Maybe $800 is good for a (admittedly not very decent) gaming laptop... which would come with a display too...
Though I guess you could knock off $100 if you dump the Windows Vista OS, for, say Linux, an old copy of WinXP, or even Windows 7 beta, all of which would run games faster than Vista.
I am wondering, though, what do others use for coding (and for Python coding in particular). Text editors are fine for many tasks, but perhaps there are more complex projects with lots of files which require something like Eclipse, etc. What's your experience w. that?
alcohols / ethanols reduce gas mileage
on
The Great Ethanol Scam
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Lots of people have been playing with various gasoline additives. Alcohol does not come out high on the list.
Essentially, by adding ~10% ethanol to gasoline, people have measured reductions in gas mileage of around 10%. So it's a great way to create agricultural subsidies without really impacting OPEC all that much at all. Big win for everyone but the consumer.
This article about using acetone as an additive has always stuck out in my mind... too bad the guy's tone kinda veers towards sounding like a quack. But as an engineer, I commiserate with his exasperation in the face of stupidity. http://pesn.com/2005/03/17/6900069_Acetone/
Even more fun is that in order for nukes to successfully work as deterrents, even the first world countries have to act like nutjobs so the other side would actually think they'd be crazy enough to use them. It's pretty pointless to have nukes if everyone thinks you're too civilized to use them.
So credit/blame Kissinger / Nixon for coming up with the idea of pretending to be nuclear-armed crazies first:
So our situation is pretty special... we moved to a pretty small condo near a Metro subway station and got rid of our second car. Our remaining car was used and bought in cash 7 years ago, and since we have a clean record and it's the only car in a family of 4, our liability insurance is like $33/mo. Since it's an old midsize, it runs up a gas / oil change bill of about $160/mo., plus occasional repairs that tear out a few hundred a year (esp. around emissions testing time:P ). If we spread the purchase cost over the expected 10 year life of the car, it's running us just under $200 a month.
So our car is pretty dirt cheap at $400/mo. all said and done. But my wife and I take turns taking public transportation to work while the other drives the kids to daycare. My transit bill still comes out to ~$120/mo., and that comes out pre-tax due to IRS incentives. My wife puts in about $50/mo. and also uses transit to go to school on the weekends.
Ostensibly we're suffering a bit to live in a small condo, but since it's near a metro station, the value didn't change much with the housing bubble.
So I daresay we have a pretty good thing going with a combination of both car and rail... we have a pretty cheap car that gives us the flexibility we need to raise kids and run errands, but can rely on transit for the humdrum commute and occasional nights out on the town. Plus I get a lot of reading done on the train, or get caught up on sleep if I've spent the evening gaming while the kids are sleeping.
Also, since we live by a Metro station, we have a few Zipcars available as a safety blanket, but haven't really had much use for them. But it's nice to know it's there.
I wouldn't hesitate to terminate myself... er... I mean terminate cables myself.
But given that it's now "a thing" with your boss, they're going to jump on any and every opportunity to blame any unrelated network problem on your cable.
So now you pretty much need to let them pay for someone else to install this line and accept any responsibility for it not performing. If there's any problem with the line, you already have your own cable to swoop in and fix it with your own work. Just be sure to set up and keep this email trail on how you are conscientiously objecting to bringing in an external contractor who doesn't really care about the quality of their work since they can get paid to come back and diagnose and fix it later.
I know this should be the job of tags, but to help put this in context, remember the recent uptime comparison that showed Facebook with pretty decent availability compared to other social networking sites. I'd say it takes the admins a fair amount of disclipine and perseverance to attain those kinds of numbers. (of course, it probably has nothing to do with the uptime of their various sundry and mostly useless modules, but I'd guess that's a different set of admins than the ones that care for the core LAMP platform)
This almost makes Facebook geek "cool" in my book, but I guess all the non-geek "cool" kids who use it already think so.
Sorry, I should have tried submitting this story sooner, over the weekend.
My father-in-law had told me about it in advance. While he does work for NASA, he actually found out about it by reading some Russian news site. I guess it wasn't very well publicized...
I lug around a full size engineering laptop with a 19" LCD, so I'm getting a kick out of these replies, etc.
