My brother is an avid outdoorsman, he's very happy with his ruggedised Samsung phone. I believe it's this one, or a very similar model. It shrugs off all kinds of abuse, and he's put it through its paces:)
Im not clear here, unlocking is specifically for joining a new carrier, correct? TFS indicates that fulfilling your contract would allow you to unlock your phone, and if you havent fulfilled your contract Im not seeing how you could have unlocked your phone anyways without breaking contract.
If your criminal law is abused to deal with "crimes" which the common man does not regard as such, but which benefits companies, you should have a serious look at the connections between your government and private interests. This should be handled by contract/civil law. In Norway providers are obligated to unlock your phone on request for a "reasonable fee" (and it is) during the contract period, and a nominal handling fee after your contract period has passed. If you can handle the unlocking yourself (or find a shop that will do it, of which there are many) you're good to go. You're still obligated to pay the fixed cost of your contract even if you unlock your phone and sign on with another provider, but of course the original company would rather prefer that you use their service and incur additional charges as opposed to pay the fixed fee only. If you don't pay the fixed fee, that's adequately handled by existing law and debt recovery services.
30 months ago I saved a nice amount of money by buying a "locked" HTC Desire on a one year contract (I saved $180 when comparing the sum of the installments to the purchase price of an unlocked phone, and an additional $90 for switching to the provider in the first place). I rooted the phone almost immediately in order to install a custom ROM, which also meant that I could have used another provider. This is completely legal, but of course I have to honor the contract or pay a termination fee which is a bit larger than what I saved in the first place. I stayed on with the company beyond the contract period, as I was happy with them (until they fucked me over by refusing to refund part of two bills which were inflated due to an internal error of theirs). I could, however, have used my phone with another provider at any time if I felt like it (and actually used it with a British sim card when on a trip to London).
What phone companies can't do here is demanding that you actually *use* their service whether they subsidised your phone or not, which is exactly how it should be. Seeing as they reserve the right to "change the price model" (increase prices for minutes and other services any way they see fit), binding you to buy their suddenly expensive minutes in order to use your phone would be insane. What happened in the US seems to be a roundabout way of enforcing that, and making it a criminal matter seems very strange to an outsider. Providers here could never prosecute you in a criminal court for unlocking your phone, and if they tried it would have caused an outrage both from both the public and the official consumer protection organisation ("Forbrukerrådet", an independent watchdog organisation funded by the government which actually has serious authority to deal with transgressions perpetrated by companies).
"Edit": Upon previewing I noticed that HateBreeder put it a lot more succinctly in his sibling post to mine, I submit anyway because I add a foreign example of how it could be done:)
And even: which ton would that be? There are two in common usage which are not the metric one. No, seriously. In a random internet post you don't know where the poster is from, and he *could* even be using a weird-ass ton especially "suited" to measuring volume (35 cubic feet), wildebeest, or something completely different:)
That doesn't stop you from having a "doh" moment when you realize it's out and you're not near an outlet.
I use my e-ink reader a lot, and that's never happened to me. It's really quite trivial to avoid, and a complete non-issue with e-ink readers.
...while I have managed to damage a netbook because the suitcase got flipped around by the airport system until the netbook was stuck at an angle and all the heavy stuff landed on top of it.
On a side note I would advise you to never check in electronics. Apart from physical abuse it can be extremely cold (-60 C), I've had CDs destroyed from frost in the luggage compartment.
Amazon claims the Kindle will run for 8 weeks w/o using wifi and a reading time of 30 minutes per day. That's not "months".
And leaving it plugged in for ten minutes every time you load a book will keep your battery full. If you use wireless, you'll still spend *a lot* more time charging your cell phone than your e-ink device. In four years of e-ink reading I've never been close to depleting the battery. Seriously, this is such a non-issue that I'm amazed someone invariably brings it up every freaking time ebooks/pbooks are discussed.
While an e-book is technically the same thing, content wise, the *experience* of reading a book is something that cannot be duplicated. A large, LARGE portion of the population apparently agrees.
When I grew up my mother was head librarian at the local library, I was usually there at least a couple of hours every day after school. Our home was filled with books. I read *a lot* of paper books, since I was about ten I have always had at least one book with me wherever I go. I have every reason to be one of those luddites.
