Under Linux you are restarting your GUI. Under Windows you have to restart EVERYTHING. For Joe User this may not amount to much most of the time, but it is a big underlying difference.
Under Linux I'm only restarting X-related processes. In Windows I'm killing every service just to load an updated video driver. That means that my Linux box can continue runing whatever non-GUI processes I have. Mail services, web servers, databases, SETI@Home. Under Windows NOTHING remains running because it's a full reboot. You don't reboot X: you restart it. Restarting a GUI and rebooting a computer are different things entirely.
Your comment about putting "win" in an autoexec.bat also misses the point. I think Linux has a superior architecture in part because you device drivers do NOT require a GUI to load. Under Windows, booting to the GUI is required to get a full set of device drivers and services. Can you burn a CD without the GUI in Windows? Run software updates over the net? Under Linux, the GUI is just the GUI. Windows is a royal pain to repair if the video drivers get foobar'd. If you can't bring up a "safe mode" version of the GUI you're pretty-well screwed. Under Linux the GUI is just icing on the cake -- I can fix config files or busted drivers easily from the command line: the config files are text and my OS is still running just fine without the GUI. With Windows you may have to reinstall if you video is too screwed up. The GUI in Linux makes the operating system user-friendly, but isn't essential. Under Windows the GUI is so tightly integrated that a problem with the GUI is a mess for the OS.
The cost of gas is shooting up to sky-high levels for many reasons:
a) OPEC has too much pricing power over crude oil
b) available supply is falling (it's finite)
c) demand is climbing (China, anyone?)
d) it's REALLY hard to get permission to build refineries in the U.S.
If seems to me that claiming "price fixing!" in this case is perfect example of the H.L. Mencken quote:
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I'm going to MOSTLY agree with the grandparent, but in the strictest since you are correct to wonder if it is truly universal. However, AS AS GENERAL RULE code that is truly obscure is generally poorly written. Cramming a gazillion manipulations into a single line is not generally better performance-wise than breaking it apart into readable chunks.
Of course, assembly is ALWAYS ugly, but can also be the most efficient code by a long shot...
I see what you mean about McVoy's boot on Tridge, but I don't see what you mean about Tridge's boot on Torvalds. I don't really see how Tridge wronged Torvalds at all. Linus, OTOH, has very publicly slammed Tridge.
Of course, although I did RTFA (and the one before that and the one before that and...) I could have missed something.
Sometimes you can conserve energy with an absolutely negligible impact on your lifestyle simply by making sure your stuff works the way it is designed to:
1 - Get your furnace/heat pump maintained! For gas furnaces, they need to burn efficiently. Corrosion can block heat transfer causing less heat to go into your house and more to vent outside with the fumes. Heat pumps low on refrigerant run much more than needed. Save energy. Save money.
2 - Get your car tuned. Is it missing? That's unburned fuel going out the exhaust. Save energy. Save money.
3 - Insulate your hot water pipes. Are you dumping the heat from your hot water into your crawlspace? Insulating the pipes will cut your costs, save energy and may even let you turn down the thermostat on your hot water heater since you won't be losing water temperature en route from the heater to your tub (more energy saved, more money saved).
4 - Dishwasher? READ THE MANUAL! It may have lower energy modes that will cut the grease just fine while using less energy. Mine also suggests running water at the sink until the water runs hot before you start the dishwasher. If the water is cold when it reaches the dishwasher, the dishwasher has to heat it up. It's much less efficient than a hot water heater, so it consumes a lot more energy that way.
5 - How hot is your hot water? You want it hot enough to meet your needs (i.e.: when mixed with cold water you should be able to take a shower of a duration of your choice). If it is hotter than needed, you are just wasting energy: heat transfers at a rate proportional to the difference between the hot spot and the cold spot. In this case that means the inside of your hot water heater and the outside. Don't make that difference more than you need.
6 - Wash full loads of clothes. A full washer is more efficient than one half-full. On the other hand don't overstuff your dryer. A stuffed dryer can't do it's job because air can't penetrate the mass of clothing. Two smaller loads in the dryer (up to a point) are better than one overstuffed load. For that matter, don't let clothes get smelly, but don't overwash them either. If they aren't dirty you're just wearing them out.
7 - How old is your fridge? If it's old, think about a new one. Efficiencies have gone up quite a bit in the past two decades.
8 - How old is your weatherstripping? Is it cracked, smashed, or missing? A little extra insulation in the attic helps as well.