If I were in your position, I'd go the other direction and get something on the big and manly side of the PDA segment, such as a Nokia N810 or something else that runs Linux.
Or you could go all geek and augment your netbook with an external keyboard and external display. For example, you could Borg it out and turn it into a wearable with a Twiddler keyboard and some kind of wearable screen. Unfortunately, that probably means slipping your netbook into a fanny pack, unless you can find some kind of shoulder holster for it.
/ I use an eeePC 901... but it ostensibly belongs to my wife.:P
I'd say both should stay relevant, if only so that applications that use them can apply proper IPC abstraction and interoperate with both (or even other desktop environments).
I like what I've seen from KDE, esp. in the KNOPPIX liveCDs. But I use pitifully little software from the environment... I run a minimal gnome-panel as a launcher and notification area, gnome-terminal since it's more minimalist than the KDE terminals, and sometimes Nautilus when I want a graphical filemanager. But that's pretty much it. Gnome leaves less of a mess in my process tree.
I find a lot of these new features interesting, I like how stories seem to pop onto the page in near-realtime. Hopefully this will develop into the future of news sites. I can't wait until comments pop into threads in near-realtime as well.
Just wish these enhancements were implemented as user-selectable "themes", though. A lot of these tweaks obviously break distiller scripts and user interface habits.
Is there a version of slashdot for mobile users (other than the rss feed?). I think AvantSlash has stopped trying to track all the changes, which has made the format less accessible to plucker and avantgo users.
Anyway, still a fan, and/. is still my primary news site.
Oh, I wouldn't go that far... Lots of atheists could still point to things like the "Bill of Rights" or some such document, or have their own manifesto. Atheists can have a system of beliefs, the fundamental belief being that there is no God or Gods or divine beings or interventions.
Agnosticism might be closer to having a lack of a defined system of beliefs. Maybe they can make up whatever justification for their actions as they see fit. From that standpoint, they have more flexibility than even the atheists.
I'd consider myself more agnostic than atheist. I don't believe in divine intervention, but at the same time, if there was an all-seeing, all-sensing god watching over me, they'd probably be pretty happy with my good behavior. And if they weren't happy with me, they wouldn't be the kind of god I'd want to worship anyway. So I'm pretty much covered come rapture or judgment day, but I haven't wasted any time or effort if it never happens (and yes, I realize how circular that argument sounds:P )
I daresay that you would really enjoy Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash if you haven't read it already. One of the side characters kinda infiltrates a religious institution by gradually exposing herself to their doctrines until she builds up something of an immunity, the same way as if you study the psychological techniques studied in the 70's employed by salesmen, you can avoid allowing yourself to get suckered in by their manipulations.
As a parent, I'm starting to understand the purpose behind a lot of the dogma a lot more... it's a lot easier explaining to kids that God or angels or spirits or whatever are always watching them and judging them even when you aren't. Hopefully this helps grow them into honest persons, and they continue in that tradition even after they're old enough to know better and the boogeyman stories are no longer necessary. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of people tend to hold on to dogma and less to the moral and ethical lessons, because frankly, the dogma is more fun.
Atheism is a religion, at least in terms of a being a system of beliefs that governs a person's actions. But yeah, it's sort of like how they say anarchy isn't the best form of government, but it's better than none at all.
Can't think of an OS analogy that wouldn't offend atheists, though.
The religion a person practices is sorta like the OS a computer runs. It doesn't really matter if it's "right," or the most effective way of doing things, it only matters that you can do good things with your programming. What you end up doing is more important than why you did it.
I like variety and diversity... I try to surround myself with at least one of every OS to appreciate the differences between them, and I think most people could agree to support that. So it's just a matter of working together to reach common goals among the systems that network well together, and trying to firewall off the ones that don't play nice, or at least isolate them in their own little sandbox in which to have their fun.
Anyway, hope this totally inappropriate analogy sparks off some interesting... discussion:P But as geek, it is the way I see the world.
Yeah, screw carbon sequestration. What we really need is oxygen sequestration. Oxygen is a toxic, corrosive, highly reactive reagent that can make just about anything burst into flame. It is also highly addictive, getting people hooked for life after their first breath.
