That laptop the GP mentioned has a custom mobo, custom case, custom cooling, and small size. If you're willing to Hackintosh it, you can even run OSX. Plus, it comes with a built-in Battery backup unit. This new mini is flat out overpriced for what it is, especially with the 3 year old specs--A C2D? Where's the i5 or at least i3? 2GB of memory? Who puts less than 4GB in anything anymore?
This smells like someone at Apple paranoid that the Mini is going to undercut some other product and turning it into a real lemon to avoid that.
It wasn't a waste by any measure. The Government actually made money off of the spectrum it was able to reclaim and sell from the DTV transition. Plus, instead of sending wasteful Analog TV signals over the air, those channels are being reused to provide better cell coverage and other services.
But traditional web servers aren't CPU bound, they're IO bound at high connection rates. It might help if you need to do a whole lot of https traffic, but even then this smells of overkill. If you're really planning to use this as a webserver, I'd be a whole lot more interested in the IO backplane and the available IO ports to the server.
What buildings near the White House are being used for comparison on this sale? My guess is that 10 Million is on the low side given the amenities in the house. Hell, there are places half that size out in Arlington that are going for a couple million, and they don't have anything like the primo location the White House enjoys.
My first thought is: If all of these fancy pants (literally!) biosensors make it so you can't just toss them in the wash, then I don't want it, especially on underwear.
Re:Windows XP is about to lose support
on
Time To Dump XP?
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· Score: 1
The APIs didn't change radically between XP and 7, so why would applications suddenly stop working? If there's one thing Microsoft has been good at, it is keeping API compatibility between versions. I would expect most apps written for Windows 7/Vista to work fine on XP.
Re:Windows 7 is actually kinda good
on
Time To Dump XP?
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· Score: 1
You know what's strange? I upgraded my home XP machine to Windows 7 a few weeks ago because I wanted to get 3D support working. I was assuming it would just be XP with some interface tweaks and updated backend support that I mostly wouldn't notice. I was surprised at just how terrible it was. A few complaints:
Who thought putting a scrollbar on the start menu was a good idea? I've always been big on having a clean desktop, and Windows 7 seems to assume that I like having all of my apps (of which there are a lot) on the desktop. The worst part of the start menu is that it is jammed into a tiny tiny little box even though my screen is rather large.
I hate maximizing windows. I almost never do it. I much prefer to have sessions side by side and lined up next to each other and pulled down all of the way (these are typically terminals). Windows 7 by default auto-maximizes anything you get near the top of the screen
The first thing I turned off in XP was "taskbar on top", because frankly I don't want to see the taskbar that often, and when I do, a quick tap of the Windows key is all I need. Windows 7 removed this feature entirely
Want to use the old resolution and refresh rate you were using in XP? Sorry, due to some driver quirk, it is not available in Windows 7, and the "override" button is grayed out.
I have two monitors running at two different resolutions (1600x1200 and 1280x1024), and when I play games, I have the game go to the big monitor and leave the Steam friends list, a browser, etc... on the second monitor. Windows 7 handles this situation considerably less gracefully than XP did, which boggles my mind. I'm frequently forced to set the games to windows mode, which is a problem because the taskbar refuses to go under it at that point.
So after that laundry list of complaints, I have to say that some of them were relatively minor (the auto-maximize can be turned off for instance), but some are real bugbears. Interface wise, it feels like Windows 7 was built for my Mom, not for me. You're supposed to do all of those things that drive me crazy. You're supposed to let your desktop become a gigantic mess of icons. You're supposed to maximize every window, no matter how pointless. You're supposed to always have the taskbar eat up part of your display uselessly. It just bothers me that they removed even the options of reverting it to my preferred setup.
Self publishing sounds great until you realize what percentage of the Radio stations in the country are owned by ClearChannel, and how much of the remainder is christian/talk/news/etc... radio. Also how many venues are owned by RIAA members. Self publishing and small labels are still a road to obscurity because the big incumbents have spend decades entrenching themselves in the system. They have been largely successful at getting monopoly restrictions repealed as well over the past couple of decades.
Yeah, I know a lot of people who would love a metered rate, but that's always by far the most expensive way to buy phone service. It's not only the consumers who like the fixed bill size each month, it's also the phone companies who know just how much they're going to take in each month from each customer.
