Actually i can't wait until they ship laptops with this cpu and a nasty integrated gpu that won't be able to pull vista off with all the bells and whistles attached.:)
Australia is living proof that these doomsday population explosions CAN AND DO HAPPEN.
Just because it hasn't happened yet in the Black Sea doesn't mean it won't. Such logic is dangerous, and needs to be taken with a *huge* grain of salt.
It's better to err on the side of caution. If you do so, the worst thing that could happen is that the crabs get fished into extinction in the region, and we end up being no worse off than when we started.
most cell networks and radio transmitters were working fine. the cell networks were overloaded to the point of being unusable, but it wouldn't have killed them to temporarily suspend all traffic for an emergency broadcast.
I don't know about you, but this system actually has some appeal to me.
I wouldn't want to be receiving messages everytime Osama Bin Laden sneezes, or some vague insubstantial threat warning is released, but some type of good, reliable system for distributing information when there is a clear and present danger would be immensely helpful to our country.
An effective information distribution system would have done wonders for getting people out of New Orleans ahead of time, rather than at the very last minute.
Likewise, if such a system were activated during the big NYC blackout a few years ago, it would done a lot to let people know that there was no sort of terrorist attack or other emergency.
As long as such a system is kept under tight control to only be used in *extreme* emergencies, I have no problem with it, although I do agree that such a system could very easily be used for propoganda purposes...
Lets see the Commodore PET, Apple II and TRS-80 were pretty \much can't touch this OS without a hammer type computers.
Well, yes.... but the problem with the Apple ][ was that this was the sort of behaviour Woz encouraged. There was an entire industry dedicated to producing hardware devices that provided functionality that the OS would otherwise not allow.
On a more serious note, this was definitely a concession to the fact that the processors of the day just weren't able to perform many specialized tasks, which could have been otherwise been accomplished via simple circuits. By providing a ridiculously simple hardware interface, the designers of the ][ (mostly Woz) ensured that the machine could perform tasks (albeit not out of the box) that their more expsneive competitors couldn't even dream of doing. Today, this is no longer necessary, and we are gradually seeing every hardware interface controlled entirely by software, and expansion slots disappearing from desktop machines. Expansion devices today generally perform very little logic of their own.
I'm sorry, but this is a little bit overreaching, considering that he had marked his profile as being private.
To create an analogy: If he had a public profile, it would have been like the employer sent out a PI to follow him to the grocery store every time he purchased groceries. Groceries are in no way connected to work, but hey, he could be building a bomb out of household cleaning products. It's creepy, but is most likely within the realm of the law --- and there's nothing anyone can do to prevent this sort of thing.
If his profile was private, it would have been like the detective following him into the grocery store, recording exactly what he purchased, taking down the number of the credit card he used to pay, and following him home to see how he used each item he purchased, and then following him on a date with his girlfriend. Whoa there! That's a definite unwarranted invasion of privacy!
The line has to be drawn between what goes on in the business world, and in the personal world. Even if you're perfectly legit, certain personal information on your profile could affect the hiring decision for the wrong reasons. In the job application process, I don't specify my religion, political affiliations, sexual orientation, musical tastes, etc. because none of these things have anything to do with my ability to work. However, on facebook, I provide all of this information voluntarily to the people I consider to be my "friends" so that I can form new relationships and network with others. From a logical standpoint, there is no reason why I should not share this information, as it has absolutely no bearing on my ability to do my job.
However, it is a well-known fact that subliminal subconscious biases occur in virtually all people. Perhaps if the employer noticed that I listed Greatful Dead and Phish as my favorite bands, he would subconsciously draw the correlation that I could be a stoner, and am thus less worthy to be hired. Logically speaking, itis a completely ludicrious assumption to base a hiring decision bsaed upon musical tastes, but the fact is that we make these sort of snap-judgements every day without realizing it, and such a judgement might be the impetus to choose between two equally-qualified applicants.
I guess what it boils down to is that these sort of invasions of privacy give employers access to completely extraneous information, that although innocuous, will unfairly affect that person's chances of being hired.
