His point is that we aren't funding this type of research enough. Also, he seems very concerned (and rightly so) that most of our species are blissfully ignorant of the dangers that we impose on ourselves, for example by relying so heavily on fossil fuels.
Thanks for the heads up. I'm already fairly convinced that my next machine with be a Mac. That Vaio was almost an iBook, but at the time my wife was worried some of the exam software that her law school used not supporting the Mac.
The machine that I encountered this on is a Windows XP box. When I was debating turning off all of these features, I timed its startup from hibernate and from a full shutdown, and there was almost no noticeable difference. I was surprised at that, but it convinced me that there was no advantage to the hibernate feature, at least on that laptop. I also now have a Dell Latitude (from work) Win2K box, which comes out of hibernate much more quickly than it does a clean boot, but I still leave the hibernate feature disabled. I really miss the days when every machine just had a single button for power on/off and you didn't have to hold it down for 5 seconds to cycle the power.
Are these features really essential? I find a lot of them annoying. We got a new Vaio last year, and this was my first new laptop since my K6-2 300, and included lots of new fangled "features". The first time that I closed the laptop to carry it to a differnt room it "hibernated", which I wasn't really expecting. Maybe I had been away from modern laptops for too long, but that wasn't really a feature I was looking for. If I want to turn a computer off, I'll shut it down myself. I don't want the machine guessing when I want it to turn itself off.
Power management I will give you as a useful feature, but those others just annoyed me until I disabled them.
I totally agree with you, but I've known a lot of people switching from Windows to anything else (Linux, *BSD, OS X) in the last year because they are tired of fighting all of the security problems that they run into on Windows. This isn't to say that alternate OSes don't have just as many (if not more) security flaws, but they are less agressively exploited. I think the immunity to Windows exploits will drive a lot of people to try Xandros and similar Windows replacements, and probably get quite a few converts in the process. The folks working on Xandros and other desktop Linux solutions are doing an increasingly good job of supplying a product that average users can use on a day to day basis without too many headaches. In some areas, I'd say that desktop Linux is far ahead of Windows. Most notably is the wide variety of file formats that you can open out of the box with Xandros (OOo, MS Office, etc), though I do agree with the article that they should package the Gimp with Xandros.
RTFA. The article mentions that the laptop they tested on previously had Ubuntu. The author is switiching back to Ubuntu because he couldn't get his wireless card to work properly under Xandros, but says that he'll switch back to Xandros as soon as it does. He cites the VPN client included with Xandros as the feature that seperates it from other distros (specifically Ubuntu).
Disaster, noun: 1) An occurrence causing widespread destruction and distress; a catastrophe. 2) A grave misfortune.
The incidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl both fit the definition of disaster in my book (and in dictionary.com's book). Also, both of these events were public relations disasters for advocates of nuclear energy and have served to inhibit more widespread adoption of safer nuclear technologies.
See this morning's article on nuclear fusion. There are lots of threads there about the general public's fear of nuclear technologies its by-products. It's easier for the public to associate nuclear power with danger since the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters.
I don't have any of the detials of their release schedule, and can't get to the because the site is slashdotted, but wouldn't it make sense to automatically generate an iso of this collection on a weekly basis? A lot of the software proejct that they include (e.g. Firefox, GAIM, Mozilla) have new releases very frequently. One problem that I've found while providing tech support for my wife, 4 brothers-in-law, parents, and wife's parents is that they are all very slack when it comes to updating software.
Re:Hmm. Does interfere with FireFox autocomplete
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Google Suggest
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Here's what I do with lists that I like to check up on every few days:
Create a new folder in the Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar Folder. But a bookmark of each of your queries in this folder. Right click on the folder on the bookmarks toolbar and choose "Open in tabs". This will open each bookmark in its own tab.
Re:What Google needs is Lexis-Nexis and Journal ta
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Google Suggest
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· Score: 2, Informative
See Google Scholar for a service that might do just that one day. It was previously covered on Slashdot here.
Mostly it's the user interface and integration with iTunes. Plenty of other portable digital music devices have more features (like support for more formats), are smaller, and cheaper, but I've yet to try one that is as user-friendly as the iPod.