However, a few years back I got my first e-ink reader, and haven't read a paper book since. For some of us the content of the book is what matters, it's what gives me the "experience" of reading, and to me the electronic reader is a far superior packaging than paper. I'm very happy that I'm rid of the "experience" of paper books. I agree that the lack of used ebooks is non-optimal, but to me the low price of ebooks + easy deDRM possibilities makes up for that, along with the availability of a huge amount of legal free books. Otherwise, none of the points on your list is even relevant. I certainly don't need a certain smell to keep me entertained... I have never been close to running out of battery (my reading habits gives me something like 2-3 weeks of battery endurance), and my reader in its cover is sturdier than a paperback. I can even read in humid conditions with an appropriate plastic bag, which is somewhat impractical with a paper book:)
I get a feeling that many "paper book hipsters" don't actually read much. I go through 2-4 books weekly, and the ease of buying and transporting ebooks *alone* is a weighty selling point for e-ink. A nice side effect is that it's trivial to read books in parallel, I can decide on the spot if I will hunker down with another chunk of Dostoyevsky or just pass some time with a crime or science fiction story; this was seldom a real option when I dragged paper books around.
By all means, enjoy your paper books, but saying that they are simply superior to ebooks suggests to me that you don't read enough for logistics to become annoying, or maybe haven't even given e-ink a try. I don't really care what the majority does, the majority also feels that a cell phone is good enough for gaming and don't maintain a gaming rig at all, which is about as pertinent to this discussion as how they feel about ebooks and pbooks:)
but who wants to deal with 250 um on a construction site?
Nobody. You'd think of it as 0.25 mm, wonder about the dimwit who didn't use an appropriate unit of measure, and/or why the hell someone believed that micrometer accuracy was necessary on a construction site.
No, it's clearly not, as the GPS unit in my phone works fine in-flight. Thus, the avionics must necessarily be hardened against things like lightning strikes, which generate immense amounts of RF noise. I'm completely at a loss as to how my e-ink device, or any consumer device with or without transmitters for that matter, could affect those avionics.
Nope. All you need is a number of devices greater than the number required to cause a problem. We have evidence that it's greater than 2-3. Can you present any evidence that it's always going to be greater than the number of seats on the airliner in question?
Do we? I call bullshit, please indicate where I can verify this evidence. On the other hand, this article states otherwise:
The F.A.A. then told me that “two iPads are very different than 200.” But experts at EMT Labs, an independent testing facility in Mountain View, Calif., say there is no difference in radio output between two iPads and 200. “Electromagnetic energy doesn’t add up like that,” said Kevin Bothmann, the EMT Labs testing manager.
I believe that you're advocating FUD, although I can't imagine for what purpose. The clincher for me is that no-one that matters believes there may be a problem, particularly the flight crew. As indicated in the article pilots don't need to switch anything off, and they're practically sitting on top of the instruments. It would be hilarious, though, having the engineers who designed a plane say with a straight face "We've proofed the avionics against direct lightning strikes, as that happens all the time. But, beware, the plane will come crashing down if a consumer device tries to connect to a cell tower. Be afraid".
Pilots actually should put their phones in flight mode, as they might otherwise negatively affect networks due to rapid handovers between towers (that's the only thing with these rules that contains a shred of truth). Additionally, if there really was any danger, phones and devices would be confiscated before boarding. As it is, no one checks your pockets for switched-on phones. This is another indication that the people who matter don't really care about our electronics. If they did, the flight crew would have portable RF detection devices.
All this bullshit achieves is to cause unnecessary anxiety to people with a fear of flying, and annoy the people with e-ink devices who can't read for large portions of a short flight. If you start moving the goalposts by pulling the "I don't want people yapping on the phone in the seat next to me" card, I agree with that, but it has absolutely zilch to do with security. I've also been on flights with the European airline Ryanair where cell phone usage was encouraged, as they had an on-board, ridiculously expensive cellular base station.
Maybe the people who wanted an e-book reader (typically the technically minded with a great love for books) already have one?
Spot on. I have a Sony PRS-650, and it's close to perfect. If a vendor-independent device with a glow-screen of similar quality to the Paperwhite comes along I might consider an upgrade (the Kobo is not good enough), but until then I'm happy with the one I've already read about 400 books on:)
ereaders are not like a cell phone or computer; they don't change that much from model to model, so people that bought an ereader four years ago are probably still happy using that same ereader. On the other hand, I know lots of people that upgrade their phone/ipad as soon as a new model comes out.