Actually, the attacks were focused on the PATH system according to the latest release.
According to Wikipedia, unlike the Holland tunnel, which is lined with steel-reinforced concrete underneath bedrock, the PATH was built on a shoestring budget in 1908, and is nothing more than a series of cast iron metal tubes sunk into the muck at the bottom of the Hudson.
For the uninformed, the PATH is a short-distance heavy rail system used by commuters to cross the Hudson between New Jersey and Downtown Manhattan. All other commuter rail trains into NYC go into either Penn Station or Grand Central Terminal, both of which are several miles away. There is a ferry that crosses the hudson along the same route, and I imagine that it's going to be significantly more popular from now on.
Are there any engineer-type people around here to comment on the strength of the tubes?
Honestly, I think it would be *amazing* if NYC (mahattan) were a pedestrian-only city.
Devise some way to effectively do freight deliveries via subway, substantially build up the mass transit and parking infrastructure outside of the city, and all the sudden, New York becomes *substantially* safer, cleaner, and quieter.
Having a car in NYC is expensive to the point where it is a privelige only afforded by tourists and the extremely rich -- it wouldn't have as big of an impact as one would imagine.
Narrow the avenues to one or two lanes to allow buses, emergency vehicles, and local delivery trucks to pass, and close most of the cross-streets to all but pedestrians and emergency vehicles.
Or they could just close one or two of the avenues. A pedestrian-only Broadway wouldn't be expensive to implement (a few overpasses or tunnels similar to the ones outside of Grand Central), and it would push property values through the roof, which I'm sure some people would like.
I think (and hope) that the era of the automobile is coming to an end.
I'm pretty sure they'd find the same exact results if they substituted the iPod for any cellphone, or any other MP3 player on the market.
The survey's meaningless because there's nothing to compare it to (no control group). Get me a survey done by a group of statisticians, and then I'll start listening.
For one, their writing style is over the top to the point of insanity. We get it. You aced Creative Writing in college. Good job!
On the other hand, their tastes in music are, in my opinion, a pretty good reflection of the college demographic. A weird anomaly, however, is that their scoring system is entirely arbitrary -- at times it's subtractive, with one bad song causing the album to lose several points, and at times, it's additive, with albums getting 9/10 ratings for one or two good songs with the rest being garbage. Artists generally take their ratings with a huge grain of salt.
Generally speaking, most of the music I like that gets reviewed by them scores somewhere between 7-9 out of 10. Anything above a 9 is too weird for my tastes.
And they've seriously got to kick their radiohead addiction.
The (relatively cheap) public school I go to advised me to buy a $1500 IBM Thinkpad, and will be turning that 'advisory' into a requirement in the coming years so that they can give them away to in-state kids getting lots of financial aid for next to nothing.
So yes. Compared to what most universities are making students buy, $899 is cheap, and I think that most of the comments here are missing the mark completely. This is designed as a lab/classroom machine, and I've gotta say that it fits the bill nicely. $900 is about what they'd be paying for a cheap-ish PC & Monitor from a reputable manufacturer. I have a feeling that Apple's next big push is going to be to recapture the education market.
One of the school districts near where I live has switched from a PC-only environment to a mixed mac-pc environment (macs for art/video & younger grades -- PCs for everything else). So far, it'w worked beautifuly, and they're saving tons of money in software licensing fees. The server backend is comprised of a series of XServes providing directory, email, file, and print servers to both windows and mac clients across several schools. It's a very slick setup.
"Hello, I'm having a problem with my computer. I'm running windows ME..."
*click*
Re:Richard Feynman's Paper on the Challenger Disas
on
Shuttle Launch Success
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's really the boy who cried wolf all over again.
NASA engineers demand precision to the point of insanity. The managment knows this is not possible, and that if the engineers were in charge, the thing would never even get off the ground.
The problem we have is that the engineers tend to over-dramatize the risks, causing the managment to often disregard them completely.
