Sort of... although I think thin is the expensive kicker here. The Asus eeePC is cheap and - dare I say it - a lot more portable and feature-laden than the Air (removable battery, 3 USB ports, ethernet).
I saw my first eeePC in the wild yesterday. I was impressed, and the girl using it was happy to show off the new toy*, but I was struck that there's no way I'd be typing on it for long. That keyboard is tiny. That's one thing about the Air (not that I'm buying one--my 2005 PowerBook 15" is fine for now) that I really like: the 13" screen and the full-size keyboard.
On another note, I was interested to see how Intel shrunk the Core 2 for the Air - it seems they shrunk the PCB block rather than the chip die itself, which would make shrinking it a lot cheaper overall. Very nice work though - hopefully it'll encourage them to make their chips smaller overall in future.
I agree. While I still haven't seen a nano-itx or pico-itx in person, pictures I've seen show the relative size of the CPU to the rest of the components, and certainly the PCB block shrink would benefit those guys.
*P.S. She was going to put Ubuntu on the eeePC since the stock setup was a bit too much like a PDA. If I weren't already married...
News flash: portability is expensive. It costs money and processing power. And they have to pay Jon Ive a mint because he designs lots of cool doodads for Apple. I'm impressed that Apple convinced/strongarmed Intel into a CPU package shrink just for them. But it's not as fast as the other Core 2 Duos currently in the lineup:
Parsing perl with wet-ware isn't always easy. Obfuscating your code in the name of optimization should be countered with good commenting. Every useful script will have to be maintained, and the grandparent post is totally correct. I work minor miracles with Perl; or, miracles to me, anyway--I couldn't have created my dissertation data without Fortran--specifically g95--and Perl.
I know there are lots of useful languages out there. Every language has its fanboys. Heck, I liked the PDP-11 macro language a lot. If people produce useful code with Perl, don't complain about it; be glad for them.
"...praising titanium (used in the construction of the 3000) for its light-weight and scratch-resistant properties..."
So what did Apple get wrong then? My TiBook was looking pretty ragged after two years of use. By contrast, my 15" Aluminum G4 PowerBook doesn't have a scratch on it....
I'm sure that fit and finish figured into Apple's decision to abandon titanium, but judging from the temperatures of my 15" Powerbook (Aluminum), Apple also figured out that titanium has lousy thermal conductivity compared to aluminum.
Phil Schrodt at the U of Kansas has been doing something similar for years using The Kansas Event Data System (and its new update, TABARI). He started using Reuters news summaries to feed the KEDS engine back in the 1990s.
Following Schrodt's work, Doug Bond and his brother, both recently of Harvard, produced the IDEAS database using machine-based coding.
These types of data can be categorized by keywords or topic, though the engines don't try to generate links. The resulting data can also be used for statistical analysis in a certain slashdotter's dissertation research...
So isn't Apple/Steve sort of making the 'mercurial' and 'hot-tempered' point for the author? While the Woz has said that Jobs never treated him badly, he admitted that many people said they'd never work for Jobs again because of alleged mistreatment by Jobs (check out the mp3 of the HOPE keynote from 2004, in the Q&A, where an audience member asks about Jobs' behavior).
And here I sit, ghosting a PC, installing Panther on a laptop, reading Slashdot, and nibbling at some code (oops, and talking on the phone because it just rang as I was typing this). So am I distracted and not getting anything done, or am I multitasking?
As heavily as I use SpyBot and Ad-Aware, there have been few preventative measures until I found SpywareBlaster. It behaves somewhat like a hosts file, and also blocks cookies from websites. It even works nicely with Firefox/Mozilla.
BHODemon is pretty helpful too, though it's finely focused on BHOs, but that's enough. Works with SP2 just fine (it detects SP2).
My folks are able enough with computers, but I don't plan to put HijackThis in their hands anytime soon. If it's something that safe mode, SpyBot and Ad-Aware won't fix, they'll need to call me anyway.
Not providing an opt-out link is not allowed under CAN-SPAM, and if the link doesn't work, then they can be fined. Great. BUT when other spammers have the opt-out link generate an attack on your machine, is the opting-out link something the lawmakers want to champion as real enforcement of the law--ostensibly making us better off?
"Real understands how incredibly powerful the Microsoft music initiative will be," said Richard Doherty, a computer industry consultant and president of Envisioneering. "I don't think that Jobs understands this. He doesn't realize how big the juggernaut is about to get."
In his e-mail message to Mr. Jobs, Mr. Glaser said that he was reaching out to Mr. Jobs before making a move to switch camps. Mr. Glaser said he was surprised that the proposal had been leaked.
"Why is Steve afraid of opening up the iPod?" he asked in a telephone interview. "Steve is showing a high level of fear that I don't understand."
