I use xubuntu on my laptop (too lazy to do a proper slackware install)
Funny that, I've always found getting any flavour of Ubuntu up and running a somewhat frustrating experience. However, I can get a fully usable Slackware install happening in much less than an hour. Go figure. Though more recently, I have taken a liking to Arch Linux, which has all of the nice simplicity of Slackware, but more active community maintenance of things like Gnome.
But getting back to the point, I'm coming round to switching off at night simply because I am trying to do my bit to use less power, since my desktop machine uses lots and lots of it. My laptop (which is a Mac anyway, so is more or less irrelevant to the discussion) just gets put to sleep.
What might prove to be of interest later on, though, is how much change I see in hardware lifespan. I come from a long-held view that the best way to keep components running is to keep them running (I have worked with computers since the '70s), so if I notice a sudden plethora of hardware failures, I might consider going back to leaving stuff powered up.
Does this help if the provider's servers are out of your control? As the submitter said, "If the provider goes down, we suffer."
Seems to me that if you can't afford someone else's servers to go down, you run your own or find someone you trust to do so on your behalf. Simple as that.
Much as some might welcome this (maybe even myself), I can see why Apple might want to steer clear of it, as if "there be dragons". Just think of the baggage of device drivers they would have to conjure up. Because you can bet the hardware manufacturers (with, of course, honourable exceptions) will mostly go with the flow and code only for the perceived majority.
Re:Every time I read an article like this
on
OS X On the MSI Wind
·
· Score: 0, Troll
I actually think it may be the other way 'round. Most of the people I see using "Macs in public" would still buy the Apple product even if it came with Windows only.
I like to think you might be right, but I suspect not. If an Apple box came with Windows installed, it would probably suck. I don't normally like to take this position, since I'm not keen on fanboyism, but I've had a bad run today with MS idiocies.:-) But I take your point: although desktop systems don't matter so much (my "heavy horse" linux box is pretty much out of sight under my desk) the portable offerings from Apple do have an appeal of their own from an aesthetic point of view.
... is the comparison (in the submission) between this and the MacBook Air. The actual dimensions of the beast in question appear to be similar to or slightly larger than the current 10" MacBook being offered. The submission mentions putting it in his lab-coat pocket, which seems out of the question unless you get your lab-coats made by the local tent-maker.
This would be a really useful exercise, however, if it could be applied to the real sub-notebook class of machine.
The whole Google Earth and Street View thing is all a bit patchy anyway. For instance, I'm delighted to be able to report that my own address in Perth, Western Australia appears to be in an SEP field. The view from above is a totally amorphous blur, while other properties are rendered quite well. And the newly-rolled-out Street View managed to almost totally miss the street out altogether. The van driver obviously decided that turning around in my little cul-de-sac was too hard, so they just drove past it, leaving the camera pointed in that general direction. I'm not complaining.
The price of the dongle plus the price of OSX is more than enough to buy a slightly used Mac Mini.
True. And maybe another consideration is the bandwidth restriction through USB itself. I have no idea how the dongle works, but if a lot of throughput is needed, it would be interesting to find out what performance hit this approach would entail.
That said, I'm happy enough with my Linux desktop machine, and my ageing iBook G4 laptop still works far too well for me to be able to justify replacing it, so I don't think I'm going to be going down the cloning path any time soon...
Well, I guess you might be unlucky. I have had lots of nVidia cards over the years, and I have found them to be literally 100% reliable. I have never had to throw one out, which is why I have a lot of them sitting in a crate in my garage, since they always outlive the architecture that supports them. Who makes a motherboard that will take a Riva TNT any more?
But the thing I like best about them is that they are so active in their Linux support. Having, over many years, been subject to the line that "such-and-such is not supported under Linux", I find it gratifying that one outfit at least isn't going to cause me any grief like this. Sure, from time to time, new versions of the kernel do break their drivers, but on every one of these occasions nVidia have already had a fix in place before I found that out.
Ever since being informed my services were no longer required (but for some reason I am required to work out my notice period)...