It's a problem, and honestly, I'm not sure that there's any easy solution other than redesigning the craft to be significantly simpler (less engineers complaining = more time for the managment to listen to the ones who legitimately have something to say).
I think NASA's reached the point where the engineers AND managment both agree that the shuttle is a flawed design, and needs to be retired ASAP (which, if all goes well, it will). However, in spite of the clamoring of the engineers, there are many practical and political concerns which dictate that the shuttle must fly. Saving the Hubble is probably the most significant of these (and right now, it looks like we actually WILL go up there in 2008 to fix the thing).
Now's as good as a time as ever to register as a marrow donor, and very likely save a life in the process.
After being presented with this opportunity, I was unable to formulate any argument in my mind not to do this. Marrow donations require a very specific genetic match, and chances are that if someone requires a marrow donation, their life depends on it.
Seriously folks, if you're eligible to do so, please register to be a marrow donor, and donate blood as often as you can. What goes around comes around.
The Gamecube has a 485mhz PowerPC. XBox has a 733mhz PIII. Although I'm well aware that the two CPUs don't compare clock-to-clock, it's pretty obvious here that in terms of raw processing power, the XBox wins hands down.
Like you mentioned, this didn't turn into a perceptable advantage for Nintendo in practice, as the different architecture and graphics hardware made up for the CPU's shortcomings. To me, it seems like nintendo's hardware is just *barely* fast enough to keep up with the competition, which, although fine for end users, is most likely a bear for developers.
That said, I agree that the Gamecube was among the best consoles ever made.
But damn I can build a pretty beefy linux box for the cost of just the console.
Screw that. you could buy a pretty beefy linux box for significantly less than the cost of the console, or buy a core-duo mac mini if you're so inclined, and take advantage of the software that comes with it.
As a minor correction -- Hamachi builds VPNs, not LANs, and is damn good at it too.
I thought that a zero-configuration VPN was too good to be true, but after successfully using it behind a few very restrictive firewalls, I'm willing to believe it's true. As a nice bonus, the security is very good. It's definitely the coolest bit of technology I've used this year.
The writers have dug themselves into a hole, where the only way out will be an extremely unsatisfying ending that will have to either be incredibly anticlimatic, or so spectacular that it's cheezy.
That said, television is finding new fun ways to keep viewers entralled. Lost and 24 are the first two heavily commercialized (read: mainstream, non-educational) series to capture my attention.
I'm actually happy that good storytelling and plot cohesiveness has been revived. I'd daresay that even Dickens would be proud.
SketchUp fills a nice-sized, currently-unoccupied gap.
It is very true that sketchup is not a state-of-the-art 3d modelling application.
However, the user-interface, and the very paradigm upon which the program operates is indeed quite revolutionary. 3d modelling is often about precision, precision, precision.
Sketchup isn't, and it says so right in the product description. Heck, they even provide a 'jitter' option to make your models look like skeches. SketchUp is great for creating basic 3d models from sketches using a limited set of rudimentary tools. No overcomplexities or fancy CAD-terminology to confuse the users. I was able to create a reasonably-accurate model of my house in about half an hour, having never picked up a piece of 3d-modeling software in my life.
Since then, I've played around with Blender, and a copy of 3d studio max at school, and determined that it would take several hours to do the same thing, albeit with a higher degree of precision.
Sketchup is really a great tool for visualizing ideas. Perhaps not-so-great for designing a skyscraper.
The landing gear has been, up until now, virtually the only piece of the shuttle that was not automated or not able to be controlled remotely.
On the shuttle, once the landing gear is down, it is down for good. It cannot be retracted, and opening the landing gear doors compromises the heat shield.
Thus, the designers of the shuttle were weary of the fact that a computer glitch could cause the gear to open up while in orbit or too high up on the descent, causing a chatestrophic mission failure from which there would be no chance of recovery. Instead, they instructed the pilots to flip a mechanical switch once the shuttle reached a certain altitude.
I guess they're at the point where they trust the computers enough to link them to this system.
Slashdot Mirror
Nasty?
This is slashdot. Not Mean Girls.