9 - Cook bigger meals and then save the leftovers. Cook once -- eat twice to cut the use of the oven.
10 - Check your water meter. If everything is turned off in your house, but the meter is moving you have a leak. Leaks waste water and money and might be slowing rotting something away that will cost big buck later.
11 - Adjust your toliets to use a tad less water. Most toliets use an adjustable float to determine when they are full. Adjust it! On older models this is as simple as adding a slight bend to the rod that runs to the float. If a toliet is leaking you need to repair it (kits are cheap) or replace it with a newer, more efficient toliet.
None of these things make you change your lifestyle in any appreciable way (though cooking with the intention of having leftovers WILL give you more free time).:)
His dismissal may have had nothing to do with his blogging. Maybe he didn't do good work. Maybe his conduct was inappropriate. Maybe he never came in on time. Maybe he didn't complete assigned tasks. We don't know.
Just because he worked at Google and blogged about work doesn't mean that's why he was fired.
Unfortunately, however, they still don't follow the meltdown-proof pebble bed design. They may be safer than Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, but as fas as I know they can still theoretically melt down.
A pebble bed reactor cannot melt down. The hotter it gets the less energy it produces. If it overheats the fission reaction fails.
This is where the Chinese are making what I believe to be a great decision. Why bolt 8 zillion safety mechanisms to prevent a meltdown when you can forego all that cost by building a reactor that can melt down? Cheaper AND safer.
As a GPS-user I would love to see an option to display latitude and longtitude. I usually use mapsonus.com because they do lat/long well so that I can calibrate my maps for my GPS.
There is something deeply ironic about a post stating incredulity that people would buy anything from spam...... in a post with a sig to a "offerprizes.com" -- "free" iPod stuff.
I say that because I've been to Home Depot and Lowe's (the two home improvement superstores in our region). Both have all their brands on prominent display at floor level.
Now they *do* tend to clump things together by price range so that all the $800 models are closer to the front than the $200 models.
Well I'll be! RIGHT YOU ARE!!! I had no idea that GE owned Hotpoint, but I think my point is valid in spite of my unlucky random choice of a similarly priced product. The point is that the GE *brand* leads consumers in some arenas (such as dishwashers) to think of it as worth a little more. This unlucky pick on my part tends to push that point: the GE brand sells for $20 more than the Hotpoint brand even though they are really both GE.
GE? Who the hell is the consumer that says "to hell with that $200 stove. I'll take that $700 GE! Because, hell, it's GE! They bring good things to life!"
A quick check at the Home Depot web site shows me a GE built-in dishwasher right next to a Hotpoint dishwasher. The GE is $370 and the Hotpoint is $350. For an extra $20 you can bet I'll take GE over Hotpoint any day of the week! No, I won't buy the GE Profile Stainless Steel interior model that has more tricks up its sleeve than Harry Houdini for $950. That's a different beast altogether.
The brand value article in Business Week is addressing EXACTLY the choice I'm talking about. On comparable products most people are willing to pay a slight premium to buy a product from GE rather than a product with the same features from a lesser-known manufacturer.
The real value of the GE brand is compounded by the fact that they make so much stuff: medical equipment, jet engines, consumer electronics, and light bulbs. Will I pay 50 cents extra for a GE bulb over a no-name brand? Absolutely -- especially if the bulb is in a hard-to-reach place that involves a ladder.
Add up all the products for which people are willing to pay a little more for the GE brand and you end up with a brand that has enormous value -- which is what Business Week is discussing.
For some people, the fastest possible laptop (even at the expense of battery life) is desirable.
I'm one of those people. 99% of the time I run with my Powerbook plugged in. Once in a while I want to use it while traveling or away from my office nook. The portability is, for me, "icing on the cake". Having a small form factor that fits my office nook was more important. I also like to play occasional games (though not too often). SimCity IV, most first-person action games, and the upcoming Sims II all could use more power than my current 1GHz G4 can offer. The newer 1.67GHz models would help, but a G5 model would really get me the power I want.
Do you use a cordless phone when you call customer support for billing questions? If so, you are using an unencrypted wireless technology -- personally, I prefer to use an encrypted online connection.
Do you use debit or credit cards in stores or restaurants? If so you are trusting the clerk or waiter not to make a copy of your card information and to appropriately handle any receipts containing your information. Again, I think that is a higher risk activity than encrypted communications to a server where your transactions generally don't require anonymous human handling.
