Vista installed from DVD default/recommended choices where possible on installation screens. Same with Ubuntu, and Mac OS/X. Any deviations noted. Any extra software installed must be available on all three platforms.
Just to make it "fair".
When is the last time you left an OS in its default configuration?
A fair configuration is one in which all tested operating systems provide as identical as possible feature sets, including all the features the majority of people like to use. Like printer and file sharing, for example.
It's also not fair to include, for example, NoScript- that breaks a ton of websites out of the box until you whitelist sites. Likewise for not including Flash as part of the package. An even more relevant example: the necessary firewall rules to allow IM (and file transfers.)
Problems currently exacerbating traffic in Boston:
Density. There are simply too many cars for the roads. Public transit is partly to blame; it's gotten better and more convenient (the Charlie Card was a major improvement- people can board busses *really* fast now, and I'm seeing fewer and fewer here-is-what-I-found-in-my-change-jar types), but the T still has miles to go in terms of reliability, routes, and just plain cleanliness.
GPS units (and Yahoo/Mapquest/Google maps) which go for the shortest/fastest route, not the *best* route or route with the most 'bandwidth'. For example, it's technically shorter to cut *through* longwood medical area, but it's much faster to go around it- even though there are more traffic lights, they're all in your favor.
Stupid traffic lights. There's a major intersection near me where, despite the complexity of the intersection (five streets), it's not wired with pads to tell how many cars are where. One car on a tiny side-street fucks up traffic on roads which are classified as arterial (y'know, the ones you can't park on during a snow emergency.) Boston and surrounding cities have hundreds of such intersections- but you'll only find the "smart" ones where rich people live.
Air travel is one of the safest modes of transportation, and that was BEFORE all the new inconveniences. Nothing has changed. 9/11 didn't change that.
Bravo- but don't be disillusioned into thinking that *anyone* in the federal government cares about *your* safety.
All they care about is a protecting their own asses. George W. Bush doesn't care about a plane getting hijacked unless someone's trying to ram it into the White House. *That* is why they're so fucking frightened: airliners are the trump card to any presidential security measure. The president would probably survive such an attack and the White House itself would be in a rubble- but the damage to the President's power, both at home and abroad, would be devastated.
Boingboing appears to be down; I get "connection reset." Here's the NO2ID group's homepage. Relevant searches on Google/Google News will probably turn up more information of interest than Boing Boing's shoot-from-the-hip sensationalism, anyway.
It might be cheaper given the cost of disposing of hazardous waste associated with conventional painting processes
Because the health and environmental problems cause expenses for body shops and manufacturers (like needing to give employees expensive respirators, special filters, etc)...paint companies have been going to more and more eco-friendly painting systems.
Improvements are both in equipment and the paint systems themselves. HVLP (High Volume Low Pressure) guns came out at least a decade ago and are much more efficient and have less overspray. Paints have gone through multiple "generations" of improvements with much lower VOC contents (Volatile Organic Compound.) Some are even water based.
Occasionally a seizure can produce a fugue, where you wander around in a daze, totally incoherent. This happened to an epileptic friend of mine just last month- she was walking around Salt Lake City in a fugue, underdressed in 7 degree weather at 3 AM when the cops found her.
Did anyone else notice her say, "and the cops checked my house for me"?
They didn't check it for HER. They checked it for them- to see if they could find drugs.
Google will be accepting bids from those countries that can show a long term commitment to the acceptability of the invasion of privacy of others and ensuring full legal protection for the use of that private data in any way that the googlite marketdroids choose ie. profits before privacy.
What makes you think they have to leave the states to do this? We've got people losing laptops with everything from nuclear weapons documents to half a million social security numbers with no encryption on them, and far as I can see, nobody's been fined a dime or spent an hour in jail.
Next time you hear a politician bragging about how he/she pulled in "jobs" via tax breaks and the like, check out The Great American Jobs Scam (http://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Jobs-Scam-Corporate/dp/1576753158 ).
