I've been saying this for a very long time. I bought a second hand X40 and it serves me far better than a netbook would, was cheaper than one, is more durable, has a full size excellent keyboard, full size screen and is only slightly larger.
Totally off topic, but have you ever tried replacing the HDD in that? I have a batch of X40s all with faulty HDDs and finding the correct HDD is a royal pain as it has a non-standard 1.8" 44 pin connector.
I was tossing up the idea of buying a SSD but as far as I can tell there is only one that will fit (an 8gb from Transcend) and the OEM no longer makes it. I've just ordered 3 of the Hitachi C4K40s from China, they are the model that was originally shipped with these laptops.
Side note: The IBM x40/41 are excellent machines. I buy them second hand for anyone looking for a basic office/web/email machine. Small, light, full size screen/keyb, solid as a rock and excellent battery life. Looking at mine (which I bought for 1/2 the price of an eeePC) makes me think just how much of a sucker you must be to buy a netbook.
I think the last missing link in OOo's suite of tools is an answer to MS Office's SharePoint server.
A good implementation of collaborative document editing would complete OOo's competition with MS Office as well as remove one of the big drawcards that Google apps has.
Personally, I don't use Google apps, as a JavaScript implementation of notepad.exe doesn't come close to satisfying my document management needs, and I can't imagine any serious business would disagree.
Given the extremely rudimentary functionality of Google Apps, I can't for the life of me figure out how there's even a discussion around it's potential use in business.
To the OOo team: Give us an answer to SharePoint! (Please).
The best snapshotting tool I have found (I'm not entirely sure if this is what you are after, as the summary is not clear) is BartPE with the DriveImageXML plugin. It's free and legal, although you need a Windows XP disc to build the tool (no really, it's free and legal).
I use it to install Windows fresh, add my apps, and then take a snapshot. If there is a virus attack or the install is otherwise dirtied, I can restore to a clean Windows install in around 10 minutes as opposed to the 2 or 3 hours it takes to get a bare metal box up and running with Windows plus all your apps.
If a typo amazes him, I think he's not only new to Slashdot, but new to the Internet. Actually, he's probably new to typing. Next he's going to tell us about some amazing new developments in a town called Gutenberg.
Brilliant! That's my point exactly. The press (assuming for the same of simplicity that they act in unison) may have made a decision as to who was the better candidate and thrown their weight behind that one. Whether that was a good or bad idea is not the point. I'm trying to highlight the fact that the exercise of free speech does have an impact upon those around you, and thus we cannot ignore irresponsibly used speech to go by hand waving and mumbling something about a free press.
We all, for example, complain when Fox news pushed that fear mongering article about the Anonymous hackers, or when copyright violators are talked about like raping psychos, or any other thing we don't like.
Yet, when other people complain about the media saying things that they don't like (such as some religion complaining about an offensive remark) we deride that group because we don't care about the remark made.
I'm not saying that one is right or wrong, just that we have to recognize and factor into our internal decision making process and our internal ethical systems the fact that free speech is not inert, it is in fact a very powerful tool, and, like any other powerful tool, can be dangerous if used carelessly.
do we as a people have the collective intelligence and insight to pick up the socio-political subtleties
Not only that, perhaps we can now realize that exercising free speech actually *does* have consequences and hence cannot be treated as an inert exercise of one's freedom.
Perhaps as a civilization this sort of thing may help us grow up and realize that the right of free speech comes with the duty to exercise it responsibly. More generally, all rights come with a corresponding duty.
The question is, however, do we as a people have the collective intelligence and insight to pick up the socio-political subtleties of this sort of thing?
The idea of these new languages (Python, Java, Ruby, and presumably ioke) is to abstract very common functions to increase the speed of development.
Every layer of abstraction increases the "power" of the language from a development point of view, allowing developers to do far more than they could with a single line of code, trading off flexibility, and performance.
The idea of a new language is to deliver as much "quick access" functionality as possible (saving the developer having to implement their own low level functionality such as string classes, array handling and perhaps memory management) while compromising as little as possible on flexibility and performance.
