We've had the Atom for about 18 months now, and it's about to be replaced by a newer version that... runs at the same speed.
This is where the major problem lies. Those 18 months have seen CULV CPUs come down in price and go up in performance, but the Atom is sat there anchored to a 1.6GHz speed, most likely for another year or so. The other kicker is that the 7" and 9" machines with SSDs were soon replaced by 10" and 12" models with HDDs which blurs the line considerably to the extent that a netbook is now just a laptop with a slow CPU. The benefits of the small footprint and limitations of small storage have been lost.
Some people will still say that they can do all their basic stuff on a netbook, but when you can fork out an extra $100 and get something like a Dell 11z or 13z (Core 2 Duo 1.3GHz, 9 hour battery life), I really don't see the point.
Actually, Asperger's potentially has everything to do with the issue, both in the fact that it broadly defines his initial actions, and that extradition may prove to be a step too far. Asperger's sufferers perceive and process the world around them differently from typical people.
Before I go on, yes I have been diagnosed with Asperger's. Do I use it as some magnificent excuse for stuff I do? No. Does knowing I suffer from it help me understand why I do what I do? Yes.
Now, apart from the fact that Asperger's is well known for affecting a person's social interaction skills, it can also have an effect in a person's approach to interests and hobbies. Highly specialised and focused interests are common, as well as pursuing those interests to a degree that most people would describe as obsessive. Another key aspect is that they often have no understanding as to how their actions would or could affect others. These might or might not be related to why he initially broke into computers and got into trouble as much as he did. Case in point; when Napster was big first time round, I noticed some people were hosting music on database servers with default admin passwords. I spent weeks obsessively finding these servers and contacting sysadmins to point this out to them. Not hacking, but it goes some way to show how far a single, small observation can turn into a mission for someone with Aspergers.
Now sure, it's for a court to agree on the intentions of people who hack, but the flip side of Asperger's is the social interaction issues I mentioned earlier.
I personally get highly stressed out in situations I'm not used to and have to plan trips and holidays meticulously so that I don't panic. I have to know exactly what's going on. In most cases I'm in control of a situation fully and it doesn't pose too many problems. However in the case of extradition - where you are essentially forced into a system that you have no control over - I can't imagine what this guy is going through. However Asperger's affects people in varying ways, that's just my perception of it.
Now, finally, I don't think Asperger's should be used as a cop out or an excuse, but it is medically defined and can be diagnosed. And as with other mental issues - even things such as dyslexia - it's incredibly difficult for others to understand exactly what it is and dismiss it as the flavour of the month thing to have. I've been diagnosed for 14 years by the way.
Ultimately though, you have to ask yourself; why are they carting this guy off to the other side of the planet to do something that could quite easily be done here and cause him a lot less stress in the process? I'm not against the guy being tried for crimes, but just as Asperger's people make an effort to fit in with the way the world works, it'd be nice if some understanding were shown towards the condition and the impact it can have in certain situations.
I'd imagine that extradition would/should be one of those situations.
Sorry, where do you live again?
Seriously though, think of the power and cooling you're saving. In all honesty, sell them off to someone who can use the horsepower, and in return you get some hard to come by money. Simple.
That's not actually true as of mid-2007. An A380 can land at any airport that can take a 747 - the restrictions in force were FAA and EASA regulations which have since been lifted.
Sure minor runway signage and lighting may need to be moved at some airports, but major issues such as the A380s size and weight (it's got more wheels so ground pressure is reduced) aren't as big a problem as was first made out.
Consumables... namely printer carts
on
DMCA Exemption Time
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Am I right in thinking that some printer companies use the DMCA to go after those that make compatible cartridges?
If that's true, then I think it's daft and an abuse of the act. If it carries on, we'll have electronics small enough that sheets of paper will start being compatible with specific printers...
Well as others have pointed out, it's still in beta.
As such, it'll have debug code in it, which tend to bump up the number of execution threads considerably.