Oh yeah, I'm sure Steve is quaking in his boots--he's known for being a coward in the face of juggernauts like Disney, Microsoft, and The Beatles' Music Company (Apple Corps)...
Anyway, Apple is hedging its bets in a few places. You can easily play OGG formats in iTunes (a tutorial in this month's MacAddict tells how to use the codec), and Apple even includes an OGG icon to use in OS X, though you have to do one or two (easy) things to make it work seamlessly. I don't think Apple is afraid of opening things up except that, for instance, supporting WMA or Real playback on iPods would endanger the iTunes Music Store sales, which provide zero or very little profit to Apple, IIRC, but which sure improve the sales of iPods. Where Real fits into the risk/reward equation is unclear, but why let Real just have a piece of the action? Doesn't look like the profit to Apple is that great.
Computer re-use is the best option. Use 'em until they can't even pull firewalling duty.
The big culprits, however, are CRTs. Manufacturing those things is awful. My father's company once contracted with (Sony, I think) a Singapore manufacturer to remove and purify all the water from their industrial runoff from CRT manufacturing. Dad's company had been working on an ultrapure water system for the Shuttle, so they knew they could do it. However, the final product (a sludge) was so toxic that it would have cost more to dispose of than just diluting the wastewater and...letting it go. Stop buying new CRTs now, folks.
The only single datum I use is the geographic references for, say, sea level. By definition, if everyone agrees on one sea level, or baseline, or whatever, it's a datum.
On the other hand, there is this article, about the Rio Tinto in Spain, which supports life despite a pH of around 2. It might not be totally separate or isolated, but that's a pretty alien environment. (another similar story, including a brief discussion of astrobiology, is here.
And the Rev. B "security" models will contain combat programs to rid your business of unwanted Time Lords, just like real Daleks...
Exterminate! Exterminate!
It's a nice way for higher-quality pubs to maintain their offerings, but they should expect some heat over the equal-access problem that paid content creates. If it's a choice between existing and not existing, then a quality site should offer subscriptions. But neither time nor bandwidth are free (unless you use a trojan to hijack some Windows box), and paid content is a fair way to get a return on an investment.
Still, just as there's a movement to give net access to low-bandwidth users in developing countries, perhaps there should be a similar push for content availability that is stratified by country.
How do you shove the required calories back into our prototype "5-days-without-food GI"? I mean, one MRE is about 1200 Calories right? How many MREs can you eat at once, hungry or not (even with the Tabasco sauce)? So if you go for five days without food, you can't necessarily go another five; you have to have a break and intake a ballpark (5x3000=) 15000 Calories. Now how is your body going to uptake that much energy, metabolize that much protein, etc. in a short time period?
If this is true, the future could be bright for Apple customers. With the company operating in the black now, perhaps there is a little leeway for prices to come down. Imagine a decked-out G5 costing the same as a similar Wintel box+monitor.
If Apple stops making a profit (which is what the above sounds like), then we can expect their stock price to hit the toilet. Profit is what makes investors happy, not money in the bank. Apple can use the cash for R&D, advertising, or purchasing new software/hardware assets. They would be very wrong to cut prices by drawing down their cash reserves.
Similarly, while having options to put OS X on other platforms, Apple would also be cutting out the heart of its production: it makes a nice chunk of change on the hardware it sells. Making Darwin run on x86 is a nice gesture, and was probably a not-so-subtle message to Motorola, but IBM is really on board and producing serious chips these days--I'm not sure that "OS X86" is that good of an idea either.
I'd love to purchase a cheaper PowerBook or G5, of course! But I don't think Apple is willing to do that until their component prices drop.
Like everything else...
on
Cyberchondria
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Hey, information can be used in many ways. Providing it makes it easier for regular people to really learn, and for paranoiacs to dive deeper into their (mis)perceptions of ill physical health.
On the other hand, with all we know, it's hard for any doctor to just say "you're fine!" and know that it's a fact. I'm sure many of us have had a problem (and please, let's not list them on/.) that either baffled a doctor or a series of doctors; perhaps some issues remain unresolved. But let's not shoot the messenger. Providing information about making bombs and providing information that drives hypochondriacs deeper into their sickness are the same thing.
Most information is neutral--blame the users of that information.
1. Windows defaults to let users run as root. Neither Mac OS X nor Linux do that.
2. (already noted) Macs ship with most ports shut down.
3. BSD has been combed over for years, and many eyes have searched for vulnerabilities. A lot have already been solved. Nobody can look at Windows code.
4. Macs have fewer application vulnerabilities (because unlike Windows, most applications can't make root system calls and run programs as root (for example, MS Outlook).
Heh, after taking a Chaucer course in college (ALL of it in Middle English), it turns out that it was useful for something geeky after all! (Well, that, and I ended up brewing my first batch of homebrew for the course, which not only turned out really well but was about 10% alcohol). If you
Additionally though, at least in terms of geekness, Monty Python's Terry Jones wrote a very well received book on Chaucer's Knight as a not-so-ideal character, and I used his book for one paper.