Basically, the job figures are always exaggerated and the whole thing is a ripoff for the taxpayers. If you want an example of a different "save the jobs" schtick, check out the massive half a billion dollar bill for Connecticut, or more specifically, for Electric Boat.
The article talks about "saving" jobs at Electric Boat (along with a bunch of bullshit about Keeping Up With The Joneses, aka the Chinese. Yup, you have Connecticut to thank for keeping us protected from those evil Chinese and their subs.) How many jobs at Electric Boat? 7,600. $500M divided by 7600 is roughly equal to 65 million dollars a person.
There are 3.4 million people in Connecticut, so $147/head. Isn't it a shame that Connecticut residents couldn't pony up that $150/person, themselves? Is anyone really stupid enough to think that even the slimmest percentage of that $500M will go back to the Connecticut state economy, when all EB does is slap stuff together that was made elsewhere?
I think the closest they'll come is in the form of taxes on the property taxes of Electric Boat executives' multi-million-dollar homes.
They show up with court orders dude.. do you honestly think people are letting them in to audit their computers without one?
The BSA's modus operandi is:
1)Get a tip from a disgruntled ex employee. 2)Show up with a team of people, unannounced, and use ignorance, surprise, and fear to their advantage. 3)Threaten legal action if they're not permitted to run their auditing tools.
Then, 4)Blackmail you into paying huge arbitrary fees that are way above what it'd cost to buy licenses, but plausibly less than fighting a court case (especially since you just voluntarily handed over piles of evidence.)
Always, always, ALWAYS tell them to go away. It's like cops asking "can I search your car, sir? have a look around?": if they have to ask, it's because they don't have justification to just do it.
'I don't know of a business where you can get away with raiding a customer with armed marshals and expect them to continue to do business with you...
If the BSA ever shows up at your door, unless they have a court order, tell them to get lost. If they refuse, slam the door in their face and call the police. Write down every license plate number you can see.
For extra giggles, when you call the police, complain that the people who won't leave are dressed like police officers (the BSA guys wear those black nylon rain jackets with big yellow letters to try and look like government agents), and if they're armed, make sure to mention that too. Cops don't take kindly to people pretending to be them.
There was no faster way to be fired (or worse) than to snoop into call records or facilitate illegal wiretaps, well intentioned or not.
Bull*shit*, chief. Hoover wiretapped and bugged whatever and whomever the hell he wanted, and nobody dared complain- he was 'fighting' communism. Hoover did it entirely on the premise that, as director of the FBI, it was his purview. That's it. No fancy legal mumbo-jumbo. "I'm the boss."
I hate the current wiretapping as much as the next guy, but let's not get caught up in "when I was your age, candybars cost 5 cents and the phone company didn't tap your phones illegally."
Our phones have been tapped almost since their inception; all the changes is who's calling the shots, what "evil" group is being targeted, and whose definition of "legal" is being used.
While past architectures have been considerably out-of-date in terms of modern features
They may not be bleeding edge, but their Eden processors used to compare very favorably to Intel's low-power chips, and have unique features like Padlock accelerated encryption (which is supported at least partially by the Linux kernel to accelerate cryptographic stuff.) Padlock made it possible to have a very low power VPN server..
The only real problem I've had with the VIA processors has been availability, pricing, and cheesy 3rd party motherboards. Mini itx dot com for example wants to bend you over backwards for some pretty old systems; the latest stuff you practically need to take out a mortgage from. You can't really buy the boards from but a handful of places. VIA also seems to be ignoring the networking market (if they sold a low-power board with 3 gigabit ports, they'd put Soekris out of its misery once and for all- overnight.)
Same thing with AMD's low-power Geode (which is plug-compatible with certain athlons.) You can't buy them anywhere except bundled with really shitty motherboards.
You appear to be under the illusion that NASA receives more than a fraction of a percent of the US budget.
NASA receives about $16BN a year.
The argument that "that's a tiny fraction of the budget" is bullshit- the federal budget is divided into MANY slices, so yeah, individual departments don't amount to much.
It's still SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS, and one of the reasons the federal budget is so fucking massive is because everyone thinks adding in another billion here or there won't hurt.
