The problem with this idea is that it comes at the expense of efficiency. Plastic films absorb light. I'm sure that NASA has already done their best to minimize the thickness of any coatings or films to begin with and the energy saved by not having any films outweighs the energy lost over time by letting the panels get a little dirty.
I had to do this same thing about 2 years ago when my power supply fried most of the devices in my old computer. I had no recent backups of my important data. Wow.
So what you're trying to say is that you didn't have backups of your pr0n collection? This is/. after all...
If you aren't constantly bargain-hunting but instead reading reviews online and buying things at the logical price point you might discover that the companies can not only afford to give you reasonable tech support but that you will also have less need of it. Additionally, buying the cheapest stuff you can find almost certainly promotes outsourcing and the hemmoraging of manufacturing jobs from our country, which hurts all of us in the end.
I digress. The correlation between cost and hemmhoraging simply does not exist. Examine a large corporation like IBM. You can buy a linux server or an AIX license from IBM, pay top dollar for it, and still watch that same corporation outsource 400,000 programming jobs to Asia. I also tend to disagree with the notion of 'made in USA', which generally means made in a sweatshop and assembled in the US. I don't think that there's anything wrong with bargain hunting either, so long as you're hunting for bargains on products from a company with sound corporate ethics.
Would it be legal for a wireless company to sell their existing stock of blackberries? Either way, there's about to be an insane black(berry) market on eBay.
Max
As a fellow college student, I have definitely been through this. What I do it physically unplug the network cable and put it away somewhere out of reach. Even after disconnecting via software, the temptation is still there to do ifconfig eth0 up and surf. As a side-effect, your papers will become more interesting as your dependence on the internet for paper writing decreases. Another idea is to go somewhere other than your room to work. The library is usually a great place. I know that when I'm sitting in front of my computer and connected to the net, the odds of my getting anything done are very slim. Exercise is important too. Join an intrmural team. I recommend IM soccer. You can't weasel your way out of organized sports as easily as you can convince yourself not to go to the gym because your team needs you. Plus you get to meet people and be outside etc... Good luck!
pine is still the best for mail on the go imho. evolution is the best i've found if html mail is something you like. metamail is also a staple where i work. metamail is especially nice for decoding attachments that have been sent through command line mail with a pipe command.
A lot of people seem to be suggesting IDE hard drives and recordable DVDs. I don't have a DVD burner yet, but I can tell you for a fact that many of the cds that I burned on my old 2X cd burner 5 years ago are starting to deteriorate. Likewise, I have some old hard drives sitting around from the 386 days that I've tried to read from time to time. I've started to encounter serious problems with data loss from hard drives. I think the best long-term solution may truly be some sort of analog storage medium as it's more fault tolerant. I, for one, would much rather watch a somewhat grainy VHS copy than a corrupted DivX or Mpeg movie where there are serious color issues until the next keyframe. Lastly, addressing the question of brittleness in old tapes, one of my parents works for a major radio station that has recently digitally archived a bunch of old tapes. Apparently what the professionals do is put the tapes in an oven and then quickly transfer the data while the tape is still warm. This makes the tape more pliable and allows for one much better-quality transfer. You might want to read up on this technique.
"Remember that favorite cartoon you used to get up early every saturday morning to watch? Then remember how that part of your childhood died when you stumbled on that dirty piece of fanart based on it?
No, I really don't remember this happening! In factm until this article brought the topic up I had no idea that anyone might try to make nasty fanart based on bugs bunny. And since the server is totally slashdotted, I fortunately will get to keep my pure childhood memories:-).
I own an iBook and it's been in for service 3 times. At this point, I think I have pretty solid hardware (I even got a faster CDRW one time after sending it in). I'd say if your computer breaks all the time, get applecare. If it doesn't seem to be a lemon, you probably won't need applecare. However, you should also consider the cost of the most failure-prone parts. The battery will last you about a year and a half ($140) and the inverter/backlight may need replacement after 5 years, from what I've been told. The inverter/backlight is pretty pricey, but it's not likely to fail before applecare expires anyways.