Do you mail your bills? By this, I'm asking if you take a slip of paper covered with your finanicial account information (i.e., a paper check) and stick it in an envelope (which stands out as a bill payment) and then stick it in an unlocked box by the side of the road with a FLAG STICKING UP to announce that something valuable might be housed within?
Personally, I think online bill payments are one of the safest means now available for handling financial transactions. The other methods send way too much of your sensitive information in cleartext through one or more anonymous sets of human hands as well as providing opportunities for malicious interception along the way.
THANK YOU! I wish I had mod points at the moment to mod you up!!!
I've seen so many posts along the lines of "why bother?", "what good is it?", and "what a waste of time" that I was beginning to wonder if any geeks were still hanging out on Slashdot.
No, it isn't marketable. No, it won't revolutionize transportation. No, it sin't even particularly practical.
But it is quite an accomplishment! What a COOL thing to do! Like so many real geeks he did it because he could.
Until I hit your post I had begun to feel in a very small minority of people that understand why you do something like this. Then again, I've always loved doing the impractical just to see if I could...
No, it isn't "Microsoft's problem". As I said, I felt the license agreement was a bad idea to begin with because it doesn't really solve anything in the long haul. My POINT was that these kinds of licensing agreements give Microsoft future leverage to increase the profit on the contracts. That's just smart business -- the same as you get if you make a "deal with the devil" -- the devil isn't in the business of being fair, but works to maximize his gains. My post was in response to a parent post that suggested that Microsoft might be improving profits by finding ways to leverage existing contracts into more profitable ones. This contract was simply a real-world example of that.
I think there may be some truth in what you say. We have a site license here at the university where I work. I was very opposed to the license at the time and continue to believe it was a very Bad Thing.
Basically the license let us be "clean" on licensing in the event of an audit. The blanket license keeps us from ever having to prove that every piece of software is properly licensed. The overwhelming majority of the software on university-owned machines IS above-board, but finding the paperwork to prove it is just about impossible.
The original license covered (for a flat yearly fee) all university desktops and laptops as well as Windows and Office for home use by faculty and staff.
This year MS changed the license on us -- faculty and staff home use is no longer covered -- there's now an extra fee. Of course, the university could reject the new terms. If it did, however, our current licenses would expire -- requiring us to purchase new individual licenses for every machine that had software installed under the old agreement. That's a big problem because no one keeps records of what is installed under a site license. The only way to "pass" an audit would be to relicense pretty much every machine on campus. No one has that kind of money, so no matter how Microsoft changes the agreement, the university now has little ability to protest. Just smile and write another check!
The moral of this story is to never ink a deal with the devil... the devil gets his due.
He was probably refering to a halogen torchiere -- the ones that fire code now requires a safety cage on to prevent it from setting drapes on fire. I had one that came with a 350W bulb -- but I upgraded to 500W (we aren't allowed space heaters in our freezing cold offices, but we CAN use halogen lamps to the same effect).
The reason people are talking about this kind of power is because the PS3 is going to be based around the Cell processor.
Whether or not the Cell really is "All That" remains to be seen...
I have a ThinkPad T41 on my desk right now. I flipped it over and found:
"Made in China"
Whether or not IBM sells its PC business to Lenovo, the technical information is already in China as is the actual manufacturing. So if our "national security" concerns are about the transfer of technical knowledge then it's too little-too late. If the concern is about having our important technology manufactured by a potential adversary, then it is also too little-too late.
This looks more like meddling for the sake of flag-waving to me...
Early Macs used parity-RAM for higher reliability. Basically each byte was nine bits long -- eight for data storage and one as a checksum bit. If a bit flipped incorrectly or got stuck in one state you would know it because the parity bit wouldn't check out.
Now Macs use non-parity RAM just like everyone else. I don't even think servers use parity-RAM anymore (the other place it used to be very common). That makes me think that RAM is just more reliable now than previously.
Slashdot Mirror
Not the same at all!
Under Linux you are restarting your GUI. Under Windows you have to restart EVERYTHING. For Joe User this may not amount to much most of the time, but it is a big underlying difference.
Under Linux I'm only restarting X-related processes. In Windows I'm killing every service just to load an updated video driver. That means that my Linux box can continue runing whatever non-GUI processes I have. Mail services, web servers, databases, SETI@Home. Under Windows NOTHING remains running because it's a full reboot. You don't reboot X: you restart it. Restarting a GUI and rebooting a computer are different things entirely.