Tell that to Australia.
Australia is living proof that these doomsday population explosions CAN AND DO HAPPEN.
Just because it hasn't happened yet in the Black Sea doesn't mean it won't. Such logic is dangerous, and needs to be taken with a *huge* grain of salt.
It's better to err on the side of caution. If you do so, the worst thing that could happen is that the crabs get fished into extinction in the region, and we end up being no worse off than when we started.
most cell networks and radio transmitters were working fine. the cell networks were overloaded to the point of being unusable, but it wouldn't have killed them to temporarily suspend all traffic for an emergency broadcast.
I don't know about you, but this system actually has some appeal to me.
I wouldn't want to be receiving messages everytime Osama Bin Laden sneezes, or some vague insubstantial threat warning is released, but some type of good, reliable system for distributing information when there is a clear and present danger would be immensely helpful to our country.
An effective information distribution system would have done wonders for getting people out of New Orleans ahead of time, rather than at the very last minute.
Likewise, if such a system were activated during the big NYC blackout a few years ago, it would done a lot to let people know that there was no sort of terrorist attack or other emergency.
As long as such a system is kept under tight control to only be used in *extreme* emergencies, I have no problem with it, although I do agree that such a system could very easily be used for propoganda purposes...
Well, yes.... but the problem with the Apple ][ was that this was the sort of behaviour Woz encouraged. There was an entire industry dedicated to producing hardware devices that provided functionality that the OS would otherwise not allow.
On a more serious note, this was definitely a concession to the fact that the processors of the day just weren't able to perform many specialized tasks, which could have been otherwise been accomplished via simple circuits. By providing a ridiculously simple hardware interface, the designers of the ][ (mostly Woz) ensured that the machine could perform tasks (albeit not out of the box) that their more expsneive competitors couldn't even dream of doing. Today, this is no longer necessary, and we are gradually seeing every hardware interface controlled entirely by software, and expansion slots disappearing from desktop machines. Expansion devices today generally perform very little logic of their own.
I'm sorry, but this is a little bit overreaching, considering that he had marked his profile as being private.
To create an analogy:
If he had a public profile, it would have been like the employer sent out a PI to follow him to the grocery store every time he purchased groceries. Groceries are in no way connected to work, but hey, he could be building a bomb out of household cleaning products. It's creepy, but is most likely within the realm of the law --- and there's nothing anyone can do to prevent this sort of thing.
If his profile was private, it would have been like the detective following him into the grocery store, recording exactly what he purchased, taking down the number of the credit card he used to pay, and following him home to see how he used each item he purchased, and then following him on a date with his girlfriend. Whoa there! That's a definite unwarranted invasion of privacy!
The line has to be drawn between what goes on in the business world, and in the personal world. Even if you're perfectly legit, certain personal information on your profile could affect the hiring decision for the wrong reasons. In the job application process, I don't specify my religion, political affiliations, sexual orientation, musical tastes, etc. because none of these things have anything to do with my ability to work. However, on facebook, I provide all of this information voluntarily to the people I consider to be my "friends" so that I can form new relationships and network with others. From a logical standpoint, there is no reason why I should not share this information, as it has absolutely no bearing on my ability to do my job.
However, it is a well-known fact that subliminal subconscious biases occur in virtually all people. Perhaps if the employer noticed that I listed Greatful Dead and Phish as my favorite bands, he would subconsciously draw the correlation that I could be a stoner, and am thus less worthy to be hired. Logically speaking, itis a completely ludicrious assumption to base a hiring decision bsaed upon musical tastes, but the fact is that we make these sort of snap-judgements every day without realizing it, and such a judgement might be the impetus to choose between two equally-qualified applicants.
I guess what it boils down to is that these sort of invasions of privacy give employers access to completely extraneous information, that although innocuous, will unfairly affect that person's chances of being hired.
With a name like that, it's sure to be good!
(seriously.... have the Gnome/KDE guys just stopped trying to be clever with their names?)
Actually, the attacks were focused on the PATH system according to the latest release.