You can try the same thing by running an IE7 beta against the release version and looking at the processes. The beta version is much more of a resource hog. It sounds a bit like someone hasn't considered the full picture in this 'comparison'...
And here I was thinking security by obscurity was bad enough.
Security by legality is just an embarrassment - "don't tell people it's breakable or we'll sue you" - the main reason being that now people know that companies are actively suppressing the story, they'll want to know more.
Smoke, meet fire...
Based on the fact that it's text...
on
The Future of XML
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· Score: 1
Doesn't that mean I can use it until um... er... text runs out?
It's not rocket science - MS were using it in MediaPlayer long before EkksEmmEll came along... it was called "sticking your crap in angle brackets and parsing it" - HTML is a subset of SGML and I'm pretty sure that it (in its XHTML form) will be around for a while yet.
How does that die out? Just because you give it a name and rant about standards in some poxy white paper/media blag doesn't mean it's going to die and go away...
... the media itself is fragile and you'd be surprised at the number of places you still can't buy them (I don't know about Nepal and Namibia though, but I'd wager places in between will have a hard time with them). I'd go for mailing memory cards home, or the good ol' internerweb.
Also, the DVD drive itself is fragile and will pack up way before you get back.
Personally, I'd go for something small, light, and with a solid state drive like the eeePC or OLPC if you were on a budget. If money is no option and you want an all-singing, all-dancing laptop that's going to survive, I'd look at the fantastic Panasonic Toughbooks, specifically the CF-W7 model, which weighs in at a sweet 2.4 pounds.
While it's obvious that MS has a certain fixation with Google - the new kids on the block - I'm also sure that it flows the other way too. Microsoft have developed core markets that Google is moving into, which I would wager is what got them rattled initially. However, with MS potentially buying Yahoo, the table does turn slightly and it becomes a case of MS parking their tanks on Google's lawn.
And there isn't anyone else out there big enough to do that to be honest... although whether it's a good move in the current economic climate remains to be seen.
Ok, granted the Dell DJ (and Ditty thingy) were just "me too" devices - off the shelf devices with a Dell logo stuck on them. Not the way to go.
However, I have to take contention with the Axim - it was a damn good PDA and most certainly not half-baked. It always came high up in Microsoft Mobile device reviews and was early to have a VGA screen, Wifi, BlueTooth and GPS. While the range was canned, I'm not so sure it was just Dell doing this at the time - the market for PDAs shrunk massively since smartphones appeared on the scene.
Nokia and Moto have their fingers in their own pies regarding phone OSes. Dell - much like Apple - need a way to get into the market. And with them supplying hardware (which has notably improved in the last 18 months) and Google supplying the software, you can see how this could potentially pan out - if it's true that is...
Yup, Dell hardware powers Google's search appliances (a PowerEdge 2950 to be exact wit ha funky yellow bezel), Google software comes on all Dells. While that's not big deal, there's even a Dell/Google Portal. Basically, they already have a partnership.
Given that the last sentence of the linked story is incorrect - Dell currently does not manufacture its own range of handhelds - there's a good chance that there may be some flames accompanying this smoke, for the simple reason that Google aren't a hardware company. They play the tech market more like MS in that they supply software and services, but partner to build devices.
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).
The other issue is that as the Mac hardware is essentially now the same as a PCs, there's not much stopping the likes of Sony from designing a similar form-factor laptop. Apple have proved the concept works, although I can envisage some people carrying around a bag of cables and adaptors to get the most out of it.
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.
Firstly, fair enough not being to uninstall an update to a product, but surely you'd expect to be able to fix the problem by uninstalling QuickTime? Is this problem caused by Apple virtually integrating it into the OS on Macs?
Secondly, I've never been happy with the way Apple seem to always deny issues by removing forum posts. This isn't the first time it's happened. I'd like to see them acknowledging their mistake and issuing a fix, rather than sweeping it under the carpet and pretending it doesn't exist.