...at how the Slashdot community, which gets all bent out of shape about companies like Halliburton...rabidly supports space exploration.
You people are so easily bought, it's not funny. Bush doesn't do space exploration for the benefit of mankind (neither did Kennedy.) If Bush did, we'd be partnering with other countries, not racing against them. This is a desperate grasp at giving his administration some sort of "legacy" whilest lining the pockets of defense contractors.
This is the original space race, all fuckin' over again except this time it's communist Chinese instead of communist Russians, and we're doing it because the Chinese are feeling their wheaties with regards to space exploration, and the Pentagon and White House are scared shitless at the thought of a major Chinese space presence or a Chinese flag sitting on the moon. You people are too blinded by your Star Trek-inspired fetishes to realize that the only thing we got out of the FIRST trips to the moon was:
a)A bunch of dead astronauts b)A ton of rocks c)some pretty pictures from/of the moon d)a very, very, very large bill (+$100BN in today's dollars.)
We have a crumbling national transportation infrastructure, a looming social security crisis, the economy is teetering on the edge of a recession, national debt is sky-high, we have a HUGE trade deficit, and millions of Americans don't have health coverage, don't get 3 square meals a day, and their children don't have enough books in school. And you people want to blow ANOTHER hundred fucking billion dollars to send someone to a giant rock in the desperate hope that we'll somehow find a way to commercially exploit so that private corporations make that money back for us, AND then spend ANOTHER giant chunk of change on sending someone to Mars?
You know that agency you all love? *Everything* NASA "buys" comes from defense contractors. Everything NASA builds, is built by defense contractors. Defense contractors forget to install a pin, $100M satellite crashes to the ground, contractor says "oops", builds another one, bills NASA, and nobody seems to care.
Have any of you looked at what NASA conducts most of its research in? It ain't Velcro or Tang, boys. It's missiles and fighter jets. NASA was part of the Air Force, and that's largely still who it "works for". Ever looked at what most of the stuff the Shuttle was used to throw up into space? It ain't satellite TV. It's spy and military satellites...
But hey, you probably stayed in a Holiday Inn last night and thought you were a firefighter at some point in your life huh?
No. I've studied the SCCA manuals which have been developed based on the direct experience of the organization over 60 years of automotive racing, in an organization unburdened by centuries of "tradition" and arrogance you find in fire departments across the country.
The instructions given to cornerworkers are clear. Don't attempt to put out a fire until the driver is out. If the driver can't get out, SAVE your extinguisher until you know for a fact more is arriving *very* soon, and only use it to directly protect the driver.
This is contrary to my first aid training. The rule I learnt (and this was a first aid course taken less than a year ago) was that if you find someone unconscious, you put them in the recovery position if (or once) they're breathing. The risk of someone suffocating is greater than any potential damage you might do to them in moving them.
The advice is for bystanders, not trained medical personnel.
I used to be a firefighter. Please, if you have the fire extinguisher available and the fire is small enough to knock it out early: use it. Saving it until the end, as the OP is suggesting, won't work as the fire has now grown beyond the capability of your typical 5# dry chem extinguisher to put out.
People aren't trained to know what is 'in capability of a typical 5lb dry chem unit', and they're almost never trained in how to use an extinguisher effectively. What if they try to fight it, and fail? Now you're doubly fucked- the person is still trapped and you have nothing left to protect the person with. Fuel/oil fires re-ignite very easily and will do so repeatedly, and cars that are on fire are typically on fire because they started leaking something flammable onto something hot, and that's not going to change. An AFFF (Aqueous Foam) unit has a better chance because the foam cools and also contains vapors to prevent re-ignition.
By using the extinguisher to keep fire off them, you keep them alive and unburned until the big boys (who are hopefully more versed than you are) arrive with a couple hundred gallons of water and extraction tools.
IF you've been taught proper procedures though, the helmet will come off if the person is unconscious; you need access to the airway whether they're breathing or not.