Your comment about putting "win" in an autoexec.bat also misses the point. I think Linux has a superior architecture in part because you device drivers do NOT require a GUI to load. Under Windows, booting to the GUI is required to get a full set of device drivers and services. Can you burn a CD without the GUI in Windows? Run software updates over the net? Under Linux, the GUI is just the GUI. Windows is a royal pain to repair if the video drivers get foobar'd. If you can't bring up a "safe mode" version of the GUI you're pretty-well screwed. Under Linux the GUI is just icing on the cake -- I can fix config files or busted drivers easily from the command line: the config files are text and my OS is still running just fine without the GUI. With Windows you may have to reinstall if you video is too screwed up. The GUI in Linux makes the operating system user-friendly, but isn't essential. Under Windows the GUI is so tightly integrated that a problem with the GUI is a mess for the OS.
The cost of gas is shooting up to sky-high levels for many reasons:
a) OPEC has too much pricing power over crude oil
b) available supply is falling (it's finite)
c) demand is climbing (China, anyone?)
d) it's REALLY hard to get permission to build refineries in the U.S.
If seems to me that claiming "price fixing!" in this case is perfect example of the H.L. Mencken quote:
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I'm going to MOSTLY agree with the grandparent, but in the strictest since you are correct to wonder if it is truly universal. However, AS AS GENERAL RULE code that is truly obscure is generally poorly written. Cramming a gazillion manipulations into a single line is not generally better performance-wise than breaking it apart into readable chunks.
Of course, assembly is ALWAYS ugly, but can also be the most efficient code by a long shot...
What was my point?
You've confused me!
I see what you mean about McVoy's boot on Tridge, but I don't see what you mean about Tridge's boot on Torvalds. I don't really see how Tridge wronged Torvalds at all. Linus, OTOH, has very publicly slammed Tridge.
Of course, although I did RTFA (and the one before that and the one before that and...) I could have missed something.
Sometimes you can conserve energy with an absolutely negligible impact on your lifestyle simply by making sure your stuff works the way it is designed to:
:)
1 - Get your furnace/heat pump maintained! For gas furnaces, they need to burn efficiently. Corrosion can block heat transfer causing less heat to go into your house and more to vent outside with the fumes. Heat pumps low on refrigerant run much more than needed. Save energy. Save money.
2 - Get your car tuned. Is it missing? That's unburned fuel going out the exhaust. Save energy. Save money.
3 - Insulate your hot water pipes. Are you dumping the heat from your hot water into your crawlspace? Insulating the pipes will cut your costs, save energy and may even let you turn down the thermostat on your hot water heater since you won't be losing water temperature en route from the heater to your tub (more energy saved, more money saved).
4 - Dishwasher? READ THE MANUAL! It may have lower energy modes that will cut the grease just fine while using less energy. Mine also suggests running water at the sink until the water runs hot before you start the dishwasher. If the water is cold when it reaches the dishwasher, the dishwasher has to heat it up. It's much less efficient than a hot water heater, so it consumes a lot more energy that way.
5 - How hot is your hot water? You want it hot enough to meet your needs (i.e.: when mixed with cold water you should be able to take a shower of a duration of your choice). If it is hotter than needed, you are just wasting energy: heat transfers at a rate proportional to the difference between the hot spot and the cold spot. In this case that means the inside of your hot water heater and the outside. Don't make that difference more than you need.
6 - Wash full loads of clothes. A full washer is more efficient than one half-full. On the other hand don't overstuff your dryer. A stuffed dryer can't do it's job because air can't penetrate the mass of clothing. Two smaller loads in the dryer (up to a point) are better than one overstuffed load. For that matter, don't let clothes get smelly, but don't overwash them either. If they aren't dirty you're just wearing them out.
7 - How old is your fridge? If it's old, think about a new one. Efficiencies have gone up quite a bit in the past two decades.
8 - How old is your weatherstripping? Is it cracked, smashed, or missing? A little extra insulation in the attic helps as well.
9 - Cook bigger meals and then save the leftovers. Cook once -- eat twice to cut the use of the oven.
10 - Check your water meter. If everything is turned off in your house, but the meter is moving you have a leak. Leaks waste water and money and might be slowing rotting something away that will cost big buck later.
