographic memory" is now gone simply makes you look like a quack.
Denver's RTD already has a pretty decent trip planner on its website, though I find it to produce results much like computerized driving directions - they may be the fastest method, but I'd rather take two busses and have a one hour trip than take five busses and have a 45 minute trip.
"Now, looking for the nearest Pizza Hut isn't that big of a deal but when somebodies life is involved, I wouldn't trust any other search provider."
When someone's life is involved, why the fuck would you be on the internet trying to find a hospital. We have a number for that, 911. If you're in Europe, 112.
I waited outside Best Buy for 5 hours on Black Friday (for the $380 laptop and $150 PC/monitor). Quantities of unbundled items were very limited (the minimum specified in the advertisement) and the employees were trying to sell extremely overpriced "bundles" to drive up the price.
Best Buy is all about upselling - from extended warranties to cables to services, their whole strategy to increase margin is to bundle overpriced junk with anything you buy.
Best Buy is fine as long as you remember one thing - don't believe their lies.
Have you even bothered to look at, say, MSN Search?
It's around 12KB including the graphics (similar to Google, which is around 10KB). There are no more distractions than Google.
Moreover, I find that MSN Search often gives better results (excluding the Image Search, which is quite frankly garbage).
As the creator and administrator of a Wiki service myself (Wikinote), I have to wonder what Wikipedia is truly thinking.
Wikinote and its sister website, Shortify, have seen their share of abuse. Most of the time it's SSH password-cracking scripts that try millions of usernames and passwords (and make 1GB logfiles with the auth failures - password authentication is disabled on WikinoteShortify). Sometimes you get a user who will try to fill the DB with random garbage.
On WikinoteShortify, disk space is extremely limited, so the major focus of our anti-abuse methods are in limiting the size of individual pages (64KB). Abuse still happens, though.
I've often thought of using CAPATCHAs or email verification to slow down the tide of bogus signups. But, realistically, that would cause more trouble for my users than it would for the spammers.
Abuse is going to happen. Do what you can to limit it. But don't stomp on your users while you are doing it.
That's the problem with limiting page creation to signed-in users. Spammers will create an account (or many, through a script) and attack. The extra step of an HTTP POST to get a new account is nothing for a Python script (nor, mind you, is the block on Python's user-agent). If you think you're accomplishing something, you're not - people will still find a way to vandalize Wikipedia.
The real question is why it is so difficult to detect bogus page creation. Wikipedia has always relied on human intervention to prevent abuse. There's always someone watching. Why is page creation any harder to audit than editing?
People just don't know where to look or realize that sometimes, programs like mutt, fetchmail and all the other "do one thing well" programs are a better solution than having a large bloaty email app.
That kind of bullshit doesn't fly in a corporate environment. Perhaps you've never worked in a corporation that uses groupware effectively.
And "mutt" being better than Outlook? What are you smoking! 90% of the people in a corporate environment can barely use Outlook - there is no way that you are ever going to get them to use mutt.
How about things like HTML email, shared calendaring, or any of the other things that you can do with Evolution / Outlook?
Before you go pissing all over the IS departments of major corporations, you should at least have the courtesy to think why Exchange/Outlook might be so popular:
- Active Directory integration
- Single server / desktop program for calendaring, email, contacts, etc.
- Distribution lists, polls, meeting requests and other features that are simple enough for the typical office user to use
- Integrated server solution (don't need different programs for IMAP, SMTP, webmail, etc.)
- Excellent webmail experience using AJAX
- Contact / Calendar / Task / Mail integration with PocketPC, Palm, and BlackBerry
After spending multiple hours mucking with different (poorly documented) configuration formats, multiple different daemons, mucking with the DB - it's really clear that Linux just isn't there. Exchange is easier to install, easier to configure, and easier to manage.
"The Pentium IV could easily beat the Opteron by cranking itself up to 6GHz if there was any practical way to extract 200W from a small core with no hot spots."
Not the case. Among other things, modern code is highly dependant on memory latency. P4 as of late hasn't even been getting 60% of clock; Opteron gets nearly 95%.
Your whole argument is why Intel developed the Itanium. The idea of producing a simpler CPU that is thermally more efficent is a novel one, but time and again we find that you can't erase the last 15 years of CPU innovation. We're still driving gasoline cars, we're still using paper money, and the Opteron still remians highly competitive with the Itanium at a fraction of the transistor count.
"In order to implement E911, GPS is necessary."
