Actually, it's more of a cost thing. If you're replacement computer is going to cost you more money, you're more likely to put off replacing it. Meanwhile, on the PC side of things, why keep dicking around with that P2 when a brand new machine is going to run you $300-$400? Even if you don't want to spend the money, the fact that other people will benefits you indirectly. Just the other day, I retrieved a 866Mhz P3 system with 512MB of ram, a 40GB harddrive, and CD burner from the trash (equilivent Mac: $150-$250 on eBay). With stuff like that free for the taking, why dick around with anything less?
VM's with low memory always run faster than a physical machine with the same amount of memory. The reason is that the host OS will use its disk cache to cache the VM's disk image, hence the VM hitting the swap isn't nearly as slow as a physical harddrive would be. With that said, XP isn't too bad with 128MB so long as you don't actually try to do anything with it.
Just a side note... CO2 isn't dirty, and is typically named public enemy #1 of "greenhouse gases". If all our cars and combustion based power planets burned friendly carbs at 100% efficiency they'd still spit out lots of H2O and CO2. We'd have no smog, you'd breathe freely even on hot days, and the world would still get warmer (or at least the majority of scientist would predict it).
I'm not trying to agitate, just hear this "CO2 is pollution" argument too often. But whatever shuts your neighbor up...:)
Actually, if we burned only biofuels (I guess that's what you mean by carbs?), we wouldn't have to worry much about the CO2 we would be dumping into the atmosphere because that CO2 would already be part of the carbon cycle as it had been absorbed by the plants and trees we would be burning.
The problem with burning fossil fuels is that we are dumping a lot of CO2 back into the environment that has been out of the carbon cycle for millions of years.
I think a better solution would be to just take the machine out. If the machine is dead, it's not going to send out any spam. Besides, the main reason why we have botnets is that the current crop of viruses leave the computer mostly operable so it can participate in the botnet. If people who have their computers infected start losing everything, they may start to wake up and start securing their machines properly.
A nicer version of this idea might be to totally hose up Windows networking to the point where you have no option but to reinstall Windows to fix it, but leave the computer operable otherwise.
Even if the image to text conversion was only 50% accurate, I bet that would be enough to train up a modern spam filter like SpamBayes to recognize and reject the message.
It doesn't even have to be that good. It's not like normal people are typing up emails in paint to send to me. If the image contains more than a line or two of text, it's probably spam.
I'm tired of the way men are portrayed in TV and movies now. Virtually every family sitcom has the father as a bumbling idiot and the woman is always the level headed take charge person. Ads on TV frequently do this too with the guy needing to be set straight by the smarter, more mature woman. In movies it is pretty common to see the guy as unable to make a decision and the woman is the hero. You even see it in kid's cartoons now. I wonder if the writers do this to appeal to woman in the audience and men just passively accept it. It is a little jab but after seeing this image countless times I'm sure it has some affect on people's perceptions.
My guess is that it's just political correctness. To make the woman the bumbling idiot and the butt of many jokes would probably end up in having the show labeled sexist. So the writers take the safe route, and make the man the bumbling idiot as they know that noone is going to stir up a controversy over it.
At constant speeds weight doesn't matter. It's only when you're accelerating that you pay the cost of the weight, and (in a hybrid) you recover some of it when you brake.
That's true as air resistance goes, but the extra weight is going to increase the friction between the car and the road (not to mention the internal friction in the car between the wheels and the rest of the car), so the extra weight will drop your economy a bit.
I wouldn't count on it. Both political parties are pretty much pro-big business, and aren't going to stand up to Microsoft in any meaningful way. Heck, even looking at the third parties, atleast one of the few that stand a chance at winning (the Libertarians) wouldn't do squat about Microsoft either.
Why buy a Mac, and get stuck with an annoying white pulsating light? The best solution is to build your own computer, and only hook up the lights you want to have on, which can be none of them.
Well, if it's like my older Sony reciever, the display can also be dimmed, which is arguably a useful feature. Once you have the device set up to dim the display, a fully off mode is trivial to add. Besides, my reciever turns the display on whenever I push a button or adjust the volume momentarly, which makes it more of a stealth mode than anything else.