I say we harvest it from the atmosphere and put it where it can't hurt anyone. Then we can charge the addicts extortionate fees for a few whiffs to help let them down easy from their high.
I don't think they tint Tanks green to make the targetable... I think they just do it to make them look more like the Incredible Hulk. I LOL'd.
I'm kinda bored of the default L4D settings, so I actually enjoy finding a weird server every once in a while. When I actually want to pursue an accomplishment, though, I almost always host a local server. Even the "good" servers tend to get shutdown or fall off the internet in the middle of some good action.
It's not all that hard... Get one guy to create a private lobby, then invite the other friends in there. Once everyone is situated, make the lobby public to fill in any empty slots.
Also, always select to host a local server rather than using a dedicated public server. Too many weird servers out there that change the game type or simply shut down in the middle of a good game.
I actually appreciate some of the hacked servers, or admins who act as gamemasters with the sv_cheats bindings. But I'm kinda bored with the "normal" game. So it's fun to have a roomfull of witches or a couple tanks come at you and once every once in a while, and just see how long you can last.
In fact, I'm going to go all racist and suggest that you'd enjoy reading http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/ . But it's OK because I'm part white myself and identify with at least a third of the stuff they cover. It has really helped me understand myself and others in a way that is simple, succinct, and wrong:P
I think it's more of a cultural thing. I've seen people of all ages kinda expect primadonna treatment for some reason or another.
I'd also go so far to say that other cultures such as asians (of which I am also part of and have lived in for several years) are brought up to expect to work hard first and reap benefits sometime after they've proven their worth. It's actually quite confusing for us when we work for an organization that is anything other than a meritocracy.
Slashdot Mirror
Most people try to hit the $500 price point with pretty good results:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%24500+gaming+computer
Maybe $800 is good for a (admittedly not very decent) gaming laptop... which would come with a display too...
Though I guess you could knock off $100 if you dump the Windows Vista OS, for, say Linux, an old copy of WinXP, or even Windows 7 beta, all of which would run games faster than Vista.
I am wondering, though, what do others use for coding (and for Python coding in particular). Text editors are fine for many tasks, but perhaps there are more complex projects with lots of files which require something like Eclipse, etc. What's your experience w. that?
The Eric Python IDE is pretty amazing, with completion, and breakpoints with variable viewers, etc. First IDE to wean me away from emacs. Check it out:
http://eric-ide.python-projects.org/eric4-screenshots.html
Lots of people have been playing with various gasoline additives. Alcohol does not come out high on the list.
Essentially, by adding ~10% ethanol to gasoline, people have measured reductions in gas mileage of around 10%. So it's a great way to create agricultural subsidies without really impacting OPEC all that much at all. Big win for everyone but the consumer.
This article about using acetone as an additive has always stuck out in my mind... too bad the guy's tone kinda veers towards sounding like a quack. But as an engineer, I commiserate with his exasperation in the face of stupidity.
http://pesn.com/2005/03/17/6900069_Acetone/
Even more fun is that in order for nukes to successfully work as deterrents, even the first world countries have to act like nutjobs so the other side would actually think they'd be crazy enough to use them. It's pretty pointless to have nukes if everyone thinks you're too civilized to use them.
So credit/blame Kissinger / Nixon for coming up with the idea of pretending to be nuclear-armed crazies first:
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-03/ff_nuclearwar?currentPage=all
So our situation is pretty special... we moved to a pretty small condo near a Metro subway station and got rid of our second car. Our remaining car was used and bought in cash 7 years ago, and since we have a clean record and it's the only car in a family of 4, our liability insurance is like $33/mo. Since it's an old midsize, it runs up a gas / oil change bill of about $160/mo., plus occasional repairs that tear out a few hundred a year (esp. around emissions testing time :P ). If we spread the purchase cost over the expected 10 year life of the car, it's running us just under $200 a month.
So our car is pretty dirt cheap at $400/mo. all said and done. But my wife and I take turns taking public transportation to work while the other drives the kids to daycare. My transit bill still comes out to ~$120/mo., and that comes out pre-tax due to IRS incentives. My wife puts in about $50/mo. and also uses transit to go to school on the weekends.