Why the hell would anyone on the side of the road need "access to someone's airway" if they're breathing, and said bystanders have no medical equipment (unless, of course, there's a Rescue Rodger on the scene.) The only reason you remove a person's helmet if they've been in a motorcycle crash is because you need to perform CPR to keep them alive. The risk of complete paralyzing them otherwise is far too great.
Paxton Galvanek pulled one of the passengers out of the smoking car, then found another bleeding heavily from his hand where his fingers had been lost during the crash.
A very, very VERY important rule regarding assisting someone who is injured, and this applies to bike, pedestrian vs. car, car vs. car, and motorcycle accidents:
Unless someone's life is in IMMEDIATE danger, do not move them, especially if they are unconscious. Immediate danger means the car is on fire, for example, AND unconscious. If the are in immediate danger but conscious, ASSIST them (ie, help open the door or smash the window, cut the belt, etc but let them move themselves. If they are in no danger but conscious, encourage them to LIE STILL; shock keeps them from feeling injuries. Leave everything you can to those trained in what to do.
For example, the first thing bystanders LOVE to do is rip off a motorcyclist's helmet. Helmets are pretty snug and this causes a lot of pull on their neck/spine. If they've' got a neck/back injury, you can turn them from "I'll walk in a few weeks after an operation" to "I'll be in a wheelchair the rest of my life because you ripped apart my spinal cord trying to be a hero." The rule for helmets is simple: if they're breathing, it stays on. If they stop breathing, that takes priority. Some motorcycle riders are now installing inflatable bladders that harmlessly lift the helmet off their head and have a blood-pressure-cuff inflator attachment for the crew to use, and some ambulances are equipping themselves with the version that can be slipped up into the helmet.
Many riders put labels on their helmets that say "DO NOT REMOVE MY HELMET UNLESS I HAVE STOPPED BREATHING" because all of the idiot bystanders who think it's important to do.
Also: fire extinguishers are meant to be used to save people, not save cars. If you have someone trying to get out of a car that has a small fire in the engine compartment and you use up the extinguisher trying to put it out- now you have someone still in the car, a fire, and an empty extinguisher. If you have one, use it to protect people in the car should the fire spread far enough while someone else assists the occupants in getting out.
If this is true, then Lenovo looks to have some heavy competition for the Macbook Air.
It can't be a competitor until Lenovo releases pricing, and I doubt Lenovo considers the very niche-market Macbook Air to be a competitor. Also, Apple's shipping units in a week or two, and Lenovo hasn't officially announced their product yet (and they missed doing so at CES, not a good sign.)
I know it's hard to resist the comparison, but just because they're both ultralight doesn't mean they're competitors. Successful products are either better than their competition (win your battles), or they put themselves in a [large enough] niche market not filled by competitors (pick your battles.)
System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Schedule, if you want to save more energy than sleep mode, yet still have your machine ready to go when you get to your desk in the morning.
Almost any mac with "soft" power has had the capability to do timer-based power-on (and power-off, which is cancelled if you have any unsaved work or an application otherwise won't quit on its own.)
Also, waking up from sleep mode is virtually instantaneous on most Macs. Just watch for mounted filesystems to netatalk servers. "Real" AFP servers handle clients sleeping and reconnecting, netatalk never has. Also, occasionally a machine won't fully wake up, particularly if you use the "require password to wake" feature; try sleeping the machine and waking it again (only works on portables, of course.)
Wrong - on a PowerBook or MacBook Pro, it's an ac voltage of about 50vac, easily measured with a cheap meter, and not present when the power brick is properly grounded.
Bullshit. 50VAC is enough to give you a lot more than a tingling sensation; ever played with an old AC train set? We'd have reports of people being shocked, buzzed, etc all over the net. People's fucking iPod screens get scratched up and it's World Fucking War Three- you think they'd be quiet about getting a jolt from their laptops?
Go look up skin resistance values and physiological effects of various current levels. Call me when you've got a fucking brain.
Slashdot Mirror
Vista installed from DVD default/recommended choices where possible on installation screens. Same with Ubuntu, and Mac OS/X. Any deviations noted. Any extra software installed must be available on all three platforms. Just to make it "fair".
When is the last time you left an OS in its default configuration?