Get a Lenovo for something with more substance. My new Lenovo doesn't have any blue LEDs at all, and what LEDs it does have are all dim.
You don't have the insanely bright yellow one at the top of the screen that lights up the keyboard? Though that one is useful, and is easily turned on/off. However, I preferred the white one found on some of the older models.
How do you install it? Last time I installed Ubuntu I put in the live CD, booted up the desktop, clicked the install icon, answered a couple of pretty non-technical questions (what is your time zone, etc), told it what partition to install to, then it did its thing for a half and hour or something, then rebooted into the new installation. To get more than 1024x768 I had to then run that xorg-config program from the command line and wade through that. Now, it wouldn't surprise me if the alternate installation went through all of that since it seems to be pretty much the standard installer for Debian, but that's not how most new users are going to install Ubuntu.
If so, here's your cluebat: Unless the electric component is bringing in power from outside the system, the test is completely valid, because all the power comes from the gasoline in the tank. Turning the engine into a generator which powers and electric drive-train doesn't change this simple fact.
Actually, it's not that simple. If the hybrid goes into the test with a mostly charged battery pack, and at the end of the test the battery pack is depleted, then the hybrid "cheated" by using stored up energy that it generated before the test began. Naturally, the effect would get worse the shorter the mileage test is. Of course, the hybrid could also be penalized if it goes into the test with a depleted battery pack, and by the end of the test had burned extra gasoline to charge it up. The only way to be fair would be to end the test with the battery pack at the same state as when the test began, or to run the test long enough (several hours?) that the effects from residual charge in the battery can be ignored.
Though my impression is the reasons hybrids do so well is that they are able to kill the gasoline engine and emit no carbon during parts of the test when a normal car would be idling its engine.
Some cars that are designed for premium fuel, such as the Nissan Maxima, have the computer adjust the timings if it detects that you have put non-premium fuel in the car to protect the engine. This lowers the efficiency of the engine, as well as reduces the power. My experience with a 1997 Maxima was that the money saved by not putting premium in the tank was pretty much offset by the reduced mileage.
I don't get all the ATI driver bashing either. I will agree that their.NET based configuration program absolutely blows, but otherwise the drivers themselves seem to be pretty stable.
Actually, you don't want to vote for the weakest canidate, as the actual party members will not vote for that canidate en mass, and that canidate won't win. You want to vote for a canidate that is plausable, which means that canidate will pick up a lot votes from both sides - but you are fairly sure you can take down in the general election, someone like another John Kerry. As far as 2008 Republican canidates go, Newt Gingrich would be a good choice if he decides to run and his campaign picks up steam. Otherwise, figure out between Guliani and McCain the canidate you can dig up the most dirt on, and vote for that one.
A similar situation exists right now. You know those traffic lights that emergency vehicles can control when they have their siren on? In my area atleast, they are controlled by an infrared strobe mounted in the vehicle. If you wanted to control the traffic lights yourself and always get a green light, all you would need to do is acquire/build an infrared strobe (not hard), and acquire the pattern the strobe flashes with (not hard, just need a video camera, an intersection that emergency vehicles travel through a lot, and some patience). Yet cases of people hacking the system are very rare, and not too hard for law enforcement to catch (the car in the pack with the strobe is very easy to spot with a camera). I would guess that people hacking a VAR would also be rare - you would simply stick out too easily.
While I see your point, I can't help but get the feeling that you're more likely to get into an accident with the swerving dude in front of you rather than behind you. I mean if he cuts across 4 lanes of traffic behind you, you're probably okay. If he does it in front of you, even with a 3 second gap... I dunno. That scares me still.
Then you're following too close. The only way to total maintain control over the situation is to have the dangerous driver in front of you with enough following distance that you can react to any move that they may do. By having them behind you, you have little control over them following you too close, or plowing into you if you have to slow down or stop. Besides, for most people like this, their focus is so narrow that if you are behind them, you might as well not even exist.