Far out. Most of the places I've worked at have scratched my network access, required me to clear my desk and ushered me out of the building immediately. I know why that's done, of course, since a disgruntled employee can do a lot of damage, but I always found the experience a bit unnerving - a bit like you've been spat out on the sidewalk.
Actually, that statement might get a nod of agreement from my doctor. I am one of the fortunate few who has what is sometimes regarded as an overqualified GP. But aside from all the paper qualifications, he has the two that are most valuable, namely (1) a moderate-sized ego (so isn't ashamed to admit when he's been barking up the wrong tree and look elsewhere for a diagnosis) and (2) a wide streak of cynicism.
I don't really see what Google has to do with this, other than that they (along with Microsoft and who knows how many others) want to be able to make a fast buck out of broadband access, whether directly or indirectly.
But these whitespace frequencies have been used for a significantly long time for devices such as wireless microphones. Just because Google has bottomless buckets of money doesn't give them any claim on the frequencies.
here in the UK the Labour party are abandoning their "for the working masses" ideology and picking up a more right-wing ideology because it gets them votes. Then again, maybe that's one place where ideology should have won out.
Indeed, we have the same situation here in Australia. Rather than even attempting to pursue any "social justice" issues, our Labor party has embraced the worst of the knee-jerk idiocies of the so-called "Liberal" party with abandon, and there's not much difference between the two any more.
The article is in the context of correcting misconceptions.
True, but in the political arena, nobody gains votes by using validated data. They get votes by pandering to the lowest common denominator among the populace.
And scientific or any other education is not necessarily a useful measure of someone's ability to think critically. I know any number of people with PhD and Master's degrees whose inability to reason critically is absolutely staggering to the point that I wonder how they manage to function at all.
Indeed, but sometimes the expert needs to stand back a bit and think from the point of view of a clueless newbie. Like my dad, for instance, a few days ago when presented with some sort of "unrecoverable error has occurred... [OK]" message, his perfectly legitimate reaction was to say "No, it's NOT fucking OK!"
These acknowledgement clickboxes have become little more than a sloppy way of avoiding the trouble of coding properly.
...it's not anything more than reading comprehension just like we've all been doing since the 1st grade.
I would normally consider it otiose to point out that this is Slashdot... But this is Slashdot, and the majority of readers fail to parse more than one sentence.:-)
In fairness, this also applies to non-Slashdot readers. I have a number of acquaintances who, although educated to a high level, are incapable of satisfactorily answering an email consisting of more than one sentence.
On occasions, I'm a bit brutal about this: I split every point I want to make or receive a response to into individual one-line emails. It pisses people off, but it gets the message across...;-)
Or, alternately, we could probably do without lawyers if we'd just simplify the damn legal code, and we could DEFINITELY do with fewer lawyers if we'd stop making stupid laws.
Alternatively, people could stop treating the legal system as a money bucket to be plundered whenever it suits them. The US took the lead in the pursuit of frivolous or vexatious lawsuits, and unfortunately, the rest of the world has, rather than eschewing this squalid and undignified practice, followed the example with glee and abandon.
The legal system and profession would have more respect if they were used as such. One is the product of the other, and the more the "system" (such as it is) is abused, the worse the situation will become.
IIRC Obama is half white, 1/32 black and the rest is mostly Arab.
I fail to understand why people still persist with this simplistic notion that genes are carried down through the generations in nice neat fractions like this. Whatever the morphology of his skin, Obama represents a synthesis of cultural values to which he has been exposed.
To my mind, any page that is useful to someone other than its creator should not be deleted unless it contains material that it is illegal or unethical for Wikimedia to host.
Thank you, that is a nicely succinct expression of the very point I was trying to make.
I belive there exists a technical solution - a notability scale. Every article would have number from 1-7 about how much it is notable.
While this is of course feasible, it leaves a lot of openings for abuse by administrators (or moderators or whatever you want to call them). Its very nature is entirely subjective, in that what is notable to one person might be less so to another.
Even a vanity article is capable of being useful and informative, particularly if it happens to point to useful sources. There's nothing in Wikipedia's policy that defines a particular number of people to whom the article must be of interest.