Exactly. I have a Sony PRS-650 which sees a lot of use, but I can't justify an upgrade featurewise. This reader is already damn near perfect. A model with a glow-screen like the Kindle Paperwhite might do it, but even that is not something I miss much. The Kindle is right out because of the heavy ties to Amazon, and the Kobo reader has an inferior light, so I guess I'll hold on to the Sony a while yet.
Please, someone else reply with confirming or refuting data.
No data, but I work at a publishing company, and you're right:)
Pricing is largely dependent on what people will pay, this is nicely accentuated by the offers I receive from Amazon for Kindle books. Oh, you live in Norway? Suddenly the prices are doubled... I've been in contact with Amazon about this, btw, fraudulent marketing is strictly illegal here, with heavy punishment. No dice (although they offered to not send me emails).
If ereader users are the hardcore traditionalists now, what do you call those of us who still like to read on paper?
Go stand with the LP crowd over there:)
But seriously, I practically grew up in a library (my mother was a librarian, went there every day after school), and have always read a lot. Books were important in my family. I jumped on the e-ink bandwagon as soon as I could, there is *nothing* I miss from paper books, and a lot that I like better with my reader. The content is what I care about.
This is why I think E-Readers are doomed. My family and friends that like books like more than the LOOK of the book, they like the feel, they like the smell, they like being able to just chunk it around, dog ear a page, etc. Whereas those that like digital devices will naturally like something that can read AND surf AND check their email AND watch videos.
Yeah, and some people like LPs for the same reasons, even though they are arguably less practical. I certainly see the appeal. For those of us who care more about the content than the packaging, though, e-ink readers are perfect. I have a phone for multimedia/interactive stuff, and even a tablet which sees very little use, but I sincerely hope e-ink (or similar) readers can be bought for the remainder of my life. A tablet is a huge downgrade when it comes to straight reading, if you say otherwise I suspect that you're not actually doing a lot of reading:)
And colours, seriously? What for? Of the ~600 books on my reader I would guess that about 15 have illustrations, mostly classics. No colours needed. For comics, childrens books, or technical PDFs a tablet is indeed better.
The fact that all of this data has to be generated seems to escape you, if you aren't using a cell phone, if you don't use social media (Facebook etc), if you pay in cash, if you travel wisely (I'm not explaining that one figure it out) then there is very little data generated.
I assume you are still koan who is hiding his tracks by posting as AC:)
I was addressing your statement about "whining over privacy". OK, so you are a devious criminal who knows how to fool The Man, good for you. I was talking about a normal person *not* running around commiting crimes in the course of his normal life. A big-brother society propably isn't what most of people want.
The fact that all of this data has to be generated seems to escape you, if you aren't using a cell phone, if you don't use social media (Facebook etc), if you pay in cash, if you travel wisely (I'm not explaining that one figure it out) then there is very little data generated.
I assume you are still koan who is hiding his tracks by posting as AC:)
I was addressing your statement about "whining over privacy". OK, so you are a devious criminal who knows how to fool The Man, good for you. I was talking about a normal person *not* running around commiting crimes in the course of his normal life. Case in point: earlier this year the police wanted to collect DNA-samples from hundreds of males in the area around a vicious rape not far from where I live "to narrow their search". If I got a request about that I would haved denied it and raised a stink if necessary, not because I had something to hide, nor because I didn't want the rapist to get caught; I just don't want neither the police nor the population to get used to the idea of large-scale collection of DNA as a good thing, and a matter of course in any investigation. Next thing is that they figure it's no use destroying the analysis results after use as they will probably need them for similar purposes in the future... The whole point of this is that I have to prove that I'm innocent. Not good, and contrary to the judicial principles where I live.
In a recent rape-and-murder-case the police got records of all cellular presence in a large area, and wanted to call in *every male* on that list for DNA-testing (even though the tests in their previous case got them nowhere). Thousands of people. Of course, a sane and intelligent perpetrator who planned well would not leave DNA or use his phone (turned out that the guy was neither and did both). This is basically investigating thousands of "suspects" for murder, where everyone has to prove his innocence. I'm not OK with that. If I'm whining over privacy, so be it.