A fair configuration is one in which all tested operating systems provide as identical as possible feature sets, including all the features the majority of people like to use. Like printer and file sharing, for example.
It's also not fair to include, for example, NoScript- that breaks a ton of websites out of the box until you whitelist sites. Likewise for not including Flash as part of the package. An even more relevant example: the necessary firewall rules to allow IM (and file transfers.)
The algorithms used are fine, but this stamp of approval would be very useful for federal Linux and Mac users!
http://www.extrapepperoni.com/2007/09/10/fips-140-2-for-mac-os-x/
Filevault already provides FIPS 140-2 compliant encryption.
The fact is that it's a myth that corporations are pulling one over on the government
They're not pulling one over on the government- they're pulling one over on us.
In the 1950's, the corporate share of taxes was about 50%. Citizens paid half, corporations paid half.
Now? it is about 2%. And why is that?
Corporate lobbying. Corporate lobbying pays for all the toys and the re-election campaigns.
Density. There are simply too many cars for the roads. Public transit is partly to blame; it's gotten better and more convenient (the Charlie Card was a major improvement- people can board busses *really* fast now, and I'm seeing fewer and fewer here-is-what-I-found-in-my-change-jar types), but the T still has miles to go in terms of reliability, routes, and just plain cleanliness.
GPS units (and Yahoo/Mapquest/Google maps) which go for the shortest/fastest route, not the *best* route or route with the most 'bandwidth'. For example, it's technically shorter to cut *through* longwood medical area, but it's much faster to go around it- even though there are more traffic lights, they're all in your favor.
Stupid traffic lights. There's a major intersection near me where, despite the complexity of the intersection (five streets), it's not wired with pads to tell how many cars are where. One car on a tiny side-street fucks up traffic on roads which are classified as arterial (y'know, the ones you can't park on during a snow emergency.) Boston and surrounding cities have hundreds of such intersections- but you'll only find the "smart" ones where rich people live.
Air travel is one of the safest modes of transportation, and that was BEFORE all the new inconveniences. Nothing has changed. 9/11 didn't change that.
Bravo- but don't be disillusioned into thinking that *anyone* in the federal government cares about *your* safety.
All they care about is a protecting their own asses. George W. Bush doesn't care about a plane getting hijacked unless someone's trying to ram it into the White House. *That* is why they're so fucking frightened: airliners are the trump card to any presidential security measure. The president would probably survive such an attack and the White House itself would be in a rubble- but the damage to the President's power, both at home and abroad, would be devastated.
Boingboing appears to be down; I get "connection reset." Here's the NO2ID group's homepage. Relevant searches on Google/Google News will probably turn up more information of interest than Boing Boing's shoot-from-the-hip sensationalism, anyway.
It might be cheaper given the cost of disposing of hazardous waste associated with conventional painting processes
Because the health and environmental problems cause expenses for body shops and manufacturers (like needing to give employees expensive respirators, special filters, etc)...paint companies have been going to more and more eco-friendly painting systems.
Improvements are both in equipment and the paint systems themselves. HVLP (High Volume Low Pressure) guns came out at least a decade ago and are much more efficient and have less overspray. Paints have gone through multiple "generations" of improvements with much lower VOC contents (Volatile Organic Compound.) Some are even water based.
Occasionally a seizure can produce a fugue, where you wander around in a daze, totally incoherent. This happened to an epileptic friend of mine just last month- she was walking around Salt Lake City in a fugue, underdressed in 7 degree weather at 3 AM when the cops found her.
Did anyone else notice her say, "and the cops checked my house for me"?
They didn't check it for HER. They checked it for them- to see if they could find drugs.
Google will be accepting bids from those countries that can show a long term commitment to the acceptability of the invasion of privacy of others and ensuring full legal protection for the use of that private data in any way that the googlite marketdroids choose ie. profits before privacy.
What makes you think they have to leave the states to do this? We've got people losing laptops with everything from nuclear weapons documents to half a million social security numbers with no encryption on them, and far as I can see, nobody's been fined a dime or spent an hour in jail.