According to Wikipedia, unlike the Holland tunnel, which is lined with steel-reinforced concrete underneath bedrock, the PATH was built on a shoestring budget in 1908, and is nothing more than a series of cast iron metal tubes sunk into the muck at the bottom of the Hudson.
For the uninformed, the PATH is a short-distance heavy rail system used by commuters to cross the Hudson between New Jersey and Downtown Manhattan. All other commuter rail trains into NYC go into either Penn Station or Grand Central Terminal, both of which are several miles away. There is a ferry that crosses the hudson along the same route, and I imagine that it's going to be significantly more popular from now on.
Are there any engineer-type people around here to comment on the strength of the tubes?
Honestly, I think it would be *amazing* if NYC (mahattan) were a pedestrian-only city.
Devise some way to effectively do freight deliveries via subway, substantially build up the mass transit and parking infrastructure outside of the city, and all the sudden, New York becomes *substantially* safer, cleaner, and quieter.
Having a car in NYC is expensive to the point where it is a privelige only afforded by tourists and the extremely rich -- it wouldn't have as big of an impact as one would imagine.
Narrow the avenues to one or two lanes to allow buses, emergency vehicles, and local delivery trucks to pass, and close most of the cross-streets to all but pedestrians and emergency vehicles.
Or they could just close one or two of the avenues. A pedestrian-only Broadway wouldn't be expensive to implement (a few overpasses or tunnels similar to the ones outside of Grand Central), and it would push property values through the roof, which I'm sure some people would like.
I think (and hope) that the era of the automobile is coming to an end.
Not quite. That solution will last you a little less than 32 years.
I'm pretty sure they'd find the same exact results if they substituted the iPod for any cellphone, or any other MP3 player on the market.
The survey's meaningless because there's nothing to compare it to (no control group). Get me a survey done by a group of statisticians, and then I'll start listening.
retroactively
Pitchfork is an interesting beast.
For one, their writing style is over the top to the point of insanity. We get it. You aced Creative Writing in college. Good job!
On the other hand, their tastes in music are, in my opinion, a pretty good reflection of the college demographic. A weird anomaly, however, is that their scoring system is entirely arbitrary -- at times it's subtractive, with one bad song causing the album to lose several points, and at times, it's additive, with albums getting 9/10 ratings for one or two good songs with the rest being garbage. Artists generally take their ratings with a huge grain of salt.
Generally speaking, most of the music I like that gets reviewed by them scores somewhere between 7-9 out of 10. Anything above a 9 is too weird for my tastes.
And they've seriously got to kick their radiohead addiction.
The (relatively cheap) public school I go to advised me to buy a $1500 IBM Thinkpad, and will be turning that 'advisory' into a requirement in the coming years so that they can give them away to in-state kids getting lots of financial aid for next to nothing.
So yes. Compared to what most universities are making students buy, $899 is cheap, and I think that most of the comments here are missing the mark completely. This is designed as a lab/classroom machine, and I've gotta say that it fits the bill nicely. $900 is about what they'd be paying for a cheap-ish PC & Monitor from a reputable manufacturer. I have a feeling that Apple's next big push is going to be to recapture the education market.
One of the school districts near where I live has switched from a PC-only environment to a mixed mac-pc environment (macs for art/video & younger grades -- PCs for everything else). So far, it'w worked beautifuly, and they're saving tons of money in software licensing fees. The server backend is comprised of a series of XServes providing directory, email, file, and print servers to both windows and mac clients across several schools. It's a very slick setup.
"Hello, I'm having a problem with my computer. I'm running windows ME..."
*click*
It's really the boy who cried wolf all over again.
NASA engineers demand precision to the point of insanity. The managment knows this is not possible, and that if the engineers were in charge, the thing would never even get off the ground.
The problem we have is that the engineers tend to over-dramatize the risks, causing the managment to often disregard them completely.
It's a problem, and honestly, I'm not sure that there's any easy solution other than redesigning the craft to be significantly simpler (less engineers complaining = more time for the managment to listen to the ones who legitimately have something to say).