Satellites always had terrible lag times for transmission, so this would be much better...but c'mon, the British weather sucks--how long before these little "microlight" planes get knocked out of the sky by wind, attacked by birds, or grounded due to foul weather? Just put money into running coax/POTS or long-distance 802.11-type service.
For about a decade there has been the technology that allowed office windows to go opaque by using LCD sheets between the panes and a low-voltage current to dim or darken them. The Soviets/Russians developed this idea a long time ago but had little use for it, and after 1991, neither did we...
Now if they'd just give me an office with a window, I could have that nice view of Standing Indian Mountain I've always wanted...
Slashdot Mirror
I saw my first eeePC in the wild yesterday. I was impressed, and the girl using it was happy to show off the new toy*, but I was struck that there's no way I'd be typing on it for long. That keyboard is tiny. That's one thing about the Air (not that I'm buying one--my 2005 PowerBook 15" is fine for now) that I really like: the 13" screen and the full-size keyboard.
I agree. While I still haven't seen a nano-itx or pico-itx in person, pictures I've seen show the relative size of the CPU to the rest of the components, and certainly the PCB block shrink would benefit those guys.
*P.S. She was going to put Ubuntu on the eeePC since the stock setup was a bit too much like a PDA. If I weren't already married...
News flash: portability is expensive. It costs money and processing power. And they have to pay Jon Ive a mint because he designs lots of cool doodads for Apple. I'm impressed that Apple convinced/strongarmed Intel into a CPU package shrink just for them. But it's not as fast as the other Core 2 Duos currently in the lineup:
Another article here.
fine, I'll feed the troll.
Parsing perl with wet-ware isn't always easy. Obfuscating your code in the name of optimization should be countered with good commenting. Every useful script will have to be maintained, and the grandparent post is totally correct. I work minor miracles with Perl; or, miracles to me, anyway--I couldn't have created my dissertation data without Fortran--specifically g95--and Perl.
I know there are lots of useful languages out there. Every language has its fanboys. Heck, I liked the PDP-11 macro language a lot. If people produce useful code with Perl, don't complain about it; be glad for them.
I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.'
Yeah, there's one this month.
also here.
Frankly, with as many spoiled rich kids that come to Emory's undergrad program, we need all the geek credibility we can get.
Plus, imagine all the Coca-Cola product placements!
Phil Schrodt at the U of Kansas has been doing something similar for years using The Kansas Event Data System (and its new update, TABARI). He started using Reuters news summaries to feed the KEDS engine back in the 1990s.
Following Schrodt's work, Doug Bond and his brother, both recently of Harvard, produced the IDEAS database using machine-based coding.
These types of data can be categorized by keywords or topic, though the engines don't try to generate links. The resulting data can also be used for statistical analysis in a certain slashdotter's dissertation research...
Life imitates art (or else some would-be "author" copies Illiad):
Another reason people should read Userfriendly.org.
So isn't Apple/Steve sort of making the 'mercurial' and 'hot-tempered' point for the author? While the Woz has said that Jobs never treated him badly, he admitted that many people said they'd never work for Jobs again because of alleged mistreatment by Jobs (check out the mp3 of the HOPE keynote from 2004, in the Q&A, where an audience member asks about Jobs' behavior).
And here I sit, ghosting a PC, installing Panther on a laptop, reading Slashdot, and nibbling at some code (oops, and talking on the phone because it just rang as I was typing this). So am I distracted and not getting anything done, or am I multitasking?
A great article, very much worth the read.
As heavily as I use SpyBot and Ad-Aware, there have been few preventative measures until I found SpywareBlaster. It behaves somewhat like a hosts file, and also blocks cookies from websites. It even works nicely with Firefox/Mozilla.
BHODemon is pretty helpful too, though it's finely focused on BHOs, but that's enough. Works with SP2 just fine (it detects SP2).
My folks are able enough with computers, but I don't plan to put HijackThis in their hands anytime soon. If it's something that safe mode, SpyBot and Ad-Aware won't fix, they'll need to call me anyway.
Not providing an opt-out link is not allowed under CAN-SPAM, and if the link doesn't work, then they can be fined. Great. BUT when other spammers have the opt-out link generate an attack on your machine, is the opting-out link something the lawmakers want to champion as real enforcement of the law--ostensibly making us better off?
Anyway, Apple is hedging its bets in a few places. You can easily play OGG formats in iTunes (a tutorial in this month's MacAddict tells how to use the codec), and Apple even includes an OGG icon to use in OS X, though you have to do one or two (easy) things to make it work seamlessly. I don't think Apple is afraid of opening things up except that, for instance, supporting WMA or Real playback on iPods would endanger the iTunes Music Store sales, which provide zero or very little profit to Apple, IIRC, but which sure improve the sales of iPods. Where Real fits into the risk/reward equation is unclear, but why let Real just have a piece of the action? Doesn't look like the profit to Apple is that great.