Ostensibly we're suffering a bit to live in a small condo, but since it's near a metro station, the value didn't change much with the housing bubble.
So I daresay we have a pretty good thing going with a combination of both car and rail... we have a pretty cheap car that gives us the flexibility we need to raise kids and run errands, but can rely on transit for the humdrum commute and occasional nights out on the town. Plus I get a lot of reading done on the train, or get caught up on sleep if I've spent the evening gaming while the kids are sleeping.
Also, since we live by a Metro station, we have a few Zipcars available as a safety blanket, but haven't really had much use for them. But it's nice to know it's there.
I wouldn't hesitate to terminate myself... er... I mean terminate cables myself.
But given that it's now "a thing" with your boss, they're going to jump on any and every opportunity to blame any unrelated network problem on your cable.
So now you pretty much need to let them pay for someone else to install this line and accept any responsibility for it not performing. If there's any problem with the line, you already have your own cable to swoop in and fix it with your own work. Just be sure to set up and keep this email trail on how you are conscientiously objecting to bringing in an external contractor who doesn't really care about the quality of their work since they can get paid to come back and diagnose and fix it later.
Nuff said.
I think I actually spent less time on that project than I did trying to get Windows NT installed from a couple dozen floppies at the time.
lol, way to throw your car analogy right into the backseat.
Linux is a swinger... it'd network with anybody! Windows and Mac are closed-minded and stuck-up, and get easily confused by the orgy of activity.
Don't bother with the factory Xandros install on the eeepc, you really want: http://www.eeebuntu.org/
http://www.eeebuntu.org/
It supports all the eee HW functions and hotkeys out of the box.
I know this should be the job of tags, but to help put this in context, remember the recent uptime comparison that showed Facebook with pretty decent availability compared to other social networking sites. I'd say it takes the admins a fair amount of disclipine and perseverance to attain those kinds of numbers. (of course, it probably has nothing to do with the uptime of their various sundry and mostly useless modules, but I'd guess that's a different set of admins than the ones that care for the core LAMP platform)
This almost makes Facebook geek "cool" in my book, but I guess all the non-geek "cool" kids who use it already think so.
You've been taken in by obvious sarcasm troll! Oh no, now I have too!
Oh, UID, why have you failed me so?!
Sorry, I should have tried submitting this story sooner, over the weekend.
My father-in-law had told me about it in advance. While he does work for NASA, he actually found out about it by reading some Russian news site. I guess it wasn't very well publicized...
I lug around a full size engineering laptop with a 19" LCD, so I'm getting a kick out of these replies, etc.
If I were in your position, I'd go the other direction and get something on the big and manly side of the PDA segment, such as a Nokia N810 or something else that runs Linux.
Or you could go all geek and augment your netbook with an external keyboard and external display. For example, you could Borg it out and turn it into a wearable with a Twiddler keyboard and some kind of wearable screen. Unfortunately, that probably means slipping your netbook into a fanny pack, unless you can find some kind of shoulder holster for it.
/ I use an eeePC 901... but it ostensibly belongs to my wife. :P
I'd say both should stay relevant, if only so that applications that use them can apply proper IPC abstraction and interoperate with both (or even other desktop environments).
I like what I've seen from KDE, esp. in the KNOPPIX liveCDs. But I use pitifully little software from the environment... I run a minimal gnome-panel as a launcher and notification area, gnome-terminal since it's more minimalist than the KDE terminals, and sometimes Nautilus when I want a graphical filemanager. But that's pretty much it. Gnome leaves less of a mess in my process tree.
I find a lot of these new features interesting, I like how stories seem to pop onto the page in near-realtime. Hopefully this will develop into the future of news sites. I can't wait until comments pop into threads in near-realtime as well.
Just wish these enhancements were implemented as user-selectable "themes", though. A lot of these tweaks obviously break distiller scripts and user interface habits.
Is there a version of slashdot for mobile users (other than the rss feed?). I think AvantSlash has stopped trying to track all the changes, which has made the format less accessible to plucker and avantgo users.
Anyway, still a fan, and /. is still my primary news site.
Oh, I wouldn't go that far... Lots of atheists could still point to things like the "Bill of Rights" or some such document, or have their own manifesto. Atheists can have a system of beliefs, the fundamental belief being that there is no God or Gods or divine beings or interventions.