If ioke delivers a best-yet mix of these trade offs, then it stands a chance to become the Next Big Thing. Personally, I think that Python is the state of the art when it comes to highly functional development languages that still deliver good performance and flexibility. It's not quite fast enough to write an operating system in (although there was an effort called Unununium which tried but never took off), however it is vastly superior, both in overall design and performance, to other languages that provide a similar level of abstraction such as PHP.
Being able to offend somebody is the hallmark of free speech.
I think that this singular sentence is wholly representative of the level of civilization, sophistication and understanding that Western peoples have achieved.
200 years of civil development, a war of independence, a civil war to free slaves and a current war supposedly to defend freedom and what is the pinnacle achievement of your society's developmental process?
The right to call me a jerk.
Please stop exporting "American Culture" to the rest of the world. A bunch of spear weilding African bushmen would have a higher level of civilization than you do.
Is there anyone else out there who is getting tired of the current greed-based international world order?
For starters, I would hope that the writing is on the wall for all petroleum based technology, what with alternative sources of energy and increasingly efficient ways to transport it in an appropriate form for a given application.
Furthermore, the squabble that results over any newly discovered resource ultimately ends up wasting large amounts of money and effort, which could be spent more intelligently. The size of the squabble often outweighs the actual resource gained.
At risk of sounding like a naive hippy, can't we all just get along? What the fuck is wrong with humans that we can't see that its in *everybody's* best interest to not act like a bunch of 5 year olds in a playpen?
Getting paid for as little work as possible is the real nature of the itch. Recognize it for what it is; if your developers don't have any motivation to write excellent code, they won't. You'll end up with the barest minimum that satisfies your requirements list and any use cases you gave them, and not one iota more.
I say find a few other people who are in your same field who perhaps are more code minded. Get a group together with a common itch, and organize yourselves to do it together. For small niche products, that's pretty much the only way. Anything else will either be prohibitively expensive (hiring top notch developers with a track history to maintain) or result in mediocre results (hiring developers whose interest stops at the paycheck).
I think this entire article is a load of attention seeking BS, and I will not believe a word of it until I see a proper peer-reviewed research paper in a medical journal that debunks stretching.
While I'm sure that it is possible to overstretch a muscle, especially if you isolate one muscle and use all your opposing musculature to stretch it excessively, the implied message of this article is rubbish. There is absolutely no evidence that stretching before exercise weakens muscles (note I used the exact same phrase as the title) so long as you don't over do it.
In other news:
Breathing is bad for you! Hyperventilating can result in a situation where you remove too much CO2 from your bloodstream leading to a failure of the breathing reflex, resulting in hypoxia and in extreme cases brain damage or death).
Exercise is bad for you! Bodily ligaments and tendons wear out, just like any other mechanical part, so the more you use them the faster they wear out. The body does have a regenerative effect, but it is not unlimited and the deterioration of the body's ability to maintain joins manifests in arthritis and other related conditions.
Water is bad for you! You can drown.
These articles brought to you by the Department of Attention Whores with no Sense of Truth or Accuracy.
I don't know about you, but if I was high up in an intelligence organization and my internal team of developers came up with a great new was of spying, I don't know if I'd be releasing it under the GPL. I'd be keeping it secret.
Remember, these organizations have budgets that are larger than many entire countries' GDP so they can afford to hire large developer teams to work on things that the commercial marker wouldn't find profitable.
At the moment, commercial software can do rudimentary facial recognition in digicams and the like. If that's what my $200 Casio camera can do, imagine with a $200 million dollar NSA data mining cluster can do.
Slashdot Mirror
I better go tell Sam Neil he'll be needed in a few weeks.
I've been saying this for a very long time. I bought a second hand X40 and it serves me far better than a netbook would, was cheaper than one, is more durable, has a full size excellent keyboard, full size screen and is only slightly larger.
Totally off topic, but have you ever tried replacing the HDD in that? I have a batch of X40s all with faulty HDDs and finding the correct HDD is a royal pain as it has a non-standard 1.8" 44 pin connector.