Computer re-use is the best option. Use 'em until they can't even pull firewalling duty.
...letting it go. Stop buying new CRTs now, folks.
The big culprits, however, are CRTs. Manufacturing those things is awful. My father's company once contracted with (Sony, I think) a Singapore manufacturer to remove and purify all the water from their industrial runoff from CRT manufacturing. Dad's company had been working on an ultrapure water system for the Shuttle, so they knew they could do it. However, the final product (a sludge) was so toxic that it would have cost more to dispose of than just diluting the wastewater and
The only single datum I use is the geographic references for, say, sea level. By definition, if everyone agrees on one sea level, or baseline, or whatever, it's a datum.
See This article for more.
As with so many rare finds, the real question is How to not contaminate or destroy what we've found, while still getting access to the knowledge we want.
On the other hand, there is this article, about the Rio Tinto in Spain, which supports life despite a pH of around 2. It might not be totally separate or isolated, but that's a pretty alien environment. (another similar story, including a brief discussion of astrobiology, is here.
And the Rev. B "security" models will contain combat programs to rid your business of unwanted Time Lords, just like real Daleks... Exterminate! Exterminate!
It's a nice way for higher-quality pubs to maintain their offerings, but they should expect some heat over the equal-access problem that paid content creates. If it's a choice between existing and not existing, then a quality site should offer subscriptions. But neither time nor bandwidth are free (unless you use a trojan to hijack some Windows box), and paid content is a fair way to get a return on an investment.
Still, just as there's a movement to give net access to low-bandwidth users in developing countries, perhaps there should be a similar push for content availability that is stratified by country.
How do you shove the required calories back into our prototype "5-days-without-food GI"? I mean, one MRE is about 1200 Calories right? How many MREs can you eat at once, hungry or not (even with the Tabasco sauce)? So if you go for five days without food, you can't necessarily go another five; you have to have a break and intake a ballpark (5x3000=) 15000 Calories. Now how is your body going to uptake that much energy, metabolize that much protein, etc. in a short time period?
Similarly, while having options to put OS X on other platforms, Apple would also be cutting out the heart of its production: it makes a nice chunk of change on the hardware it sells. Making Darwin run on x86 is a nice gesture, and was probably a not-so-subtle message to Motorola, but IBM is really on board and producing serious chips these days--I'm not sure that "OS X86" is that good of an idea either.
I'd love to purchase a cheaper PowerBook or G5, of course! But I don't think Apple is willing to do that until their component prices drop.
Hey, information can be used in many ways. Providing it makes it easier for regular people to really learn, and for paranoiacs to dive deeper into their (mis)perceptions of ill physical health.
/.) that either baffled a doctor or a series of doctors; perhaps some issues remain unresolved. But let's not shoot the messenger. Providing information about making bombs and providing information that drives hypochondriacs deeper into their sickness are the same thing.
On the other hand, with all we know, it's hard for any doctor to just say "you're fine!" and know that it's a fact. I'm sure many of us have had a problem (and please, let's not list them on
Most information is neutral--blame the users of that information.
Time to strike up the drumbeat:
1. Windows defaults to let users run as root. Neither Mac OS X nor Linux do that.
2. (already noted) Macs ship with most ports shut down.
3. BSD has been combed over for years, and many eyes have searched for vulnerabilities. A lot have already been solved. Nobody can look at Windows code.
4. Macs have fewer application vulnerabilities (because unlike Windows, most applications can't make root system calls and run programs as root (for example, MS Outlook).
Sorry to be repetitive.
Heh, after taking a Chaucer course in college (ALL of it in Middle English), it turns out that it was useful for something geeky after all! (Well, that, and I ended up brewing my first batch of homebrew for the course, which not only turned out really well but was about 10% alcohol). If you
Additionally though, at least in terms of geekness, Monty Python's Terry Jones wrote a very well received book on Chaucer's Knight as a not-so-ideal character, and I used his book for one paper.
Satellites always had terrible lag times for transmission, so this would be much better...but c'mon, the British weather sucks--how long before these little "microlight" planes get knocked out of the sky by wind, attacked by birds, or grounded due to foul weather? Just put money into running coax/POTS or long-distance 802.11-type service.
For about a decade there has been the technology that allowed office windows to go opaque by using LCD sheets between the panes and a low-voltage current to dim or darken them. The Soviets/Russians developed this idea a long time ago but had little use for it, and after 1991, neither did we...
Now if they'd just give me an office with a window, I could have that nice view of Standing Indian Mountain I've always wanted...