I think NASA's reached the point where the engineers AND managment both agree that the shuttle is a flawed design, and needs to be retired ASAP (which, if all goes well, it will). However, in spite of the clamoring of the engineers, there are many practical and political concerns which dictate that the shuttle must fly. Saving the Hubble is probably the most significant of these (and right now, it looks like we actually WILL go up there in 2008 to fix the thing).
Now's as good as a time as ever to register as a marrow donor, and very likely save a life in the process.
After being presented with this opportunity, I was unable to formulate any argument in my mind not to do this. Marrow donations require a very specific genetic match, and chances are that if someone requires a marrow donation, their life depends on it.
Seriously folks, if you're eligible to do so, please register to be a marrow donor, and donate blood as often as you can. What goes around comes around.
The Gamecube has a 485mhz PowerPC. XBox has a 733mhz PIII. Although I'm well aware that the two CPUs don't compare clock-to-clock, it's pretty obvious here that in terms of raw processing power, the XBox wins hands down.
Like you mentioned, this didn't turn into a perceptable advantage for Nintendo in practice, as the different architecture and graphics hardware made up for the CPU's shortcomings. To me, it seems like nintendo's hardware is just *barely* fast enough to keep up with the competition, which, although fine for end users, is most likely a bear for developers.
That said, I agree that the Gamecube was among the best consoles ever made.
Screw that. you could buy a pretty beefy linux box for significantly less than the cost of the console, or buy a core-duo mac mini if you're so inclined, and take advantage of the software that comes with it.
As a minor correction -- Hamachi builds VPNs, not LANs, and is damn good at it too.
I thought that a zero-configuration VPN was too good to be true, but after successfully using it behind a few very restrictive firewalls, I'm willing to believe it's true. As a nice bonus, the security is very good. It's definitely the coolest bit of technology I've used this year.
you know..... the grammatical error in there seems fitting
Is there any way for it to?
The writers have dug themselves into a hole, where the only way out will be an extremely unsatisfying ending that will have to either be incredibly anticlimatic, or so spectacular that it's cheezy.
That said, television is finding new fun ways to keep viewers entralled. Lost and 24 are the first two heavily commercialized (read: mainstream, non-educational) series to capture my attention.
I'm actually happy that good storytelling and plot cohesiveness has been revived. I'd daresay that even Dickens would be proud.
SketchUp fills a nice-sized, currently-unoccupied gap.
It is very true that sketchup is not a state-of-the-art 3d modelling application.
However, the user-interface, and the very paradigm upon which the program operates is indeed quite revolutionary. 3d modelling is often about precision, precision, precision.
Sketchup isn't, and it says so right in the product description. Heck, they even provide a 'jitter' option to make your models look like skeches. SketchUp is great for creating basic 3d models from sketches using a limited set of rudimentary tools. No overcomplexities or fancy CAD-terminology to confuse the users. I was able to create a reasonably-accurate model of my house in about half an hour, having never picked up a piece of 3d-modeling software in my life.
Since then, I've played around with Blender, and a copy of 3d studio max at school, and determined that it would take several hours to do the same thing, albeit with a higher degree of precision.
Sketchup is really a great tool for visualizing ideas. Perhaps not-so-great for designing a skyscraper.
The landing gear has been, up until now, virtually the only piece of the shuttle that was not automated or not able to be controlled remotely.
On the shuttle, once the landing gear is down, it is down for good. It cannot be retracted, and opening the landing gear doors compromises the heat shield.
Thus, the designers of the shuttle were weary of the fact that a computer glitch could cause the gear to open up while in orbit or too high up on the descent, causing a chatestrophic mission failure from which there would be no chance of recovery. Instead, they instructed the pilots to flip a mechanical switch once the shuttle reached a certain altitude.
I guess they're at the point where they trust the computers enough to link them to this system.
Most Police in the US have mandatory cameras placed in their cars, so I'd imagine that this is already happening.
Personally, I think they're a great idea, as it takes lots of the guesswork out of the legal process, and keeps cops in line as well.