I'm a tad annoyed by this. iPhone users get the new software update for free, new iPod Touch users get them for free, yet the early adopter iPod Touch people have to stump up $20?
I know I'll end up buying them, but it's the principle of it all...
Um... that sounds a bit spun doesn't it? Intel still sells the Classmate PC, and in the Peruvian case, the Intel machines it's trying to sell will still go to the same target audience as the OLPC units, it's not like they suddenly hate kids!
Now regardless of who's making the machines and what OS, CPU blah blah they have in them, it's good that this device class actually exists and it's great that more people around the world get a chance to use devices that we take forgranted. OLPC and the Classmate are both doing a good job, and I'd love to see other devices like the EEE PC tailored towards developing nations in the near future.
Well, it seemed to be ok, until I go into the clock application and all the dates read 08/01/01.
System settings say 1 January 2008, so I assume it's a display error. At least it rolled over into 2008 though which is what I thought the main article said was the problem. Odd really, as you'd expect such as basic issue to be caught in testing.
I always wondered whether a nanoscale reactor is possible - it's be great, too small and complex to be unloaded and the fuel spent elsewhere, but possible to generate quite a bit of power, especially if lots are coupled together.
IANANPh, but I'd guess there'd be problems with shielding as I don't think radiation scales very well, but I could be wrong... anyone know?
That's very true, but if everything's online, you still need a desktop or sorts to be able to get to it. If you've got a desktop of somekind, you'll want to be able to do other stuff with its capabilities too, not just access the web.
Without a desktop - be it Windows, OSX, iPhone, Symbian etc. - Google wouldn't be accessible, or exist.
I think that long-term you'll see a compromised middle ground appear. Information needs to be centralized and always available, and the computing power used to act on it needs to be localized. Information in a single place can end up being virtually useless if you can't get to it, and the frustrations of not having local computing power to hand are exactly what killed mainframe and thin-client computing.
So, I think you'll see a dominant online Google (aren't they already?) and a still-powerful client/server-bound Microsoft. They're both companies that have their fingers in a lot of pots - some successful, some not, but it's in the public interests that they both exist, if either one extinguished the other, it would be bad for everyone.
Taking a hammer (or thermite) to a hard drive is considerably more suspicious than saying you "wiped your drive because you thought you had a virus". In todays security-conscious environment, an overzealous old guy wiping his drive in such a manner can easily be spun into something done with a good conscience... or if you're feeling brave, stupidity...
How about Hanlon's Razor; "never attribute to malice, what can be attributed to stupidity".
And that's your perfect answer "Oops I'm sorry, I wanted to make sure my virus had gone. I didn't realise it would get rid of evidence as well..." - this guy's smart, but probably not smart enough...
It's very easy to shoot this idea down in flames, but he was a smart guy. There's no reason he thought it'd be a laugh to stick an Easter Egg in a painting. After all programmers do it, musicians put cryptic stuff in sleeve notes, writers hide recurring themes in books. Why not a painter?
Thing is, you can read stuff into anything. So if it is supposed to be musical notes, I'm sure it'll be bloody obvious, otherwise it'll sounds like crap.
Adobe, go out and license the Office ribbon.
I know I'll get trolled, flamebaited, blah'd for saying that, but the ribbon is task-based and works really, really well in Office. While it may have come from Microsoft, the amount of thought and work put into it has really made a difference to Office; regularly used features are now effortless to find, and some older - but hidden away - features have been made more prominent as to actually be useable.
Consequently, the addition of ribbons to Office has not removed any of its functionality, but it has removed the 'bloated' feelign of the interface, exactly where Photoshop needs to go.
Now back to my first sentence; whether Adobe licenses it is irrelevant. They just need perform the same exercise as Microsoft and reach some similar conclusions.
Slashdot Mirror
We've had the Atom for about 18 months now, and it's about to be replaced by a newer version that... runs at the same speed.