Next time you hear a politician bragging about how he/she pulled in "jobs" via tax breaks and the like, check out The Great American Jobs Scam (http://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Jobs-Scam-Corporate/dp/1576753158 ).
Basically, the job figures are always exaggerated and the whole thing is a ripoff for the taxpayers. If you want an example of a different "save the jobs" schtick, check out the massive half a billion dollar bill for Connecticut , or more specifically, for Electric Boat.
The article talks about "saving" jobs at Electric Boat (along with a bunch of bullshit about Keeping Up With The Joneses, aka the Chinese. Yup, you have Connecticut to thank for keeping us protected from those evil Chinese and their subs.) How many jobs at Electric Boat? 7,600. $500M divided by 7600 is roughly equal to 65 million dollars a person.
There are 3.4 million people in Connecticut, so $147/head. Isn't it a shame that Connecticut residents couldn't pony up that $150/person, themselves? Is anyone really stupid enough to think that even the slimmest percentage of that $500M will go back to the Connecticut state economy, when all EB does is slap stuff together that was made elsewhere?
I think the closest they'll come is in the form of taxes on the property taxes of Electric Boat executives' multi-million-dollar homes.
They show up with court orders dude.. do you honestly think people are letting them in to audit their computers without one?
The BSA's modus operandi is:
1)Get a tip from a disgruntled ex employee. 2)Show up with a team of people, unannounced, and use ignorance, surprise, and fear to their advantage. 3)Threaten legal action if they're not permitted to run their auditing tools.
Then, 4)Blackmail you into paying huge arbitrary fees that are way above what it'd cost to buy licenses, but plausibly less than fighting a court case (especially since you just voluntarily handed over piles of evidence.)
Always, always, ALWAYS tell them to go away. It's like cops asking "can I search your car, sir? have a look around?": if they have to ask, it's because they don't have justification to just do it.
'I don't know of a business where you can get away with raiding a customer with armed marshals and expect them to continue to do business with you...
If the BSA ever shows up at your door, unless they have a court order, tell them to get lost. If they refuse, slam the door in their face and call the police. Write down every license plate number you can see.
For extra giggles, when you call the police, complain that the people who won't leave are dressed like police officers (the BSA guys wear those black nylon rain jackets with big yellow letters to try and look like government agents), and if they're armed, make sure to mention that too. Cops don't take kindly to people pretending to be them.
There was no faster way to be fired (or worse) than to snoop into call records or facilitate illegal wiretaps, well intentioned or not.
Bull*shit*, chief. Hoover wiretapped and bugged whatever and whomever the hell he wanted, and nobody dared complain- he was 'fighting' communism. Hoover did it entirely on the premise that, as director of the FBI, it was his purview. That's it. No fancy legal mumbo-jumbo. "I'm the boss."
I hate the current wiretapping as much as the next guy, but let's not get caught up in "when I was your age, candybars cost 5 cents and the phone company didn't tap your phones illegally."
Our phones have been tapped almost since their inception; all the changes is who's calling the shots, what "evil" group is being targeted, and whose definition of "legal" is being used.
While past architectures have been considerably out-of-date in terms of modern features
They may not be bleeding edge, but their Eden processors used to compare very favorably to Intel's low-power chips, and have unique features like Padlock accelerated encryption (which is supported at least partially by the Linux kernel to accelerate cryptographic stuff.) Padlock made it possible to have a very low power VPN server..
The only real problem I've had with the VIA processors has been availability, pricing, and cheesy 3rd party motherboards. Mini itx dot com for example wants to bend you over backwards for some pretty old systems; the latest stuff you practically need to take out a mortgage from. You can't really buy the boards from but a handful of places. VIA also seems to be ignoring the networking market (if they sold a low-power board with 3 gigabit ports, they'd put Soekris out of its misery once and for all- overnight.)
Same thing with AMD's low-power Geode (which is plug-compatible with certain athlons.) You can't buy them anywhere except bundled with really shitty motherboards.
You appear to be under the illusion that NASA receives more than a fraction of a percent of the US budget.
NASA receives about $16BN a year.