Sounds reasonable, right? Well, apparently not. I've had drivers behind me go into apoplectic fits, screaming and flipping me off, because I allowed a half-dozen car lengths to open ahead of me. I've had drivers pass me on the shoulder where there is no shoulder (I literally mean a two lane road with big, scary ditches on the sides) because they couldn't stand to see a gap in front of me. I've had drivers pull out of line, swerve in front of me, then watch their mirror as I idled up from behind and slam on the brakes as I approached, attempting to cause an accident that would be my fault. I hate to ascribe motives to people I don't know, but that seems to me to be just an attempt to "get" me for not driving like everybody else.
Seems like the thing to do if you want to mess with people that do things like this, would be to speed up and close the gap once you see that they are trying to illegally overtake you. If the people behind you have a similar mindset to the typical driver, they will stick to your back bumper like glue and leave the idiot sitting in the ditch. On the other hand, I've never seen any behavior like this on the road when driving similar to how you describe.
Vista installs a patch, it tells you, then you can tell it when to reboot, otherwise it does it at some odd hour, when you don't use your machine (or I don't anyhow).
If I leave my machine on overnight, there is a reason. Otherwise the computer is off. Windows update automatically rebooting the computer in the middle of the night has pissed me off more than once. My solution is to set the computer up to install the updates manually. Which works until I get another computer, or have to reinstall - and I forget about the default setting and get burned again.
The thing is, the song (or whatever) is copyrighted, not the number. The song on the CD is a number, and if I rip it to MP3 it's another number. If I fiddle with the settings, I can get dozens of different numbers just by changing bitrates, quality settings, etc. And I can get dozens more with Vorbis, Windows Media, AAC, etc. I can even make it not a number by dubbing the song to a cassette tape. Yet, if I play it back, no matter what the format, everyone is going to agree it's the same song.
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Actually, it's more of a cost thing. If you're replacement computer is going to cost you more money, you're more likely to put off replacing it. Meanwhile, on the PC side of things, why keep dicking around with that P2 when a brand new machine is going to run you $300-$400? Even if you don't want to spend the money, the fact that other people will benefits you indirectly. Just the other day, I retrieved a 866Mhz P3 system with 512MB of ram, a 40GB harddrive, and CD burner from the trash (equilivent Mac: $150-$250 on eBay). With stuff like that free for the taking, why dick around with anything less?
VM's with low memory always run faster than a physical machine with the same amount of memory. The reason is that the host OS will use its disk cache to cache the VM's disk image, hence the VM hitting the swap isn't nearly as slow as a physical harddrive would be. With that said, XP isn't too bad with 128MB so long as you don't actually try to do anything with it.
Just a side note... CO2 isn't dirty, and is typically named public enemy #1 of "greenhouse gases". If all our cars and combustion based power planets burned friendly carbs at 100% efficiency they'd still spit out lots of H2O and CO2. We'd have no smog, you'd breathe freely even on hot days, and the world would still get warmer (or at least the majority of scientist would predict it).
:)
I'm not trying to agitate, just hear this "CO2 is pollution" argument too often. But whatever shuts your neighbor up...
Actually, if we burned only biofuels (I guess that's what you mean by carbs?), we wouldn't have to worry much about the CO2 we would be dumping into the atmosphere because that CO2 would already be part of the carbon cycle as it had been absorbed by the plants and trees we would be burning.
The problem with burning fossil fuels is that we are dumping a lot of CO2 back into the environment that has been out of the carbon cycle for millions of years.
I think a better solution would be to just take the machine out. If the machine is dead, it's not going to send out any spam. Besides, the main reason why we have botnets is that the current crop of viruses leave the computer mostly operable so it can participate in the botnet. If people who have their computers infected start losing everything, they may start to wake up and start securing their machines properly.
A nicer version of this idea might be to totally hose up Windows networking to the point where you have no option but to reinstall Windows to fix it, but leave the computer operable otherwise.
Even if the image to text conversion was only 50% accurate, I bet that would be enough to train up a modern spam filter like SpamBayes to recognize and reject the message.
It doesn't even have to be that good. It's not like normal people are typing up emails in paint to send to me. If the image contains more than a line or two of text, it's probably spam.