11 - Adjust your toliets to use a tad less water. Most toliets use an adjustable float to determine when they are full. Adjust it! On older models this is as simple as adding a slight bend to the rod that runs to the float. If a toliet is leaking you need to repair it (kits are cheap) or replace it with a newer, more efficient toliet.
None of these things make you change your lifestyle in any appreciable way (though cooking with the intention of having leftovers WILL give you more free time).
His dismissal may have had nothing to do with his blogging. Maybe he didn't do good work. Maybe his conduct was inappropriate. Maybe he never came in on time. Maybe he didn't complete assigned tasks. We don't know.
Just because he worked at Google and blogged about work doesn't mean that's why he was fired.
Isn't a big portion of population growth in the U.S. actually driven by immigration (legal and otherwise)?
I think that if you remove that from the equation the U.S. is like most other industrialized nations -- growth is very slow at most.
Unfortunately, however, they still don't follow the meltdown-proof pebble bed design. They may be safer than Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, but as fas as I know they can still theoretically melt down.
A pebble bed reactor cannot melt down. The hotter it gets the less energy it produces. If it overheats the fission reaction fails.
This is where the Chinese are making what I believe to be a great decision. Why bolt 8 zillion safety mechanisms to prevent a meltdown when you can forego all that cost by building a reactor that can melt down? Cheaper AND safer.
As a GPS-user I would love to see an option to display latitude and longtitude. I usually use mapsonus.com because they do lat/long well so that I can calibrate my maps for my GPS.
No --
80% of MS employees have a player.
80% of those employees have an iPod.
Total number of employees on campus is 25,000.
(0.8)(0.8)(25,000)=16,000
The original article is correct.
There is something deeply ironic about a post stating incredulity that people would buy anything from spam... ... in a post with a sig to a "offerprizes.com" -- "free" iPod stuff.
No, I don't.
I say that because I've been to Home Depot and Lowe's (the two home improvement superstores in our region). Both have all their brands on prominent display at floor level.
Now they *do* tend to clump things together by price range so that all the $800 models are closer to the front than the $200 models.
Well I'll be! RIGHT YOU ARE!!! I had no idea that GE owned Hotpoint, but I think my point is valid in spite of my unlucky random choice of a similarly priced product. The point is that the GE *brand* leads consumers in some arenas (such as dishwashers) to think of it as worth a little more. This unlucky pick on my part tends to push that point: the GE brand sells for $20 more than the Hotpoint brand even though they are really both GE.
Good catch on my goof!
GE? Who the hell is the consumer that says "to hell with that $200 stove. I'll take that $700 GE! Because, hell, it's GE! They bring good things to life!"
A quick check at the Home Depot web site shows me a GE built-in dishwasher right next to a Hotpoint dishwasher. The GE is $370 and the Hotpoint is $350. For an extra $20 you can bet I'll take GE over Hotpoint any day of the week! No, I won't buy the GE Profile Stainless Steel interior model that has more tricks up its sleeve than Harry Houdini for $950. That's a different beast altogether.
The brand value article in Business Week is addressing EXACTLY the choice I'm talking about. On comparable products most people are willing to pay a slight premium to buy a product from GE rather than a product with the same features from a lesser-known manufacturer.
The real value of the GE brand is compounded by the fact that they make so much stuff: medical equipment, jet engines, consumer electronics, and light bulbs. Will I pay 50 cents extra for a GE bulb over a no-name brand? Absolutely -- especially if the bulb is in a hard-to-reach place that involves a ladder.
Add up all the products for which people are willing to pay a little more for the GE brand and you end up with a brand that has enormous value -- which is what Business Week is discussing.
For some people, the fastest possible laptop (even at the expense of battery life) is desirable.
I'm one of those people. 99% of the time I run with my Powerbook plugged in. Once in a while I want to use it while traveling or away from my office nook. The portability is, for me, "icing on the cake". Having a small form factor that fits my office nook was more important. I also like to play occasional games (though not too often). SimCity IV, most first-person action games, and the upcoming Sims II all could use more power than my current 1GHz G4 can offer. The newer 1.67GHz models would help, but a G5 model would really get me the power I want.
Do you use a cordless phone when you call customer support for billing questions? If so, you are using an unencrypted wireless technology -- personally, I prefer to use an encrypted online connection.
Do you use debit or credit cards in stores or restaurants? If so you are trusting the clerk or waiter not to make a copy of your card information and to appropriately handle any receipts containing your information. Again, I think that is a higher risk activity than encrypted communications to a server where your transactions generally don't require anonymous human handling.