max
$10 bn for a space elevator? Maybe if we're talking about a million million dollars. A space elevator seems like the greatest engineering endeavor that mankind has ever attempted, and to even joke about it costing that little is very silly. Their design also seems pretty strange... lasers "beam"ing at photocells? Do these people take themselves seriously? The loosiness of shining a laser through the atmosphere combined with the inefficiency of photocells would make this extremely inefficient. How about just using batteries or fuel cells?
my.02
max
A friend of mine was once on a business trip on a DC-9. This was back in the early 90's. There was a big storm at the destination airport, which I believe was in Fargo/Moorehead. Anyways, the plane was forced to land at a small airfield. The passengers were then bussed to their destination. The plane landed just fine. However, the runway was not long enuogh to permit takeoff. The plane had to be disassembled and trucked off. This is much easier with a DC-9 than with a 1000 seat monster of an airplane though.
When it all boils down, this effort seems pretty futile to me. Linux and its siblings are really server operating systems. They perform server tasks very well and are good operating systems for people who have the time and desire to face The Learning Curve. Unfortunately, in the corporate setting, the reality is that people want computers that run MS Office. Not OpenOffice. Furthermore, people want computers that work. Dells work. You take them out of the box, turn them on, enter a few bits of personal information, and for the most part they work. Moreover, they work just like every other Wintel machine on the planet. Linux, despite claims to the contrary, doesn't work this well. There are too many discrepencies between distributions. In the desktop arena, predictability is more important than powerful features and even cost. Until Linux becomes one standard such that you can sit down at any linux box and use it exactly as you would your own, it will never have a chance in the desktop market.
I'm gonna strap a camera to my wang and do a 10 page write up on it. And *I'll* have PICTURES.
If you're like most/. readers, methinks that the traincam's pictures will be much more interesting than those from your wang-cam, unless you spend some of your budget on other *things*.
I will attest to the fact that my iBook gets 4.5 hours of battery life while doing simple things with Airport off. However, apple has the same type of processor speed reduction. In the power management tab of system preferences, there is a selection for "Automatic," "Maximum Performance, or "Energy Saver" modes. I honestly can't tell when it's running faster or slower as in automatic mode the transition is seamless from the user's perspective. This seems like a much better approach to the problem of performance/battery life to me.
Slashdot Mirror
and good luck with what comes next. /. has meant a lot to me over the years.
(Anschauliche Geometrie) by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen. Fantastic book and I think that much of it could be understood by high school students.
I'm happy to give up Firewire, but why not throw on an eSATA port? This seems like the way to go for external hard drives.
For the millionth time, it's = contraction of 'it is'. its=posessive of it.
The problem with this idea is that it comes at the expense of efficiency. Plastic films absorb light. I'm sure that NASA has already done their best to minimize the thickness of any coatings or films to begin with and the energy saved by not having any films outweighs the energy lost over time by letting the panels get a little dirty.
So what you're trying to say is that you didn't have backups of your pr0n collection? This is
I digress. The correlation between cost and hemmhoraging simply does not exist. Examine a large corporation like IBM. You can buy a linux server or an AIX license from IBM, pay top dollar for it, and still watch that same corporation outsource 400,000 programming jobs to Asia. I also tend to disagree with the notion of 'made in USA', which generally means made in a sweatshop and assembled in the US. I don't think that there's anything wrong with bargain hunting either, so long as you're hunting for bargains on products from a company with sound corporate ethics.
Would it be legal for a wireless company to sell their existing stock of blackberries? Either way, there's about to be an insane black(berry) market on eBay. Max
As a fellow college student, I have definitely been through this. What I do it physically unplug the network cable and put it away somewhere out of reach. Even after disconnecting via software, the temptation is still there to do ifconfig eth0 up and surf. As a side-effect, your papers will become more interesting as your dependence on the internet for paper writing decreases. Another idea is to go somewhere other than your room to work. The library is usually a great place. I know that when I'm sitting in front of my computer and connected to the net, the odds of my getting anything done are very slim. Exercise is important too. Join an intrmural team. I recommend IM soccer. You can't weasel your way out of organized sports as easily as you can convince yourself not to go to the gym because your team needs you. Plus you get to meet people and be outside etc... Good luck!
max
pine is still the best for mail on the go imho. evolution is the best i've found if html mail is something you like. metamail is also a staple where i work. metamail is especially nice for decoding attachments that have been sent through command line mail with a pipe command.
max
who has no idea who this guy is? Whould someone care to enlighten the rest of us?