I would prefer to see a system where nothing is deleted without VERY good reason. The actual policy as I understand it is in general not bad as it stands, but if pages are being deleted capriciously, there needs to be some method of oversight.
just include a prominent request [...] along the lines of "If you publish any work that uses this software, please cite XXX." Most scientists would be happy to add that citation. The only ones who wouldn't are the ones who try to pass off other's work as their own: do you really think they care about respecting copyright?
Well said. A nice, simple and polite approach. One could safely delete all other posts on this topic, and it would be fully and succinctly answered here.
Citations are a matter of academic integrity and publishing ethics not law.
This is usually true, and I won't argue exceptions here. I'm also not going to be drawn into discussion of cases of abuse, although any of us are capable of finding such instances.
However, academic integrity is important to those of us involved, and if someone transgresses, he should expect to have his ass kicked. It is that integrity that makes the academic community useful to the general community at large. Take that away, and you end up with a gaggle of squabbling, backbiting buffoons who hold nothing sacred except their own careers.
Biochem ranks as the most difficult (for me) class I ever took
I don't know anyone who ever found biochem easy. But if you have a good organic chem background, it does make sense. I find it a hell of a lot easier to understand things than to memorise them, and after a while I found I really loved the subject. Even though I spent 10 years working as a sysprog, I never thought of myself as a geek until I found myself thinking oxidative phosphorylation was really cool.:-)
Incidentally, I think biochem was very nearly the last unit I ever bought a textbook for. My area is molecular biology, and (although it wasn't required) I did shell out good money for "Molecular Biology of the Cell", but apart from that, most of my material has come from the current literature.
Well, they can take their time as far as I'm concerned. I can think of more pleasant and productive ways to spend my time than trying to navigate and strain my eyes reading webpages on those tiny screens.
I can endure it for a quick email or weather report, but otherwise I'll just wait a little while until I get an opportunity to use a proper computer.
Slashdot Mirror
I use xubuntu on my laptop (too lazy to do a proper slackware install)
Funny that, I've always found getting any flavour of Ubuntu up and running a somewhat frustrating experience. However, I can get a fully usable Slackware install happening in much less than an hour. Go figure. Though more recently, I have taken a liking to Arch Linux, which has all of the nice simplicity of Slackware, but more active community maintenance of things like Gnome.
But getting back to the point, I'm coming round to switching off at night simply because I am trying to do my bit to use less power, since my desktop machine uses lots and lots of it. My laptop (which is a Mac anyway, so is more or less irrelevant to the discussion) just gets put to sleep.
What might prove to be of interest later on, though, is how much change I see in hardware lifespan. I come from a long-held view that the best way to keep components running is to keep them running (I have worked with computers since the '70s), so if I notice a sudden plethora of hardware failures, I might consider going back to leaving stuff powered up.
Why not go for dedicated servers for each app?
Does this help if the provider's servers are out of your control? As the submitter said, "If the provider goes down, we suffer."
Seems to me that if you can't afford someone else's servers to go down, you run your own or find someone you trust to do so on your behalf. Simple as that.
My bad, I was referring to the 12". But my point remains: this box is quite thick by comparison.
Much as some might welcome this (maybe even myself), I can see why Apple might want to steer clear of it, as if "there be dragons". Just think of the baggage of device drivers they would have to conjure up. Because you can bet the hardware manufacturers (with, of course, honourable exceptions) will mostly go with the flow and code only for the perceived majority.
I actually think it may be the other way 'round. Most of the people I see using "Macs in public" would still buy the Apple product even if it came with Windows only.
:-) But I take your point: although desktop systems don't matter so much (my "heavy horse" linux box is pretty much out of sight under my desk) the portable offerings from Apple do have an appeal of their own from an aesthetic point of view.
I like to think you might be right, but I suspect not. If an Apple box came with Windows installed, it would probably suck. I don't normally like to take this position, since I'm not keen on fanboyism, but I've had a bad run today with MS idiocies.
... is the comparison (in the submission) between this and the MacBook Air. The actual dimensions of the beast in question appear to be similar to or slightly larger than the current 10" MacBook being offered. The submission mentions putting it in his lab-coat pocket, which seems out of the question unless you get your lab-coats made by the local tent-maker.