That's a meaningless comparison tbh. The difference is likely that of 'el-cheapo' vs 'upper-mid-range'. The el-cheapo is probably not as stable when you get closer to its rated output.
An upper-mid-range 400W would probably have been fine.
Yes, that was more or less what I meant:)
IIRC the reason for going with the 600W was that I wanted three PCIe 6-pin connectors at the time (two cards, one of them a "performance" card, driving a total of three monitors), and that was the cheapest/smallest quality PSU that had it at my local store.
As for your second question: I have no idea about efficiency curves, but the 600W PSU turned out to be very quiet, with its fan barely turning over, even under load. I suppose that might be an advantage of running it at less than half capacity:)
It doesn't stop the uneducated from buying 1000W power supplies.
I have a quad core i7 3.2ghz powerhouse with 2high end video cards and 4 drives in it and it's happy with the 400 watt power supply I put in it even at full load. Some people think bigger numbers are better, Others actually calculate what they need.
A while ago I built my new system using an el-cheapo 400W PSU I had laying around. The system was flaky under load, even though my components couldn't have drawn more than about 250W. I suspect voltage fluctuations even if it might have been able to supply the full 400W. I bought an upper-mid-range 600W PSU to replace it, which I have been very happy with it through the next two upgrades (which makes it about five years), I'm still using it in my gaming rig.
It might be overkill, but in the long run it was actually a very cheap investment.
Slashdot Mirror
Got any other recommendation ?
My brother is an avid outdoorsman, he's very happy with his ruggedised Samsung phone. I believe it's this one, or a very similar model. It shrugs off all kinds of abuse, and he's put it through its paces :)
Im not clear here, unlocking is specifically for joining a new carrier, correct? TFS indicates that fulfilling your contract would allow you to unlock your phone, and if you havent fulfilled your contract Im not seeing how you could have unlocked your phone anyways without breaking contract.
If your criminal law is abused to deal with "crimes" which the common man does not regard as such, but which benefits companies, you should have a serious look at the connections between your government and private interests. This should be handled by contract/civil law. In Norway providers are obligated to unlock your phone on request for a "reasonable fee" (and it is) during the contract period, and a nominal handling fee after your contract period has passed. If you can handle the unlocking yourself (or find a shop that will do it, of which there are many) you're good to go. You're still obligated to pay the fixed cost of your contract even if you unlock your phone and sign on with another provider, but of course the original company would rather prefer that you use their service and incur additional charges as opposed to pay the fixed fee only. If you don't pay the fixed fee, that's adequately handled by existing law and debt recovery services.
30 months ago I saved a nice amount of money by buying a "locked" HTC Desire on a one year contract (I saved $180 when comparing the sum of the installments to the purchase price of an unlocked phone, and an additional $90 for switching to the provider in the first place). I rooted the phone almost immediately in order to install a custom ROM, which also meant that I could have used another provider. This is completely legal, but of course I have to honor the contract or pay a termination fee which is a bit larger than what I saved in the first place. I stayed on with the company beyond the contract period, as I was happy with them (until they fucked me over by refusing to refund part of two bills which were inflated due to an internal error of theirs). I could, however, have used my phone with another provider at any time if I felt like it (and actually used it with a British sim card when on a trip to London).
What phone companies can't do here is demanding that you actually *use* their service whether they subsidised your phone or not, which is exactly how it should be. Seeing as they reserve the right to "change the price model" (increase prices for minutes and other services any way they see fit), binding you to buy their suddenly expensive minutes in order to use your phone would be insane. What happened in the US seems to be a roundabout way of enforcing that, and making it a criminal matter seems very strange to an outsider. Providers here could never prosecute you in a criminal court for unlocking your phone, and if they tried it would have caused an outrage both from both the public and the official consumer protection organisation ("Forbrukerrådet", an independent watchdog organisation funded by the government which actually has serious authority to deal with transgressions perpetrated by companies).
"Edit": Upon previewing I noticed that HateBreeder put it a lot more succinctly in his sibling post to mine, I submit anyway because I add a foreign example of how it could be done :)
I liked Primer, even though I must admit that I didn't catch all the details even after watching it twice. Here is another chart (lower right).