The argument that "that's a tiny fraction of the budget" is bullshit- the federal budget is divided into MANY slices, so yeah, individual departments don't amount to much.
It's still SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS, and one of the reasons the federal budget is so fucking massive is because everyone thinks adding in another billion here or there won't hurt.
You people are so easily bought, it's not funny. Bush doesn't do space exploration for the benefit of mankind (neither did Kennedy.) If Bush did, we'd be partnering with other countries, not racing against them. This is a desperate grasp at giving his administration some sort of "legacy" whilest lining the pockets of defense contractors.
This is the original space race, all fuckin' over again except this time it's communist Chinese instead of communist Russians, and we're doing it because the Chinese are feeling their wheaties with regards to space exploration, and the Pentagon and White House are scared shitless at the thought of a major Chinese space presence or a Chinese flag sitting on the moon. You people are too blinded by your Star Trek-inspired fetishes to realize that the only thing we got out of the FIRST trips to the moon was:
a)A bunch of dead astronauts b)A ton of rocks c)some pretty pictures from/of the moon d)a very, very, very large bill (+$100BN in today's dollars.)
We have a crumbling national transportation infrastructure, a looming social security crisis, the economy is teetering on the edge of a recession, national debt is sky-high, we have a HUGE trade deficit, and millions of Americans don't have health coverage, don't get 3 square meals a day, and their children don't have enough books in school. And you people want to blow ANOTHER hundred fucking billion dollars to send someone to a giant rock in the desperate hope that we'll somehow find a way to commercially exploit so that private corporations make that money back for us, AND then spend ANOTHER giant chunk of change on sending someone to Mars?
You know that agency you all love? *Everything* NASA "buys" comes from defense contractors. Everything NASA builds, is built by defense contractors. Defense contractors forget to install a pin, $100M satellite crashes to the ground, contractor says "oops", builds another one, bills NASA, and nobody seems to care.
Have any of you looked at what NASA conducts most of its research in? It ain't Velcro or Tang, boys. It's missiles and fighter jets. NASA was part of the Air Force, and that's largely still who it "works for". Ever looked at what most of the stuff the Shuttle was used to throw up into space? It ain't satellite TV. It's spy and military satellites...
sell some copies of Socialist Worker?
Sure, Cory doesn't believe in copyright, so feel free to print out BoingBoing and hand it out.
But hey, you probably stayed in a Holiday Inn last night and thought you were a firefighter at some point in your life huh?
No. I've studied the SCCA manuals which have been developed based on the direct experience of the organization over 60 years of automotive racing, in an organization unburdened by centuries of "tradition" and arrogance you find in fire departments across the country.
The instructions given to cornerworkers are clear. Don't attempt to put out a fire until the driver is out. If the driver can't get out, SAVE your extinguisher until you know for a fact more is arriving *very* soon, and only use it to directly protect the driver.
And yes, I've personally put out car fires.
This is contrary to my first aid training. The rule I learnt (and this was a first aid course taken less than a year ago) was that if you find someone unconscious, you put them in the recovery position if (or once) they're breathing. The risk of someone suffocating is greater than any potential damage you might do to them in moving them.
The advice is for bystanders, not trained medical personnel.
Context: fun for the whole family!
I used to be a firefighter. Please, if you have the fire extinguisher available and the fire is small enough to knock it out early: use it. Saving it until the end, as the OP is suggesting, won't work as the fire has now grown beyond the capability of your typical 5# dry chem extinguisher to put out.
People aren't trained to know what is 'in capability of a typical 5lb dry chem unit', and they're almost never trained in how to use an extinguisher effectively. What if they try to fight it, and fail? Now you're doubly fucked- the person is still trapped and you have nothing left to protect the person with. Fuel/oil fires re-ignite very easily and will do so repeatedly, and cars that are on fire are typically on fire because they started leaking something flammable onto something hot, and that's not going to change. An AFFF (Aqueous Foam) unit has a better chance because the foam cools and also contains vapors to prevent re-ignition.