I was tossing up the idea of buying a SSD but as far as I can tell there is only one that will fit (an 8gb from Transcend) and the OEM no longer makes it. I've just ordered 3 of the Hitachi C4K40s from China, they are the model that was originally shipped with these laptops.
Side note: The IBM x40/41 are excellent machines. I buy them second hand for anyone looking for a basic office/web/email machine. Small, light, full size screen/keyb, solid as a rock and excellent battery life. Looking at mine (which I bought for 1/2 the price of an eeePC) makes me think just how much of a sucker you must be to buy a netbook.
That's actually not true.
Compare this with this, and you'll find that your Random Regurgitated Factoid is, in fact, bollocks.
Thanks for playing PAFOOYA (Pull A Fact Out Of Your Arse).
A better way would be to slash Phil's tires. Then you can sell him a space in your organized car pool.
It's vigilante environmentalism for fun and profit.
I think the last missing link in OOo's suite of tools is an answer to MS Office's SharePoint server.
A good implementation of collaborative document editing would complete OOo's competition with MS Office as well as remove one of the big drawcards that Google apps has.
Personally, I don't use Google apps, as a JavaScript implementation of notepad.exe doesn't come close to satisfying my document management needs, and I can't imagine any serious business would disagree.
Given the extremely rudimentary functionality of Google Apps, I can't for the life of me figure out how there's even a discussion around it's potential use in business.
To the OOo team: Give us an answer to SharePoint! (Please).
Not possible. If we tasted like chicken cannibalism would be more common.
You, on the other hand, are a confirmed skeptic.
The best snapshotting tool I have found (I'm not entirely sure if this is what you are after, as the summary is not clear) is BartPE with the DriveImageXML plugin. It's free and legal, although you need a Windows XP disc to build the tool (no really, it's free and legal).
I use it to install Windows fresh, add my apps, and then take a snapshot. If there is a virus attack or the install is otherwise dirtied, I can restore to a clean Windows install in around 10 minutes as opposed to the 2 or 3 hours it takes to get a bare metal box up and running with Windows plus all your apps.
Yea, at the moment it's too busy bitch-slapping greedy bankers.
You win. That is flat out the best car analogy EVER.
If a typo amazes him, I think he's not only new to Slashdot, but new to the Internet. Actually, he's probably new to typing. Next he's going to tell us about some amazing new developments in a town called Gutenberg.
Brilliant! That's my point exactly. The press (assuming for the same of simplicity that they act in unison) may have made a decision as to who was the better candidate and thrown their weight behind that one. Whether that was a good or bad idea is not the point. I'm trying to highlight the fact that the exercise of free speech does have an impact upon those around you, and thus we cannot ignore irresponsibly used speech to go by hand waving and mumbling something about a free press.
We all, for example, complain when Fox news pushed that fear mongering article about the Anonymous hackers, or when copyright violators are talked about like raping psychos, or any other thing we don't like.
Yet, when other people complain about the media saying things that they don't like (such as some religion complaining about an offensive remark) we deride that group because we don't care about the remark made.
I'm not saying that one is right or wrong, just that we have to recognize and factor into our internal decision making process and our internal ethical systems the fact that free speech is not inert, it is in fact a very powerful tool, and, like any other powerful tool, can be dangerous if used carelessly.
You, dear sir, go in the "yes" column :)
Not only that, perhaps we can now realize that exercising free speech actually *does* have consequences and hence cannot be treated as an inert exercise of one's freedom.
Perhaps as a civilization this sort of thing may help us grow up and realize that the right of free speech comes with the duty to exercise it responsibly. More generally, all rights come with a corresponding duty.
The question is, however, do we as a people have the collective intelligence and insight to pick up the socio-political subtleties of this sort of thing?
Chair to the face > Microsoft embracing, extending and extinguishing to the rectum
The idea of these new languages (Python, Java, Ruby, and presumably ioke) is to abstract very common functions to increase the speed of development.
Every layer of abstraction increases the "power" of the language from a development point of view, allowing developers to do far more than they could with a single line of code, trading off flexibility, and performance.