This would be a really useful exercise, however, if it could be applied to the real sub-notebook class of machine.
The whole Google Earth and Street View thing is all a bit patchy anyway. For instance, I'm delighted to be able to report that my own address in Perth, Western Australia appears to be in an SEP field. The view from above is a totally amorphous blur, while other properties are rendered quite well. And the newly-rolled-out Street View managed to almost totally miss the street out altogether. The van driver obviously decided that turning around in my little cul-de-sac was too hard, so they just drove past it, leaving the camera pointed in that general direction. I'm not complaining.
The price of the dongle plus the price of OSX is more than enough to buy a slightly used Mac Mini.
True. And maybe another consideration is the bandwidth restriction through USB itself. I have no idea how the dongle works, but if a lot of throughput is needed, it would be interesting to find out what performance hit this approach would entail.
That said, I'm happy enough with my Linux desktop machine, and my ageing iBook G4 laptop still works far too well for me to be able to justify replacing it, so I don't think I'm going to be going down the cloning path any time soon...
No more nvidia trash for me
Well, I guess you might be unlucky. I have had lots of nVidia cards over the years, and I have found them to be literally 100% reliable. I have never had to throw one out, which is why I have a lot of them sitting in a crate in my garage, since they always outlive the architecture that supports them. Who makes a motherboard that will take a Riva TNT any more?
But the thing I like best about them is that they are so active in their Linux support. Having, over many years, been subject to the line that "such-and-such is not supported under Linux", I find it gratifying that one outfit at least isn't going to cause me any grief like this. Sure, from time to time, new versions of the kernel do break their drivers, but on every one of these occasions nVidia have already had a fix in place before I found that out.
Ever since being informed my services were no longer required (but for some reason I am required to work out my notice period)...
Far out. Most of the places I've worked at have scratched my network access, required me to clear my desk and ushered me out of the building immediately. I know why that's done, of course, since a disgruntled employee can do a lot of damage, but I always found the experience a bit unnerving - a bit like you've been spat out on the sidewalk.
If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't complain.
3/4s of Doctors diagnoses are incorrect?
Actually, that statement might get a nod of agreement from my doctor. I am one of the fortunate few who has what is sometimes regarded as an overqualified GP. But aside from all the paper qualifications, he has the two that are most valuable, namely (1) a moderate-sized ego (so isn't ashamed to admit when he's been barking up the wrong tree and look elsewhere for a diagnosis) and (2) a wide streak of cynicism.
I don't really see what Google has to do with this, other than that they (along with Microsoft and who knows how many others) want to be able to make a fast buck out of broadband access, whether directly or indirectly.
But these whitespace frequencies have been used for a significantly long time for devices such as wireless microphones. Just because Google has bottomless buckets of money doesn't give them any claim on the frequencies.
Since all Republicans only (like Rush Limbaugh) have high skool edjumications, these must be Democrats you are referring to.
What about Condoleeza Rice? Anyway, no, I am not a US citizen, so I won't be voting in your elections.
here in the UK the Labour party are abandoning their "for the working masses" ideology and picking up a more right-wing ideology because it gets them votes. Then again, maybe that's one place where ideology should have won out.
Indeed, we have the same situation here in Australia. Rather than even attempting to pursue any "social justice" issues, our Labor party has embraced the worst of the knee-jerk idiocies of the so-called "Liberal" party with abandon, and there's not much difference between the two any more.
The article is in the context of correcting misconceptions.
True, but in the political arena, nobody gains votes by using validated data. They get votes by pandering to the lowest common denominator among the populace.
And scientific or any other education is not necessarily a useful measure of someone's ability to think critically. I know any number of people with PhD and Master's degrees whose inability to reason critically is absolutely staggering to the point that I wonder how they manage to function at all.
You are seeing the window as a computer expert.
Indeed, but sometimes the expert needs to stand back a bit and think from the point of view of a clueless newbie. Like my dad, for instance, a few days ago when presented with some sort of "unrecoverable error has occurred... [OK]" message, his perfectly legitimate reaction was to say "No, it's NOT fucking OK!"