This is where the major problem lies. Those 18 months have seen CULV CPUs come down in price and go up in performance, but the Atom is sat there anchored to a 1.6GHz speed, most likely for another year or so. The other kicker is that the 7" and 9" machines with SSDs were soon replaced by 10" and 12" models with HDDs which blurs the line considerably to the extent that a netbook is now just a laptop with a slow CPU. The benefits of the small footprint and limitations of small storage have been lost.
Some people will still say that they can do all their basic stuff on a netbook, but when you can fork out an extra $100 and get something like a Dell 11z or 13z (Core 2 Duo 1.3GHz, 9 hour battery life), I really don't see the point.
Actually, Asperger's potentially has everything to do with the issue, both in the fact that it broadly defines his initial actions, and that extradition may prove to be a step too far. Asperger's sufferers perceive and process the world around them differently from typical people.
Before I go on, yes I have been diagnosed with Asperger's. Do I use it as some magnificent excuse for stuff I do? No. Does knowing I suffer from it help me understand why I do what I do? Yes.
Now, apart from the fact that Asperger's is well known for affecting a person's social interaction skills, it can also have an effect in a person's approach to interests and hobbies. Highly specialised and focused interests are common, as well as pursuing those interests to a degree that most people would describe as obsessive. Another key aspect is that they often have no understanding as to how their actions would or could affect others. These might or might not be related to why he initially broke into computers and got into trouble as much as he did. Case in point; when Napster was big first time round, I noticed some people were hosting music on database servers with default admin passwords. I spent weeks obsessively finding these servers and contacting sysadmins to point this out to them. Not hacking, but it goes some way to show how far a single, small observation can turn into a mission for someone with Aspergers.
Now sure, it's for a court to agree on the intentions of people who hack, but the flip side of Asperger's is the social interaction issues I mentioned earlier.
I personally get highly stressed out in situations I'm not used to and have to plan trips and holidays meticulously so that I don't panic. I have to know exactly what's going on. In most cases I'm in control of a situation fully and it doesn't pose too many problems. However in the case of extradition - where you are essentially forced into a system that you have no control over - I can't imagine what this guy is going through. However Asperger's affects people in varying ways, that's just my perception of it.
Now, finally, I don't think Asperger's should be used as a cop out or an excuse, but it is medically defined and can be diagnosed. And as with other mental issues - even things such as dyslexia - it's incredibly difficult for others to understand exactly what it is and dismiss it as the flavour of the month thing to have. I've been diagnosed for 14 years by the way.
Ultimately though, you have to ask yourself; why are they carting this guy off to the other side of the planet to do something that could quite easily be done here and cause him a lot less stress in the process? I'm not against the guy being tried for crimes, but just as Asperger's people make an effort to fit in with the way the world works, it'd be nice if some understanding were shown towards the condition and the impact it can have in certain situations.
I'd imagine that extradition would/should be one of those situations.
Other companies are releasing yearly iterations of hardware with bigger screens.
Are people going to realistically complain about Sony releasing a 50" LCD TV because they already produce a 40" one? No.
From the article:
"This was actually the planet Jupiter and it can be characterised by being by far the brightest star in the entire night sky," he said.
That's gonna really follow that astronomer around for a long time...
Sorry, where do you live again? Seriously though, think of the power and cooling you're saving. In all honesty, sell them off to someone who can use the horsepower, and in return you get some hard to come by money. Simple.
That's not actually true as of mid-2007. An A380 can land at any airport that can take a 747 - the restrictions in force were FAA and EASA regulations which have since been lifted.
Sure minor runway signage and lighting may need to be moved at some airports, but major issues such as the A380s size and weight (it's got more wheels so ground pressure is reduced) aren't as big a problem as was first made out.
Am I right in thinking that some printer companies use the DMCA to go after those that make compatible cartridges?
If that's true, then I think it's daft and an abuse of the act. If it carries on, we'll have electronics small enough that sheets of paper will start being compatible with specific printers...