Agnosticism might be closer to having a lack of a defined system of beliefs. Maybe they can make up whatever justification for their actions as they see fit. From that standpoint, they have more flexibility than even the atheists.
I'd consider myself more agnostic than atheist. I don't believe in divine intervention, but at the same time, if there was an all-seeing, all-sensing god watching over me, they'd probably be pretty happy with my good behavior. And if they weren't happy with me, they wouldn't be the kind of god I'd want to worship anyway. So I'm pretty much covered come rapture or judgment day, but I haven't wasted any time or effort if it never happens (and yes, I realize how circular that argument sounds :P )
I daresay that you would really enjoy Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash if you haven't read it already. One of the side characters kinda infiltrates a religious institution by gradually exposing herself to their doctrines until she builds up something of an immunity, the same way as if you study the psychological techniques studied in the 70's employed by salesmen, you can avoid allowing yourself to get suckered in by their manipulations.
As a parent, I'm starting to understand the purpose behind a lot of the dogma a lot more... it's a lot easier explaining to kids that God or angels or spirits or whatever are always watching them and judging them even when you aren't. Hopefully this helps grow them into honest persons, and they continue in that tradition even after they're old enough to know better and the boogeyman stories are no longer necessary. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of people tend to hold on to dogma and less to the moral and ethical lessons, because frankly, the dogma is more fun.
Atheism is a religion, at least in terms of a being a system of beliefs that governs a person's actions. But yeah, it's sort of like how they say anarchy isn't the best form of government, but it's better than none at all.
Can't think of an OS analogy that wouldn't offend atheists, though.
The religion a person practices is sorta like the OS a computer runs. It doesn't really matter if it's "right," or the most effective way of doing things, it only matters that you can do good things with your programming. What you end up doing is more important than why you did it.
I like variety and diversity... I try to surround myself with at least one of every OS to appreciate the differences between them, and I think most people could agree to support that. So it's just a matter of working together to reach common goals among the systems that network well together, and trying to firewall off the ones that don't play nice, or at least isolate them in their own little sandbox in which to have their fun.
Anyway, hope this totally inappropriate analogy sparks off some interesting... discussion :P But as geek, it is the way I see the world.
Yeah, screw carbon sequestration. What we really need is oxygen sequestration. Oxygen is a toxic, corrosive, highly reactive reagent that can make just about anything burst into flame. It is also highly addictive, getting people hooked for life after their first breath.
I say we harvest it from the atmosphere and put it where it can't hurt anyone. Then we can charge the addicts extortionate fees for a few whiffs to help let them down easy from their high.
I don't think they tint Tanks green to make the targetable... I think they just do it to make them look more like the Incredible Hulk. I LOL'd.
I'm kinda bored of the default L4D settings, so I actually enjoy finding a weird server every once in a while. When I actually want to pursue an accomplishment, though, I almost always host a local server. Even the "good" servers tend to get shutdown or fall off the internet in the middle of some good action.
It's not all that hard...
Get one guy to create a private lobby, then invite the other friends in there. Once everyone is situated, make the lobby public to fill in any empty slots.
Also, always select to host a local server rather than using a dedicated public server. Too many weird servers out there that change the game type or simply shut down in the middle of a good game.
I actually appreciate some of the hacked servers, or admins who act as gamemasters with the sv_cheats bindings. But I'm kinda bored with the "normal" game. So it's fun to have a roomfull of witches or a couple tanks come at you and once every once in a while, and just see how long you can last.
Huh, my middle paragraph got eaten somehow.
In fact, I'm going to go all racist and suggest that you'd enjoy reading http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/ . But it's OK because I'm part white myself and identify with at least a third of the stuff they cover. It has really helped me understand myself and others in a way that is simple, succinct, and wrong :P
I think it's more of a cultural thing. I've seen people of all ages kinda expect primadonna treatment for some reason or another.
I'd also go so far to say that other cultures such as asians (of which I am also part of and have lived in for several years) are brought up to expect to work hard first and reap benefits sometime after they've proven their worth. It's actually quite confusing for us when we work for an organization that is anything other than a meritocracy.