I'm tired of the way men are portrayed in TV and movies now. Virtually every family sitcom has the father as a bumbling idiot and the woman is always the level headed take charge person. Ads on TV frequently do this too with the guy needing to be set straight by the smarter, more mature woman. In movies it is pretty common to see the guy as unable to make a decision and the woman is the hero. You even see it in kid's cartoons now. I wonder if the writers do this to appeal to woman in the audience and men just passively accept it. It is a little jab but after seeing this image countless times I'm sure it has some affect on people's perceptions.
My guess is that it's just political correctness. To make the woman the bumbling idiot and the butt of many jokes would probably end up in having the show labeled sexist. So the writers take the safe route, and make the man the bumbling idiot as they know that noone is going to stir up a controversy over it.
If you've ever driven Toyota you should know that it doesn't make cars, it makes lifeless soulless appliances, sort of fridges and sofas on wheals.
That's odd, if you asked me what kind of car handles like a fridge but is comfy as a sofa, I would have said Buick.
At constant speeds weight doesn't matter. It's only when you're accelerating that you pay the cost of the weight, and (in a hybrid) you recover some of it when you brake.
That's true as air resistance goes, but the extra weight is going to increase the friction between the car and the road (not to mention the internal friction in the car between the wheels and the rest of the car), so the extra weight will drop your economy a bit.
I wouldn't count on it. Both political parties are pretty much pro-big business, and aren't going to stand up to Microsoft in any meaningful way. Heck, even looking at the third parties, atleast one of the few that stand a chance at winning (the Libertarians) wouldn't do squat about Microsoft either.
Why buy a Mac, and get stuck with an annoying white pulsating light? The best solution is to build your own computer, and only hook up the lights you want to have on, which can be none of them.
Well, if it's like my older Sony reciever, the display can also be dimmed, which is arguably a useful feature. Once you have the device set up to dim the display, a fully off mode is trivial to add. Besides, my reciever turns the display on whenever I push a button or adjust the volume momentarly, which makes it more of a stealth mode than anything else.
Get a Lenovo for something with more substance. My new Lenovo doesn't have any blue LEDs at all, and what LEDs it does have are all dim.
You don't have the insanely bright yellow one at the top of the screen that lights up the keyboard? Though that one is useful, and is easily turned on/off. However, I preferred the white one found on some of the older models.
How do you install it? Last time I installed Ubuntu I put in the live CD, booted up the desktop, clicked the install icon, answered a couple of pretty non-technical questions (what is your time zone, etc), told it what partition to install to, then it did its thing for a half and hour or something, then rebooted into the new installation. To get more than 1024x768 I had to then run that xorg-config program from the command line and wade through that. Now, it wouldn't surprise me if the alternate installation went through all of that since it seems to be pretty much the standard installer for Debian, but that's not how most new users are going to install Ubuntu.
If so, here's your cluebat: Unless the electric component is bringing in power from outside the system, the test is completely valid, because all the power comes from the gasoline in the tank. Turning the engine into a generator which powers and electric drive-train doesn't change this simple fact.
Actually, it's not that simple. If the hybrid goes into the test with a mostly charged battery pack, and at the end of the test the battery pack is depleted, then the hybrid "cheated" by using stored up energy that it generated before the test began. Naturally, the effect would get worse the shorter the mileage test is. Of course, the hybrid could also be penalized if it goes into the test with a depleted battery pack, and by the end of the test had burned extra gasoline to charge it up. The only way to be fair would be to end the test with the battery pack at the same state as when the test began, or to run the test long enough (several hours?) that the effects from residual charge in the battery can be ignored.
Though my impression is the reasons hybrids do so well is that they are able to kill the gasoline engine and emit no carbon during parts of the test when a normal car would be idling its engine.
Some cars that are designed for premium fuel, such as the Nissan Maxima, have the computer adjust the timings if it detects that you have put non-premium fuel in the car to protect the engine. This lowers the efficiency of the engine, as well as reduces the power. My experience with a 1997 Maxima was that the money saved by not putting premium in the tank was pretty much offset by the reduced mileage.