One thing that bugs me, however, is that iTunes for Windows refuses to behave like a standard windows app. When you minimize it, it doesn't become the last entry in the Alt+Tab list, and in general has some wacky GUI choices. I really wish Apple would take the time to address these issues, but even those short comings make it difficult to deny the ease of use of an iPod.
try telling that to the kneejerk reaction anti nuclear fanatics who can't see the wood for their own foolishly planted trees
I was having a discussion with my wife and several friends a few nights ago, and the topic turned to energy concerns. I was amazed to find that I was the only person in the room who wasn't opposed to nuclear power plants, but then I remembered that I was the only person in the room with an engineering background and anything more than a high school physics class under my belt. I showed them all this Wired article and it actually seems to have helped their understanding of how nuclear power can be safe. That's a hard concept to sell to almost anyone who's spent years being convinced, or convincing themselves, that nuclear power cannot be safe, but I've found that it is possible to convince some. I'm also very proud of my wife, who has abandoned her "They can build it, just not near our house" attitude.
Actually, if you pay a little closer attention, you'll notice that I am the submitter. An editor seems to have changed the title of the article after I submitted it.
When I first saw the article, I was VERY curios as to how a quasar could have volcanic activity, which is why when I originally submitted the article the title was "Evidence of Volcanic Activity in the Kupier Belt".
Just to nitpick a bit, the DS is not a replacement for the GBA. Note that the DS doesn't carry the "Gameboy" name on it, it just happens to be backwards compatible with the GBA games. Game development will continue for the GBA, which probably has a good bit of life left in it. The DS is Nintendo's attempt to conquer the wireless handheld market that may or may not exist.
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His point is that we aren't funding this type of research enough. Also, he seems very concerned (and rightly so) that most of our species are blissfully ignorant of the dangers that we impose on ourselves, for example by relying so heavily on fossil fuels.
Spend about 30 seconds in an Apple store and it will change your mind.
...and the PSP gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way we likes it...
Well which is it? Did you have color or were the yellow sprites a drug-induced effect?
JST - Japanese Standard Time. I know geography is a difficult subject, but Japan is no where near Europe.
Queue - A lot of use are programmers, and a queue is a basic data structure that we can all understand. A line is a 1 dimensional object in geometry.
Celcius - Do you realize how much easier it is to communicate with the rest of the world and to make simple conversion when you work in Celsius?
Thanks for the heads up. I'm already fairly convinced that my next machine with be a Mac. That Vaio was almost an iBook, but at the time my wife was worried some of the exam software that her law school used not supporting the Mac.
The machine that I encountered this on is a Windows XP box. When I was debating turning off all of these features, I timed its startup from hibernate and from a full shutdown, and there was almost no noticeable difference. I was surprised at that, but it convinced me that there was no advantage to the hibernate feature, at least on that laptop. I also now have a Dell Latitude (from work) Win2K box, which comes out of hibernate much more quickly than it does a clean boot, but I still leave the hibernate feature disabled. I really miss the days when every machine just had a single button for power on/off and you didn't have to hold it down for 5 seconds to cycle the power.
Are these features really essential? I find a lot of them annoying. We got a new Vaio last year, and this was my first new laptop since my K6-2 300, and included lots of new fangled "features". The first time that I closed the laptop to carry it to a differnt room it "hibernated", which I wasn't really expecting. Maybe I had been away from modern laptops for too long, but that wasn't really a feature I was looking for. If I want to turn a computer off, I'll shut it down myself. I don't want the machine guessing when I want it to turn itself off.
Power management I will give you as a useful feature, but those others just annoyed me until I disabled them.
I totally agree with you, but I've known a lot of people switching from Windows to anything else (Linux, *BSD, OS X) in the last year because they are tired of fighting all of the security problems that they run into on Windows. This isn't to say that alternate OSes don't have just as many (if not more) security flaws, but they are less agressively exploited. I think the immunity to Windows exploits will drive a lot of people to try Xandros and similar Windows replacements, and probably get quite a few converts in the process. The folks working on Xandros and other desktop Linux solutions are doing an increasingly good job of supplying a product that average users can use on a day to day basis without too many headaches. In some areas, I'd say that desktop Linux is far ahead of Windows. Most notably is the wide variety of file formats that you can open out of the box with Xandros (OOo, MS Office, etc), though I do agree with the article that they should package the Gimp with Xandros.