)
Phew, stopped it.
I can conclude that Mr Peter "W.H. Smiths, the book store" used the highly efficient MS HTML (in Word et el) converter to write that analyse page.
Whenever you see tags classed MsoNormal with heaps of inline css, run like the wind.
ounces in a ton?
And even: which ton would that be? There are two in common usage which are not the metric one. No, seriously. In a random internet post you don't know where the poster is from, and he *could* even be using a weird-ass ton especially "suited" to measuring volume (35 cubic feet), wildebeest, or something completely different :)
That doesn't stop you from having a "doh" moment when you realize it's out and you're not near an outlet.
I use my e-ink reader a lot, and that's never happened to me. It's really quite trivial to avoid, and a complete non-issue with e-ink readers.
...while I have managed to damage a netbook because the suitcase got flipped around by the airport system until the netbook was stuck at an angle and all the heavy stuff landed on top of it.
On a side note I would advise you to never check in electronics. Apart from physical abuse it can be extremely cold (-60 C), I've had CDs destroyed from frost in the luggage compartment.
Amazon claims the Kindle will run for 8 weeks w/o using wifi and a reading time of 30 minutes per day. That's not "months".
And leaving it plugged in for ten minutes every time you load a book will keep your battery full. If you use wireless, you'll still spend *a lot* more time charging your cell phone than your e-ink device. In four years of e-ink reading I've never been close to depleting the battery. Seriously, this is such a non-issue that I'm amazed someone invariably brings it up every freaking time ebooks/pbooks are discussed.
While an e-book is technically the same thing, content wise, the *experience* of reading a book is something that cannot be duplicated. A large, LARGE portion of the population apparently agrees.
When I grew up my mother was head librarian at the local library, I was usually there at least a couple of hours every day after school. Our home was filled with books. I read *a lot* of paper books, since I was about ten I have always had at least one book with me wherever I go. I have every reason to be one of those luddites.
However, a few years back I got my first e-ink reader, and haven't read a paper book since. For some of us the content of the book is what matters, it's what gives me the "experience" of reading, and to me the electronic reader is a far superior packaging than paper. I'm very happy that I'm rid of the "experience" of paper books. I agree that the lack of used ebooks is non-optimal, but to me the low price of ebooks + easy deDRM possibilities makes up for that, along with the availability of a huge amount of legal free books. Otherwise, none of the points on your list is even relevant. I certainly don't need a certain smell to keep me entertained... I have never been close to running out of battery (my reading habits gives me something like 2-3 weeks of battery endurance), and my reader in its cover is sturdier than a paperback. I can even read in humid conditions with an appropriate plastic bag, which is somewhat impractical with a paper book :)
I get a feeling that many "paper book hipsters" don't actually read much. I go through 2-4 books weekly, and the ease of buying and transporting ebooks *alone* is a weighty selling point for e-ink. A nice side effect is that it's trivial to read books in parallel, I can decide on the spot if I will hunker down with another chunk of Dostoyevsky or just pass some time with a crime or science fiction story; this was seldom a real option when I dragged paper books around.
By all means, enjoy your paper books, but saying that they are simply superior to ebooks suggests to me that you don't read enough for logistics to become annoying, or maybe haven't even given e-ink a try. I don't really care what the majority does, the majority also feels that a cell phone is good enough for gaming and don't maintain a gaming rig at all, which is about as pertinent to this discussion as how they feel about ebooks and pbooks :)
but who wants to deal with 250 um on a construction site?
Nobody. You'd think of it as 0.25 mm, wonder about the dimwit who didn't use an appropriate unit of measure, and/or why the hell someone believed that micrometer accuracy was necessary on a construction site.
So no, it's not a Faraday cage.
No, it's clearly not, as the GPS unit in my phone works fine in-flight. Thus, the avionics must necessarily be hardened against things like lightning strikes, which generate immense amounts of RF noise. I'm completely at a loss as to how my e-ink device, or any consumer device with or without transmitters for that matter, could affect those avionics.
Nope. All you need is a number of devices greater than the number required to cause a problem. We have evidence that it's greater than 2-3. Can you present any evidence that it's always going to be greater than the number of seats on the airliner in question?