Well as others have pointed out, it's still in beta.
As such, it'll have debug code in it, which tend to bump up the number of execution threads considerably.
You can try the same thing by running an IE7 beta against the release version and looking at the processes. The beta version is much more of a resource hog. It sounds a bit like someone hasn't considered the full picture in this 'comparison'...
...you can fake it and you can break it.
And here I was thinking security by obscurity was bad enough.
Security by legality is just an embarrassment - "don't tell people it's breakable or we'll sue you" - the main reason being that now people know that companies are actively suppressing the story, they'll want to know more.
Smoke, meet fire...
Doesn't that mean I can use it until um... er... text runs out?
It's not rocket science - MS were using it in MediaPlayer long before EkksEmmEll came along... it was called "sticking your crap in angle brackets and parsing it" - HTML is a subset of SGML and I'm pretty sure that it (in its XHTML form) will be around for a while yet.
How does that die out? Just because you give it a name and rant about standards in some poxy white paper/media blag doesn't mean it's going to die and go away...
... the media itself is fragile and you'd be surprised at the number of places you still can't buy them (I don't know about Nepal and Namibia though, but I'd wager places in between will have a hard time with them). I'd go for mailing memory cards home, or the good ol' internerweb.
Also, the DVD drive itself is fragile and will pack up way before you get back.
Personally, I'd go for something small, light, and with a solid state drive like the eeePC or OLPC if you were on a budget. If money is no option and you want an all-singing, all-dancing laptop that's going to survive, I'd look at the fantastic Panasonic Toughbooks, specifically the CF-W7 model, which weighs in at a sweet 2.4 pounds.
...normally marry, don't they?
While it's obvious that MS has a certain fixation with Google - the new kids on the block - I'm also sure that it flows the other way too. Microsoft have developed core markets that Google is moving into, which I would wager is what got them rattled initially. However, with MS potentially buying Yahoo, the table does turn slightly and it becomes a case of MS parking their tanks on Google's lawn.
And there isn't anyone else out there big enough to do that to be honest... although whether it's a good move in the current economic climate remains to be seen.
Ok, granted the Dell DJ (and Ditty thingy) were just "me too" devices - off the shelf devices with a Dell logo stuck on them. Not the way to go.
However, I have to take contention with the Axim - it was a damn good PDA and most certainly not half-baked. It always came high up in Microsoft Mobile device reviews and was early to have a VGA screen, Wifi, BlueTooth and GPS. While the range was canned, I'm not so sure it was just Dell doing this at the time - the market for PDAs shrunk massively since smartphones appeared on the scene.
Nokia and Moto have their fingers in their own pies regarding phone OSes. Dell - much like Apple - need a way to get into the market. And with them supplying hardware (which has notably improved in the last 18 months) and Google supplying the software, you can see how this could potentially pan out - if it's true that is...
You might want to sit back and have a look at this
Yup, Dell hardware powers Google's search appliances (a PowerEdge 2950 to be exact wit ha funky yellow bezel), Google software comes on all Dells. While that's not big deal, there's even a Dell/Google Portal. Basically, they already have a partnership.
Given that the last sentence of the linked story is incorrect - Dell currently does not manufacture its own range of handhelds - there's a good chance that there may be some flames accompanying this smoke, for the simple reason that Google aren't a hardware company. They play the tech market more like MS in that they supply software and services, but partner to build devices.
The other issue is that as the Mac hardware is essentially now the same as a PCs, there's not much stopping the likes of Sony from designing a similar form-factor laptop. Apple have proved the concept works, although I can envisage some people carrying around a bag of cables and adaptors to get the most out of it.
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.
Firstly, fair enough not being to uninstall an update to a product, but surely you'd expect to be able to fix the problem by uninstalling QuickTime? Is this problem caused by Apple virtually integrating it into the OS on Macs?