The idea of a new language is to deliver as much "quick access" functionality as possible (saving the developer having to implement their own low level functionality such as string classes, array handling and perhaps memory management) while compromising as little as possible on flexibility and performance.
If ioke delivers a best-yet mix of these trade offs, then it stands a chance to become the Next Big Thing. Personally, I think that Python is the state of the art when it comes to highly functional development languages that still deliver good performance and flexibility. It's not quite fast enough to write an operating system in (although there was an effort called Unununium which tried but never took off), however it is vastly superior, both in overall design and performance, to other languages that provide a similar level of abstraction such as PHP.
A little from column A, and a little from column B :P
I think that this singular sentence is wholly representative of the level of civilization, sophistication and understanding that Western peoples have achieved.
200 years of civil development, a war of independence, a civil war to free slaves and a current war supposedly to defend freedom and what is the pinnacle achievement of your society's developmental process?
The right to call me a jerk.
Please stop exporting "American Culture" to the rest of the world. A bunch of spear weilding African bushmen would have a higher level of civilization than you do.
... hope that this robot becomes self-aware and hunts down every idiot that invokes this stupid fucking meme.
Blatant hijacking of idiotic first post.
Is there anyone else out there who is getting tired of the current greed-based international world order?
For starters, I would hope that the writing is on the wall for all petroleum based technology, what with alternative sources of energy and increasingly efficient ways to transport it in an appropriate form for a given application.
Furthermore, the squabble that results over any newly discovered resource ultimately ends up wasting large amounts of money and effort, which could be spent more intelligently. The size of the squabble often outweighs the actual resource gained.
At risk of sounding like a naive hippy, can't we all just get along? What the fuck is wrong with humans that we can't see that its in *everybody's* best interest to not act like a bunch of 5 year olds in a playpen?
Lhisa, ihn dhis countghy ve obay de laws of shermodynamics!
Look I told you that story in confidence...
Getting paid for as little work as possible is the real nature of the itch. Recognize it for what it is; if your developers don't have any motivation to write excellent code, they won't. You'll end up with the barest minimum that satisfies your requirements list and any use cases you gave them, and not one iota more.
I say find a few other people who are in your same field who perhaps are more code minded. Get a group together with a common itch, and organize yourselves to do it together. For small niche products, that's pretty much the only way. Anything else will either be prohibitively expensive (hiring top notch developers with a track history to maintain) or result in mediocre results (hiring developers whose interest stops at the paycheck).
I think this entire article is a load of attention seeking BS, and I will not believe a word of it until I see a proper peer-reviewed research paper in a medical journal that debunks stretching.
While I'm sure that it is possible to overstretch a muscle, especially if you isolate one muscle and use all your opposing musculature to stretch it excessively, the implied message of this article is rubbish. There is absolutely no evidence that stretching before exercise weakens muscles (note I used the exact same phrase as the title) so long as you don't over do it.
In other news:
Breathing is bad for you!
Hyperventilating can result in a situation where you remove too much CO2 from your bloodstream leading to a failure of the breathing reflex, resulting in hypoxia and in extreme cases brain damage or death).
Exercise is bad for you!
Bodily ligaments and tendons wear out, just like any other mechanical part, so the more you use them the faster they wear out. The body does have a regenerative effect, but it is not unlimited and the deterioration of the body's ability to maintain joins manifests in arthritis and other related conditions.
Water is bad for you!
You can drown.
These articles brought to you by the Department of Attention Whores with no Sense of Truth or Accuracy.
I don't know about you, but if I was high up in an intelligence organization and my internal team of developers came up with a great new was of spying, I don't know if I'd be releasing it under the GPL. I'd be keeping it secret.
Remember, these organizations have budgets that are larger than many entire countries' GDP so they can afford to hire large developer teams to work on things that the commercial marker wouldn't find profitable.
At the moment, commercial software can do rudimentary facial recognition in digicams and the like. If that's what my $200 Casio camera can do, imagine with a $200 million dollar NSA data mining cluster can do.