The problem is that Iridium data is a joke. 2400bps raw symbol rate, and you get even less than that, plus the handoffs can be touchy as one satellite passes over the horizon and another eeks into view. Inmarsat3 does 56kbps, and BGAN can go up into the hundreds of kbps.
Iridium does have a latency advantage though, especially in mobile-to-mobile applications. It is, as you noted, suitable for low power or small form factor solutions as well, since Inmarsat needs an antenna the size of a large dinner plate while Iridium can get by with a slightly oversized cell phone aerial. Additionally, unless you buy a bulky mobile antenna, Inmarsat requires you to carefully point the antenna before you can use it, Iridium is happy as long as it is pointed vaguely up.
If you need to transmit very small amounts of data in a small form factor, then Iridium is for you, but that is a decidedly niche market, especially when you start to consider the per-bit costs.
Discrete Graphics are the opposite of Integrated Graphics. Generally it refers to using a PCIe card to do the graphics instead of something built into your Northbridge (or whatever Intel calls their Northbridge now) or the CPU. Just as Integrated Graphics are synonymous with "crap", Discrete Graphics generally imply that you've got something at least somewhat capable under the hood.
The idea is that these users we always hear about who never have less than 50 tabs open can't remember which tabs are which, and if you put up a Facebook login screen or something, then you'll think it's just a timed out Facebook session.
Even before tabbed browsing was popular, you could have done this with minimized or backgrounded windows too. To me the big problem is that he has to create a site that people will feel compelled to leave open while they go off and do something else. That will probably be the most difficult part.
You don't have to actually shatter every window in someone's house to annoy them. It gets old having to bolt down every single thing in your house lest it be knocked over every time the plane takes off.
If you're posting, I can see forcing a person to make an account. But a lot of forums these days want you to register to even view the posts. It's obnoxious, especially when you're only going there because someone linked to a post on it that solves some problem you have. Some tech support sites require you to set up an account before you can search their FAQ too, which is super obnoxious.
Why not just pull the battery immediately? Or simply turn it off? I was under the impression that the phone had to have its cell modem on for the remote wipe feature to work. Once they get back to the crime lab they can worry about faraday cages.
These are not the crackpot fringe. These are people in charge of educating the children of one of the country's largest populations, and who influence education thoughout the country.
I'd argue that they are both the crackpot fringe and the ones elected by the people to decide what we teach the children. This is not new either, people have long known that it's not very hard to influence local elections where you only get a few thousand people voting anyway. With proper motivation of the base you can get just about anybody elected, especially if the other side isn't paying attention or has been disenfranchised somehow (redistricting). It wasn't an accident that these people were elected, there is a dedicated group of people working to make sure they got where they are.
Conservapedia bans a lot of users for being suspected trolls, and rightfully so; but the problem is that it's almost impossible to tell the trolls from the real "contributors" like Schafly because the content of the posts is nearly identical.
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That laptop the GP mentioned has a custom mobo, custom case, custom cooling, and small size. If you're willing to Hackintosh it, you can even run OSX. Plus, it comes with a built-in Battery backup unit. This new mini is flat out overpriced for what it is, especially with the 3 year old specs--A C2D? Where's the i5 or at least i3? 2GB of memory? Who puts less than 4GB in anything anymore?
This smells like someone at Apple paranoid that the Mini is going to undercut some other product and turning it into a real lemon to avoid that.
It wasn't a waste by any measure. The Government actually made money off of the spectrum it was able to reclaim and sell from the DTV transition. Plus, instead of sending wasteful Analog TV signals over the air, those channels are being reused to provide better cell coverage and other services.
But traditional web servers aren't CPU bound, they're IO bound at high connection rates. It might help if you need to do a whole lot of https traffic, but even then this smells of overkill. If you're really planning to use this as a webserver, I'd be a whole lot more interested in the IO backplane and the available IO ports to the server.
What buildings near the White House are being used for comparison on this sale? My guess is that 10 Million is on the low side given the amenities in the house. Hell, there are places half that size out in Arlington that are going for a couple million, and they don't have anything like the primo location the White House enjoys.
Man, it must suck to be black and/or seedy looking. I have never once had a cop randomly pull me over and ask to search my car.
If you can't see the pixels, what's the point of anti-aliasing?
My first thought is: If all of these fancy pants (literally!) biosensors make it so you can't just toss them in the wash, then I don't want it, especially on underwear.
The APIs didn't change radically between XP and 7, so why would applications suddenly stop working? If there's one thing Microsoft has been good at, it is keeping API compatibility between versions. I would expect most apps written for Windows 7/Vista to work fine on XP.