Secondly, I've never been happy with the way Apple seem to always deny issues by removing forum posts. This isn't the first time it's happened. I'd like to see them acknowledging their mistake and issuing a fix, rather than sweeping it under the carpet and pretending it doesn't exist.
I'm a tad annoyed by this. iPhone users get the new software update for free, new iPod Touch users get them for free, yet the early adopter iPod Touch people have to stump up $20?
I know I'll end up buying them, but it's the principle of it all...
Now regardless of who's making the machines and what OS, CPU blah blah they have in them, it's good that this device class actually exists and it's great that more people around the world get a chance to use devices that we take forgranted. OLPC and the Classmate are both doing a good job, and I'd love to see other devices like the EEE PC tailored towards developing nations in the near future.
Well, it seemed to be ok, until I go into the clock application and all the dates read 08/01/01.
System settings say 1 January 2008, so I assume it's a display error. At least it rolled over into 2008 though which is what I thought the main article said was the problem. Odd really, as you'd expect such as basic issue to be caught in testing.
...as I read it, she wouldn't cut down on game content at all, but the availability to kids of games containing that content.
That makes some sense - just like rating movies.
I always wondered whether a nanoscale reactor is possible - it's be great, too small and complex to be unloaded and the fuel spent elsewhere, but possible to generate quite a bit of power, especially if lots are coupled together.
IANANPh, but I'd guess there'd be problems with shielding as I don't think radiation scales very well, but I could be wrong... anyone know?
That's very true, but if everything's online, you still need a desktop or sorts to be able to get to it. If you've got a desktop of somekind, you'll want to be able to do other stuff with its capabilities too, not just access the web.
Without a desktop - be it Windows, OSX, iPhone, Symbian etc. - Google wouldn't be accessible, or exist.
I think that long-term you'll see a compromised middle ground appear. Information needs to be centralized and always available, and the computing power used to act on it needs to be localized. Information in a single place can end up being virtually useless if you can't get to it, and the frustrations of not having local computing power to hand are exactly what killed mainframe and thin-client computing.
So, I think you'll see a dominant online Google (aren't they already?) and a still-powerful client/server-bound Microsoft. They're both companies that have their fingers in a lot of pots - some successful, some not, but it's in the public interests that they both exist, if either one extinguished the other, it would be bad for everyone.
...plausible deniability...
Taking a hammer (or thermite) to a hard drive is considerably more suspicious than saying you "wiped your drive because you thought you had a virus". In todays security-conscious environment, an overzealous old guy wiping his drive in such a manner can easily be spun into something done with a good conscience... or if you're feeling brave, stupidity...
How about Hanlon's Razor; "never attribute to malice, what can be attributed to stupidity".
And that's your perfect answer "Oops I'm sorry, I wanted to make sure my virus had gone. I didn't realise it would get rid of evidence as well..." - this guy's smart, but probably not smart enough...
It's very easy to shoot this idea down in flames, but he was a smart guy. There's no reason he thought it'd be a laugh to stick an Easter Egg in a painting. After all programmers do it, musicians put cryptic stuff in sleeve notes, writers hide recurring themes in books. Why not a painter?
Thing is, you can read stuff into anything. So if it is supposed to be musical notes, I'm sure it'll be bloody obvious, otherwise it'll sounds like crap.
Adobe, go out and license the Office ribbon. I know I'll get trolled, flamebaited, blah'd for saying that, but the ribbon is task-based and works really, really well in Office. While it may have come from Microsoft, the amount of thought and work put into it has really made a difference to Office; regularly used features are now effortless to find, and some older - but hidden away - features have been made more prominent as to actually be useable. Consequently, the addition of ribbons to Office has not removed any of its functionality, but it has removed the 'bloated' feelign of the interface, exactly where Photoshop needs to go. Now back to my first sentence; whether Adobe licenses it is irrelevant. They just need perform the same exercise as Microsoft and reach some similar conclusions.