Oh look, it goes all the way up to 1024x768. Getting higher resolutions, while not hugely difficult, is not nearly as simple in Ubuntu.
I don't get all the ATI driver bashing either. I will agree that their .NET based configuration program absolutely blows, but otherwise the drivers themselves seem to be pretty stable.
I don't understand why we have to have the religion debate every time an article mentions a date more than 6000 years in the past.
Because this is slashdot, and we have trolls around here.
Actually, you don't want to vote for the weakest canidate, as the actual party members will not vote for that canidate en mass, and that canidate won't win. You want to vote for a canidate that is plausable, which means that canidate will pick up a lot votes from both sides - but you are fairly sure you can take down in the general election, someone like another John Kerry. As far as 2008 Republican canidates go, Newt Gingrich would be a good choice if he decides to run and his campaign picks up steam. Otherwise, figure out between Guliani and McCain the canidate you can dig up the most dirt on, and vote for that one.
A similar situation exists right now. You know those traffic lights that emergency vehicles can control when they have their siren on? In my area atleast, they are controlled by an infrared strobe mounted in the vehicle. If you wanted to control the traffic lights yourself and always get a green light, all you would need to do is acquire/build an infrared strobe (not hard), and acquire the pattern the strobe flashes with (not hard, just need a video camera, an intersection that emergency vehicles travel through a lot, and some patience). Yet cases of people hacking the system are very rare, and not too hard for law enforcement to catch (the car in the pack with the strobe is very easy to spot with a camera). I would guess that people hacking a VAR would also be rare - you would simply stick out too easily.
While I see your point, I can't help but get the feeling that you're more likely to get into an accident with the swerving dude in front of you rather than behind you. I mean if he cuts across 4 lanes of traffic behind you, you're probably okay. If he does it in front of you, even with a 3 second gap ... I dunno. That scares me still.
Then you're following too close. The only way to total maintain control over the situation is to have the dangerous driver in front of you with enough following distance that you can react to any move that they may do. By having them behind you, you have little control over them following you too close, or plowing into you if you have to slow down or stop. Besides, for most people like this, their focus is so narrow that if you are behind them, you might as well not even exist.
Sounds reasonable, right? Well, apparently not. I've had drivers behind me go into apoplectic fits, screaming and flipping me off, because I allowed a half-dozen car lengths to open ahead of me. I've had drivers pass me on the shoulder where there is no shoulder (I literally mean a two lane road with big, scary ditches on the sides) because they couldn't stand to see a gap in front of me. I've had drivers pull out of line, swerve in front of me, then watch their mirror as I idled up from behind and slam on the brakes as I approached, attempting to cause an accident that would be my fault. I hate to ascribe motives to people I don't know, but that seems to me to be just an attempt to "get" me for not driving like everybody else.
Seems like the thing to do if you want to mess with people that do things like this, would be to speed up and close the gap once you see that they are trying to illegally overtake you. If the people behind you have a similar mindset to the typical driver, they will stick to your back bumper like glue and leave the idiot sitting in the ditch. On the other hand, I've never seen any behavior like this on the road when driving similar to how you describe.
Vista installs a patch, it tells you, then you can tell it when to reboot, otherwise it does it at some odd hour, when you don't use your machine (or I don't anyhow).
If I leave my machine on overnight, there is a reason. Otherwise the computer is off. Windows update automatically rebooting the computer in the middle of the night has pissed me off more than once. My solution is to set the computer up to install the updates manually. Which works until I get another computer, or have to reinstall - and I forget about the default setting and get burned again.
The thing is, the song (or whatever) is copyrighted, not the number. The song on the CD is a number, and if I rip it to MP3 it's another number. If I fiddle with the settings, I can get dozens of different numbers just by changing bitrates, quality settings, etc. And I can get dozens more with Vorbis, Windows Media, AAC, etc. I can even make it not a number by dubbing the song to a cassette tape. Yet, if I play it back, no matter what the format, everyone is going to agree it's the same song.
Given that faxes come in at something like 14.4kbps max, I would suspect that even a modest PC could handle a lot of fax lines.