By using the extinguisher to keep fire off them, you keep them alive and unburned until the big boys (who are hopefully more versed than you are) arrive with a couple hundred gallons of water and extraction tools.
IF you've been taught proper procedures though, the helmet will come off if the person is unconscious; you need access to the airway whether they're breathing or not.
Why the hell would anyone on the side of the road need "access to someone's airway" if they're breathing, and said bystanders have no medical equipment (unless, of course, there's a Rescue Rodger on the scene.) The only reason you remove a person's helmet if they've been in a motorcycle crash is because you need to perform CPR to keep them alive. The risk of complete paralyzing them otherwise is far too great.
Paxton Galvanek pulled one of the passengers out of the smoking car, then found another bleeding heavily from his hand where his fingers had been lost during the crash.
A very, very VERY important rule regarding assisting someone who is injured, and this applies to bike, pedestrian vs. car, car vs. car, and motorcycle accidents:
Unless someone's life is in IMMEDIATE danger, do not move them, especially if they are unconscious. Immediate danger means the car is on fire, for example, AND unconscious. If the are in immediate danger but conscious, ASSIST them (ie, help open the door or smash the window, cut the belt, etc but let them move themselves. If they are in no danger but conscious, encourage them to LIE STILL; shock keeps them from feeling injuries. Leave everything you can to those trained in what to do.
For example, the first thing bystanders LOVE to do is rip off a motorcyclist's helmet. Helmets are pretty snug and this causes a lot of pull on their neck/spine. If they've' got a neck/back injury, you can turn them from "I'll walk in a few weeks after an operation" to "I'll be in a wheelchair the rest of my life because you ripped apart my spinal cord trying to be a hero." The rule for helmets is simple: if they're breathing, it stays on. If they stop breathing, that takes priority. Some motorcycle riders are now installing inflatable bladders that harmlessly lift the helmet off their head and have a blood-pressure-cuff inflator attachment for the crew to use, and some ambulances are equipping themselves with the version that can be slipped up into the helmet.
Many riders put labels on their helmets that say "DO NOT REMOVE MY HELMET UNLESS I HAVE STOPPED BREATHING" because all of the idiot bystanders who think it's important to do.
Also: fire extinguishers are meant to be used to save people, not save cars. If you have someone trying to get out of a car that has a small fire in the engine compartment and you use up the extinguisher trying to put it out- now you have someone still in the car, a fire, and an empty extinguisher. If you have one, use it to protect people in the car should the fire spread far enough while someone else assists the occupants in getting out.
If this is true, then Lenovo looks to have some heavy competition for the Macbook Air.
It can't be a competitor until Lenovo releases pricing, and I doubt Lenovo considers the very niche-market Macbook Air to be a competitor. Also, Apple's shipping units in a week or two, and Lenovo hasn't officially announced their product yet (and they missed doing so at CES, not a good sign.)
I know it's hard to resist the comparison, but just because they're both ultralight doesn't mean they're competitors. Successful products are either better than their competition (win your battles), or they put themselves in a [large enough] niche market not filled by competitors (pick your battles.)
Almost any mac with "soft" power has had the capability to do timer-based power-on (and power-off, which is cancelled if you have any unsaved work or an application otherwise won't quit on its own.)
Also, waking up from sleep mode is virtually instantaneous on most Macs. Just watch for mounted filesystems to netatalk servers. "Real" AFP servers handle clients sleeping and reconnecting, netatalk never has. Also, occasionally a machine won't fully wake up, particularly if you use the "require password to wake" feature; try sleeping the machine and waking it again (only works on portables, of course.)
Wrong - on a PowerBook or MacBook Pro, it's an ac voltage of about 50vac, easily measured with a cheap meter, and not present when the power brick is properly grounded.
Bullshit. 50VAC is enough to give you a lot more than a tingling sensation; ever played with an old AC train set? We'd have reports of people being shocked, buzzed, etc all over the net. People's fucking iPod screens get scratched up and it's World Fucking War Three- you think they'd be quiet about getting a jolt from their laptops?
Go look up skin resistance values and physiological effects of various current levels. Call me when you've got a fucking brain.