RTFA. The article mentions that the laptop they tested on previously had Ubuntu. The author is switiching back to Ubuntu because he couldn't get his wireless card to work properly under Xandros, but says that he'll switch back to Xandros as soon as it does. He cites the VPN client included with Xandros as the feature that seperates it from other distros (specifically Ubuntu).
Check out iPod Linux.
Disaster, noun:
1) An occurrence causing widespread destruction and distress; a catastrophe.
2) A grave misfortune.
The incidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl both fit the definition of disaster in my book (and in dictionary.com's book). Also, both of these events were public relations disasters for advocates of nuclear energy and have served to inhibit more widespread adoption of safer nuclear technologies.
See this morning's article on nuclear fusion. There are lots of threads there about the general public's fear of nuclear technologies its by-products. It's easier for the public to associate nuclear power with danger since the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters.
I don't have any of the detials of their release schedule, and can't get to the because the site is slashdotted, but wouldn't it make sense to automatically generate an iso of this collection on a weekly basis? A lot of the software proejct that they include (e.g. Firefox, GAIM, Mozilla) have new releases very frequently. One problem that I've found while providing tech support for my wife, 4 brothers-in-law, parents, and wife's parents is that they are all very slack when it comes to updating software.
Here's what I do with lists that I like to check up on every few days:
Create a new folder in the Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar Folder. But a bookmark of each of your queries in this folder. Right click on the folder on the bookmarks toolbar and choose "Open in tabs". This will open each bookmark in its own tab.
See Google Scholar for a service that might do just that one day. It was previously covered on Slashdot here.
Buy a copy of Boktai or Boktai 2 and the sun is your ally.
Also, the GBA SP is backlit, and you can mod the original GBA to add backlighting, so this is not really a big deal.
iPod Linux is here. Start thinking.
Mostly it's the user interface and integration with iTunes. Plenty of other portable digital music devices have more features (like support for more formats), are smaller, and cheaper, but I've yet to try one that is as user-friendly as the iPod.
One thing that bugs me, however, is that iTunes for Windows refuses to behave like a standard windows app. When you minimize it, it doesn't become the last entry in the Alt+Tab list, and in general has some wacky GUI choices. I really wish Apple would take the time to address these issues, but even those short comings make it difficult to deny the ease of use of an iPod.
Also, you can get several for free.
I was having a discussion with my wife and several friends a few nights ago, and the topic turned to energy concerns. I was amazed to find that I was the only person in the room who wasn't opposed to nuclear power plants, but then I remembered that I was the only person in the room with an engineering background and anything more than a high school physics class under my belt. I showed them all this Wired article and it actually seems to have helped their understanding of how nuclear power can be safe. That's a hard concept to sell to almost anyone who's spent years being convinced, or convincing themselves, that nuclear power cannot be safe, but I've found that it is possible to convince some. I'm also very proud of my wife, who has abandoned her "They can build it, just not near our house" attitude.
Actually, if you pay a little closer attention, you'll notice that I am the submitter. An editor seems to have changed the title of the article after I submitted it.
According to the Apple site, it's called an iPod Photo, NOT a Photo iPod. Seeing as how they make the thing, I'm going to take their word for it.
When I first saw the article, I was VERY curios as to how a quasar could have volcanic activity, which is why when I originally submitted the article the title was "Evidence of Volcanic Activity in the Kupier Belt".
You can preorder Mario Kart DS here.
Just to nitpick a bit, the DS is not a replacement for the GBA. Note that the DS doesn't carry the "Gameboy" name on it, it just happens to be backwards compatible with the GBA games. Game development will continue for the GBA, which probably has a good bit of life left in it. The DS is Nintendo's attempt to conquer the wireless handheld market that may or may not exist.