A lot of people seem to be suggesting IDE hard drives and recordable DVDs. I don't have a DVD burner yet, but I can tell you for a fact that many of the cds that I burned on my old 2X cd burner 5 years ago are starting to deteriorate. Likewise, I have some old hard drives sitting around from the 386 days that I've tried to read from time to time. I've started to encounter serious problems with data loss from hard drives. I think the best long-term solution may truly be some sort of analog storage medium as it's more fault tolerant. I, for one, would much rather watch a somewhat grainy VHS copy than a corrupted DivX or Mpeg movie where there are serious color issues until the next keyframe. Lastly, addressing the question of brittleness in old tapes, one of my parents works for a major radio station that has recently digitally archived a bunch of old tapes. Apparently what the professionals do is put the tapes in an oven and then quickly transfer the data while the tape is still warm. This makes the tape more pliable and allows for one much better-quality transfer. You might want to read up on this technique.
max
"Remember that favorite cartoon you used to get up early every saturday morning to watch? Then remember how that part of your childhood died when you stumbled on that dirty piece of fanart based on it?
:-).
No, I really don't remember this happening! In factm until this article brought the topic up I had no idea that anyone might try to make nasty fanart based on bugs bunny. And since the server is totally slashdotted, I fortunately will get to keep my pure childhood memories
max
I own an iBook and it's been in for service 3 times. At this point, I think I have pretty solid hardware (I even got a faster CDRW one time after sending it in). I'd say if your computer breaks all the time, get applecare. If it doesn't seem to be a lemon, you probably won't need applecare. However, you should also consider the cost of the most failure-prone parts. The battery will last you about a year and a half ($140) and the inverter/backlight may need replacement after 5 years, from what I've been told. The inverter/backlight is pretty pricey, but it's not likely to fail before applecare expires anyways. max
I live in Lorain County, OH where our local sanitary landfill produces power from captured natural gas. It seems like a great system to me. max
The first time I read through that I thought it said "Strong Badding". Homestarrunner has gone to my head.
$10 bn for a space elevator? Maybe if we're talking about a million million dollars. A space elevator seems like the greatest engineering endeavor that mankind has ever attempted, and to even joke about it costing that little is very silly. Their design also seems pretty strange... lasers "beam"ing at photocells? Do these people take themselves seriously? The loosiness of shining a laser through the atmosphere combined with the inefficiency of photocells would make this extremely inefficient. How about just using batteries or fuel cells? my .02
max
A friend of mine was once on a business trip on a DC-9. This was back in the early 90's. There was a big storm at the destination airport, which I believe was in Fargo/Moorehead. Anyways, the plane was forced to land at a small airfield. The passengers were then bussed to their destination. The plane landed just fine. However, the runway was not long enuogh to permit takeoff. The plane had to be disassembled and trucked off. This is much easier with a DC-9 than with a 1000 seat monster of an airplane though.
max
When it all boils down, this effort seems pretty futile to me. Linux and its siblings are really server operating systems. They perform server tasks very well and are good operating systems for people who have the time and desire to face The Learning Curve. Unfortunately, in the corporate setting, the reality is that people want computers that run MS Office. Not OpenOffice. Furthermore, people want computers that work. Dells work. You take them out of the box, turn them on, enter a few bits of personal information, and for the most part they work. Moreover, they work just like every other Wintel machine on the planet. Linux, despite claims to the contrary, doesn't work this well. There are too many discrepencies between distributions. In the desktop arena, predictability is more important than powerful features and even cost. Until Linux becomes one standard such that you can sit down at any linux box and use it exactly as you would your own, it will never have a chance in the desktop market.
If you're like most
I will attest to the fact that my iBook gets 4.5 hours of battery life while doing simple things with Airport off. However, apple has the same type of processor speed reduction. In the power management tab of system preferences, there is a selection for "Automatic," "Maximum Performance, or "Energy Saver" modes. I honestly can't tell when it's running faster or slower as in automatic mode the transition is seamless from the user's perspective. This seems like a much better approach to the problem of performance/battery life to me.