. php
Not the case. While CDMA and iDEN phones do need GPS to provide reliable triangulation, GSM triangulation systems exist that provide position with sufficent accuracy to meet E911 requirements:
http://www.trueposition.com/news_07.23.03_tmobile
When I buy a PC, any PC, I have Windows preinstalled.
Have you been living under a rock for the last five years? Dell, HP, and thousands of independant system builders are happy to sell you a PC without Windows. Even Fry's and Wal-Mart have PCs without Windows.
The fact that those products sell poorly indicates that people want Windows.
No, post the UL number on the bottom. That number can be used to find out who really manufactures the PSU.
In all likelyhood, it's FSP Group, Delta, or LiteON.
Anyone out there who could shed some insight into why aluminum is preferred over well-designed plastic?
Aluminum tends to bend in situations where plastic would crack or shatter.
But, that said, we're talking about a light, farily small product here. I throw my iPod Shuffle accross the room at the wall to freak people out, and it has held up fine.
IBM's PPC970 is known to produce vast quantities of heat, particularly with three cores. And ATI's modern GPUs are hot potatoes as well - particularly when you consider that the ATI GPU in the XBOX is also serving as the northbridge.
By all accounts, the system produces ~180W of heat while playing games. That's a lot to handle with only two 60mm fans.
Microsoft is not alone with this problem - the PS3 has an NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX derivitive that is clocked very high; it will produce at least 80W, and Cell will likely produce ~80W. More problematic for Sony is the fact that the current PS3 case has very few vent holes.
Make no mistake - heat is an issue that will be problematic for all next generation consoles. The days of 25W desktop CPUs are over, as are the days of 30W performance GPUs.
I'm just surprised that no one was smart enough to put a bloody Sempron in one of these consoles...
A quick cursory search on Google found that 5 gal of Coca-Cola syrup can be had for $40.00.
You can bet that McDonalds franchises don'y pay anywhere near $40 for 5 gal of syrup.
The checkerboard pattern indicates a bad GPU quad - it's a hardware problem that happens sometimes. Usually it's caught in QA, but it appears that TSMC has been slacking off as of late.
Many GPUs are sold with a disabled quad as a "value" edition - the Radeon 9500, 9800SE, x800 Pro/LE, and a number NVIDIA products are all parts with the broken quad (or quads) disabled.
"Maybe Microsoft could make some money off the machine if they knew how to actually design hardware rather than slapping a new case on a PC."
The 360 is no more a PC than the GameCube or PS2. It has a custom PowerPC CPU, a custom GPU, and a unified memory architecture that is very unlike what you find in a PC.
The GPU is the center of the 360, unlike in a PC - GPU memory (512M of GDDR3 at 700MHz) is the system memory.
There is also no PC-style BIOS, no PCI/PCIe, no parallel ATA, no legacy I/O - the list goes on.
As for manufacturing, I'd place the 360 "Core System" right around $300 to manufacture. There just isn't that much in the system that is expensive.
The Mini is a nice box, but it's not an HTPC box, despite what Slashdot users want to think.
Things you might want in an HTPC that the Mini doesn't have:
So, yeah, if you get a Mini and add:
- FireWire disk
- USB Optical Audio adaptor
- USB TV tuner
- USB IR reciever
- A USB 2.0 hub (only 2 ports on the Mini)
Then you may have an HTPC. All you need to do now is piece together an integrated solution to browse your media on the TV.
so one can reasonably expect it to be served at any temperature up to boiling. Simple physics limits the maximum temperature. McDonald's is not, and cannot be, at fault for serving "too hot" coffee, regardless of the serving temperature others use. The OP burned themselves.
No, one can reasonably expect it to be at a temperature fit for consumption and at a temperature that is reasonably safe.
You don't assume that the hot water coming out of a faucet is going to be 95C. Such a temperature is extremely dangerous for water that will likely come into contact with skin.
Coffee spills happen, particularly when you serve coffee in styrofoam cups with lids that frequently pop off (causing the cup to deform and spill liquid). As such, it is up to McDonalds to ensure that their product is safe if spilled. They aren't selling concentrated hydrochloric acid, they are selling a beverage.
95C is unreasonably hot for a beverage.
Why is this newsworthy? My high school had a laser cutter/engraver (similar to the one in the article, but much larger and more powerful).
We used it to cut/engrave all kinds of crap. Wood works well, as does acrylic (but not polycarbonate). Anodized aluminum works well, too.