So after that laundry list of complaints, I have to say that some of them were relatively minor (the auto-maximize can be turned off for instance), but some are real bugbears. Interface wise, it feels like Windows 7 was built for my Mom, not for me. You're supposed to do all of those things that drive me crazy. You're supposed to let your desktop become a gigantic mess of icons. You're supposed to maximize every window, no matter how pointless. You're supposed to always have the taskbar eat up part of your display uselessly. It just bothers me that they removed even the options of reverting it to my preferred setup.
Self publishing sounds great until you realize what percentage of the Radio stations in the country are owned by ClearChannel, and how much of the remainder is christian/talk/news/etc... radio. Also how many venues are owned by RIAA members. Self publishing and small labels are still a road to obscurity because the big incumbents have spend decades entrenching themselves in the system. They have been largely successful at getting monopoly restrictions repealed as well over the past couple of decades.
Metered data? Who is your provider?
Yeah, I know a lot of people who would love a metered rate, but that's always by far the most expensive way to buy phone service. It's not only the consumers who like the fixed bill size each month, it's also the phone companies who know just how much they're going to take in each month from each customer.
The problem is that Iridium data is a joke. 2400bps raw symbol rate, and you get even less than that, plus the handoffs can be touchy as one satellite passes over the horizon and another eeks into view. Inmarsat3 does 56kbps, and BGAN can go up into the hundreds of kbps.
Iridium does have a latency advantage though, especially in mobile-to-mobile applications. It is, as you noted, suitable for low power or small form factor solutions as well, since Inmarsat needs an antenna the size of a large dinner plate while Iridium can get by with a slightly oversized cell phone aerial. Additionally, unless you buy a bulky mobile antenna, Inmarsat requires you to carefully point the antenna before you can use it, Iridium is happy as long as it is pointed vaguely up.
If you need to transmit very small amounts of data in a small form factor, then Iridium is for you, but that is a decidedly niche market, especially when you start to consider the per-bit costs.
I would be ashamed too if I had to admit that I stayed loyal to Voyager (the Worst Non-Movie Trek) long enough to know that.
Discrete Graphics are the opposite of Integrated Graphics. Generally it refers to using a PCIe card to do the graphics instead of something built into your Northbridge (or whatever Intel calls their Northbridge now) or the CPU. Just as Integrated Graphics are synonymous with "crap", Discrete Graphics generally imply that you've got something at least somewhat capable under the hood.
No, but they know how to write tens of thousands of complaint letters about anything they don't like.
Isn't this how you get hit by 3.75 million dollar fines?
You know, a poisonous algae that killed all humans would be lauded as the savior of the environment by some.
The idea is that these users we always hear about who never have less than 50 tabs open can't remember which tabs are which, and if you put up a Facebook login screen or something, then you'll think it's just a timed out Facebook session.
Even before tabbed browsing was popular, you could have done this with minimized or backgrounded windows too. To me the big problem is that he has to create a site that people will feel compelled to leave open while they go off and do something else. That will probably be the most difficult part.
You don't have to actually shatter every window in someone's house to annoy them. It gets old having to bolt down every single thing in your house lest it be knocked over every time the plane takes off.
If you're posting, I can see forcing a person to make an account. But a lot of forums these days want you to register to even view the posts. It's obnoxious, especially when you're only going there because someone linked to a post on it that solves some problem you have. Some tech support sites require you to set up an account before you can search their FAQ too, which is super obnoxious.
I'm guessing it was a combo of child porn and porn popup advertising hosts.
Why not just pull the battery immediately? Or simply turn it off? I was under the impression that the phone had to have its cell modem on for the remote wipe feature to work. Once they get back to the crime lab they can worry about faraday cages.
I'd argue that they are both the crackpot fringe and the ones elected by the people to decide what we teach the children. This is not new either, people have long known that it's not very hard to influence local elections where you only get a few thousand people voting anyway. With proper motivation of the base you can get just about anybody elected, especially if the other side isn't paying attention or has been disenfranchised somehow (redistricting). It wasn't an accident that these people were elected, there is a dedicated group of people working to make sure they got where they are.
Conservapedia bans a lot of users for being suspected trolls, and rightfully so; but the problem is that it's almost impossible to tell the trolls from the real "contributors" like Schafly because the content of the posts is nearly identical.