Do we? I call bullshit, please indicate where I can verify this evidence. On the other hand, this article states otherwise:
The F.A.A. then told me that “two iPads are very different than 200.” But experts at EMT Labs, an independent testing facility in Mountain View, Calif., say there is no difference in radio output between two iPads and 200. “Electromagnetic energy doesn’t add up like that,” said Kevin Bothmann, the EMT Labs testing manager.
I believe that you're advocating FUD, although I can't imagine for what purpose. The clincher for me is that no-one that matters believes there may be a problem, particularly the flight crew. As indicated in the article pilots don't need to switch anything off, and they're practically sitting on top of the instruments. It would be hilarious, though, having the engineers who designed a plane say with a straight face "We've proofed the avionics against direct lightning strikes, as that happens all the time. But, beware, the plane will come crashing down if a consumer device tries to connect to a cell tower. Be afraid".
Pilots actually should put their phones in flight mode, as they might otherwise negatively affect networks due to rapid handovers between towers (that's the only thing with these rules that contains a shred of truth). Additionally, if there really was any danger, phones and devices would be confiscated before boarding. As it is, no one checks your pockets for switched-on phones. This is another indication that the people who matter don't really care about our electronics. If they did, the flight crew would have portable RF detection devices.
All this bullshit achieves is to cause unnecessary anxiety to people with a fear of flying, and annoy the people with e-ink devices who can't read for large portions of a short flight. If you start moving the goalposts by pulling the "I don't want people yapping on the phone in the seat next to me" card, I agree with that, but it has absolutely zilch to do with security. I've also been on flights with the European airline Ryanair where cell phone usage was encouraged, as they had an on-board, ridiculously expensive cellular base station.
$40 per month for uncapped 100 down and 100 up in olde Sweden. :)
Yes, and Bredbandsbolaget has even had a cheap 100/100 option since when? 2003 or so? You Swedes were early on that account :)
- Envious Norwegian
All of those items are valid in most countries around the world. Your option:
6) I didn't go to skule
Useless fact unless you're Norwegian: "Skule" is actually the word for "school" in the Norwegian dialect nynorsk (ISO 639-1 "nn").
Maybe the people who wanted an e-book reader (typically the technically minded with a great love for books) already have one?
Spot on. I have a Sony PRS-650, and it's close to perfect. If a vendor-independent device with a glow-screen of similar quality to the Paperwhite comes along I might consider an upgrade (the Kobo is not good enough), but until then I'm happy with the one I've already read about 400 books on :)
For example why is Jane Austen after Bram Stoker in an alphabetical list?
User error :)
It's Austen, Jane and Stoker, Bram. Use calibre to maintain your library, and those problems go away.
ereaders are not like a cell phone or computer; they don't change that much from model to model, so people that bought an ereader four years ago are probably still happy using that same ereader. On the other hand, I know lots of people that upgrade their phone/ipad as soon as a new model comes out.
Exactly. I have a Sony PRS-650 which sees a lot of use, but I can't justify an upgrade featurewise. This reader is already damn near perfect. A model with a glow-screen like the Kindle Paperwhite might do it, but even that is not something I miss much. The Kindle is right out because of the heavy ties to Amazon, and the Kobo reader has an inferior light, so I guess I'll hold on to the Sony a while yet.
Please, someone else reply with confirming or refuting data.
No data, but I work at a publishing company, and you're right :)
Pricing is largely dependent on what people will pay, this is nicely accentuated by the offers I receive from Amazon for Kindle books. Oh, you live in Norway? Suddenly the prices are doubled... I've been in contact with Amazon about this, btw, fraudulent marketing is strictly illegal here, with heavy punishment. No dice (although they offered to not send me emails).
If ereader users are the hardcore traditionalists now, what do you call those of us who still like to read on paper?
Go stand with the LP crowd over there :)
But seriously, I practically grew up in a library (my mother was a librarian, went there every day after school), and have always read a lot. Books were important in my family. I jumped on the e-ink bandwagon as soon as I could, there is *nothing* I miss from paper books, and a lot that I like better with my reader. The content is what I care about.
This is why I think E-Readers are doomed. My family and friends that like books like more than the LOOK of the book, they like the feel, they like the smell, they like being able to just chunk it around, dog ear a page, etc. Whereas those that like digital devices will naturally like something that can read AND surf AND check their email AND watch videos.