Do you mail your bills? By this, I'm asking if you take a slip of paper covered with your finanicial account information (i.e., a paper check) and stick it in an envelope (which stands out as a bill payment) and then stick it in an unlocked box by the side of the road with a FLAG STICKING UP to announce that something valuable might be housed within?
Personally, I think online bill payments are one of the safest means now available for handling financial transactions. The other methods send way too much of your sensitive information in cleartext through one or more anonymous sets of human hands as well as providing opportunities for malicious interception along the way.
Humvees old school?!?!?
JEEPS are OLD SCHOOL!
We actually use our 95 Jeep Cherokee the way it was meant to be used: climbing 3 ft high rocks and dropping down 60-degree slopes into muddy ravines.
The only thing a Humvee is good for is towing practice for Jeeps!
Sorry for going a leeetle off-topic, but I HAD to defend the good old Jeep!
THANK YOU! I wish I had mod points at the moment to mod you up!!!
I've seen so many posts along the lines of "why bother?", "what good is it?", and "what a waste of time" that I was beginning to wonder if any geeks were still hanging out on Slashdot.
No, it isn't marketable. No, it won't revolutionize transportation. No, it sin't even particularly practical.
But it is quite an accomplishment! What a COOL thing to do! Like so many real geeks he did it because he could.
Until I hit your post I had begun to feel in a very small minority of people that understand why you do something like this. Then again, I've always loved doing the impractical just to see if I could...
Nooooo, basically:
You missed my point.
No, it isn't "Microsoft's problem". As I said, I felt the license agreement was a bad idea to begin with because it doesn't really solve anything in the long haul. My POINT was that these kinds of licensing agreements give Microsoft future leverage to increase the profit on the contracts. That's just smart business -- the same as you get if you make a "deal with the devil" -- the devil isn't in the business of being fair, but works to maximize his gains. My post was in response to a parent post that suggested that Microsoft might be improving profits by finding ways to leverage existing contracts into more profitable ones. This contract was simply a real-world example of that.
I think there may be some truth in what you say. We have a site license here at the university where I work. I was very opposed to the license at the time and continue to believe it was a very Bad Thing.
Basically the license let us be "clean" on licensing in the event of an audit. The blanket license keeps us from ever having to prove that every piece of software is properly licensed. The overwhelming majority of the software on university-owned machines IS above-board, but finding the paperwork to prove it is just about impossible.
The original license covered (for a flat yearly fee) all university desktops and laptops as well as Windows and Office for home use by faculty and staff.
This year MS changed the license on us -- faculty and staff home use is no longer covered -- there's now an extra fee. Of course, the university could reject the new terms. If it did, however, our current licenses would expire -- requiring us to purchase new individual licenses for every machine that had software installed under the old agreement. That's a big problem because no one keeps records of what is installed under a site license. The only way to "pass" an audit would be to relicense pretty much every machine on campus. No one has that kind of money, so no matter how Microsoft changes the agreement, the university now has little ability to protest. Just smile and write another check!
The moral of this story is to never ink a deal with the devil... the devil gets his due.
He was probably refering to a halogen torchiere -- the ones that fire code now requires a safety cage on to prevent it from setting drapes on fire. I had one that came with a 350W bulb -- but I upgraded to 500W (we aren't allowed space heaters in our freezing cold offices, but we CAN use halogen lamps to the same effect).
The reason people are talking about this kind of power is because the PS3 is going to be based around the Cell processor.
Whether or not the Cell really is "All That" remains to be seen...
I have a ThinkPad T41 on my desk right now. I flipped it over and found:
"Made in China"
Whether or not IBM sells its PC business to Lenovo, the technical information is already in China as is the actual manufacturing. So if our "national security" concerns are about the transfer of technical knowledge then it's too little-too late. If the concern is about having our important technology manufactured by a potential adversary, then it is also too little-too late.
This looks more like meddling for the sake of flag-waving to me...
Early Macs used parity-RAM for higher reliability. Basically each byte was nine bits long -- eight for data storage and one as a checksum bit. If a bit flipped incorrectly or got stuck in one state you would know it because the parity bit wouldn't check out.
Now Macs use non-parity RAM just like everyone else. I don't even think servers use parity-RAM anymore (the other place it used to be very common). That makes me think that RAM is just more reliable now than previously.
Anyone without a strong root password is likely to have a strong root password provided for them by an "outside consultant". :-)