These acknowledgement clickboxes have become little more than a sloppy way of avoiding the trouble of coding properly.
...it's not anything more than reading comprehension just like we've all been doing since the 1st grade.
:-)
;-)
I would normally consider it otiose to point out that this is Slashdot... But this is Slashdot, and the majority of readers fail to parse more than one sentence.
In fairness, this also applies to non-Slashdot readers. I have a number of acquaintances who, although educated to a high level, are incapable of satisfactorily answering an email consisting of more than one sentence.
On occasions, I'm a bit brutal about this: I split every point I want to make or receive a response to into individual one-line emails. It pisses people off, but it gets the message across...
Or, alternately, we could probably do without lawyers if we'd just simplify the damn legal code, and we could DEFINITELY do with fewer lawyers if we'd stop making stupid laws.
Alternatively, people could stop treating the legal system as a money bucket to be plundered whenever it suits them. The US took the lead in the pursuit of frivolous or vexatious lawsuits, and unfortunately, the rest of the world has, rather than eschewing this squalid and undignified practice, followed the example with glee and abandon.
The legal system and profession would have more respect if they were used as such. One is the product of the other, and the more the "system" (such as it is) is abused, the worse the situation will become.
IIRC Obama is half white, 1/32 black and the rest is mostly Arab.
I fail to understand why people still persist with this simplistic notion that genes are carried down through the generations in nice neat fractions like this. Whatever the morphology of his skin, Obama represents a synthesis of cultural values to which he has been exposed.
To my mind, any page that is useful to someone other than its creator should not be deleted unless it contains material that it is illegal or unethical for Wikimedia to host.
Thank you, that is a nicely succinct expression of the very point I was trying to make.
I belive there exists a technical solution - a notability scale. Every article would have number from 1-7 about how much it is notable.
While this is of course feasible, it leaves a lot of openings for abuse by administrators (or moderators or whatever you want to call them). Its very nature is entirely subjective, in that what is notable to one person might be less so to another.
Even a vanity article is capable of being useful and informative, particularly if it happens to point to useful sources. There's nothing in Wikipedia's policy that defines a particular number of people to whom the article must be of interest.
I would prefer to see a system where nothing is deleted without VERY good reason. The actual policy as I understand it is in general not bad as it stands, but if pages are being deleted capriciously, there needs to be some method of oversight.
just include a prominent request [...] along the lines of "If you publish any work that uses this software, please cite XXX." Most scientists would be happy to add that citation. The only ones who wouldn't are the ones who try to pass off other's work as their own: do you really think they care about respecting copyright?
Well said. A nice, simple and polite approach. One could safely delete all other posts on this topic, and it would be fully and succinctly answered here.
Citations are a matter of academic integrity and publishing ethics not law.
This is usually true, and I won't argue exceptions here. I'm also not going to be drawn into discussion of cases of abuse, although any of us are capable of finding such instances.
However, academic integrity is important to those of us involved, and if someone transgresses, he should expect to have his ass kicked. It is that integrity that makes the academic community useful to the general community at large. Take that away, and you end up with a gaggle of squabbling, backbiting buffoons who hold nothing sacred except their own careers.
Biochem ranks as the most difficult (for me) class I ever took
:-)
I don't know anyone who ever found biochem easy. But if you have a good organic chem background, it does make sense. I find it a hell of a lot easier to understand things than to memorise them, and after a while I found I really loved the subject. Even though I spent 10 years working as a sysprog, I never thought of myself as a geek until I found myself thinking oxidative phosphorylation was really cool.
Incidentally, I think biochem was very nearly the last unit I ever bought a textbook for. My area is molecular biology, and (although it wasn't required) I did shell out good money for "Molecular Biology of the Cell", but apart from that, most of my material has come from the current literature.
Well, they can take their time as far as I'm concerned. I can think of more pleasant and productive ways to spend my time than trying to navigate and strain my eyes reading webpages on those tiny screens.
I can endure it for a quick email or weather report, but otherwise I'll just wait a little while until I get an opportunity to use a proper computer.