Yeah, and some people like LPs for the same reasons, even though they are arguably less practical. I certainly see the appeal. For those of us who care more about the content than the packaging, though, e-ink readers are perfect. I have a phone for multimedia/interactive stuff, and even a tablet which sees very little use, but I sincerely hope e-ink (or similar) readers can be bought for the remainder of my life. A tablet is a huge downgrade when it comes to straight reading, if you say otherwise I suspect that you're not actually doing a lot of reading :)
And colours, seriously? What for? Of the ~600 books on my reader I would guess that about 15 have illustrations, mostly classics. No colours needed. For comics, childrens books, or technical PDFs a tablet is indeed better.
The fact that all of this data has to be generated seems to escape you, if you aren't using a cell phone, if you don't use social media (Facebook etc), if you pay in cash, if you travel wisely (I'm not explaining that one figure it out) then there is very little data generated.
I assume you are still koan who is hiding his tracks by posting as AC :)
I was addressing your statement about "whining over privacy". OK, so you are a devious criminal who knows how to fool The Man, good for you. I was talking about a normal person *not* running around commiting crimes in the course of his normal life. A big-brother society propably isn't what most of people want.
The fact that all of this data has to be generated seems to escape you, if you aren't using a cell phone, if you don't use social media (Facebook etc), if you pay in cash, if you travel wisely (I'm not explaining that one figure it out) then there is very little data generated.
I assume you are still koan who is hiding his tracks by posting as AC :)
I was addressing your statement about "whining over privacy". OK, so you are a devious criminal who knows how to fool The Man, good for you. I was talking about a normal person *not* running around commiting crimes in the course of his normal life. Case in point: earlier this year the police wanted to collect DNA-samples from hundreds of males in the area around a vicious rape not far from where I live "to narrow their search". If I got a request about that I would haved denied it and raised a stink if necessary, not because I had something to hide, nor because I didn't want the rapist to get caught; I just don't want neither the police nor the population to get used to the idea of large-scale collection of DNA as a good thing, and a matter of course in any investigation. Next thing is that they figure it's no use destroying the analysis results after use as they will probably need them for similar purposes in the future... The whole point of this is that I have to prove that I'm innocent. Not good, and contrary to the judicial principles where I live.
In a recent rape-and-murder-case the police got records of all cellular presence in a large area, and wanted to call in *every male* on that list for DNA-testing (even though the tests in their previous case got them nowhere). Thousands of people. Of course, a sane and intelligent perpetrator who planned well would not leave DNA or use his phone (turned out that the guy was neither and did both). This is basically investigating thousands of "suspects" for murder, where everyone has to prove his innocence. I'm not OK with that. If I'm whining over privacy, so be it.
That's a meaningless comparison tbh. The difference is likely that of 'el-cheapo' vs 'upper-mid-range'. The el-cheapo is probably not as stable when you get closer to its rated output.
An upper-mid-range 400W would probably have been fine.
Yes, that was more or less what I meant :)
IIRC the reason for going with the 600W was that I wanted three PCIe 6-pin connectors at the time (two cards, one of them a "performance" card, driving a total of three monitors), and that was the cheapest/smallest quality PSU that had it at my local store.
As for your second question: I have no idea about efficiency curves, but the 600W PSU turned out to be very quiet, with its fan barely turning over, even under load. I suppose that might be an advantage of running it at less than half capacity :)
Do you look for cooking recipes from "Plumbers central"?
They might have some insight into which recipes you *really* should avoid :)
It doesn't stop the uneducated from buying 1000W power supplies.
I have a quad core i7 3.2ghz powerhouse with 2high end video cards and 4 drives in it and it's happy with the 400 watt power supply I put in it even at full load. Some people think bigger numbers are better, Others actually calculate what they need.
A while ago I built my new system using an el-cheapo 400W PSU I had laying around. The system was flaky under load, even though my components couldn't have drawn more than about 250W. I suspect voltage fluctuations even if it might have been able to supply the full 400W. I bought an upper-mid-range 600W PSU to replace it, which I have been very happy with it through the next two upgrades (which makes it about five years), I'm still using it in my gaming rig.
It might be overkill, but in the long run it was actually a very cheap investment.