there will be a little more horsepower for your buck with that purchase from Ebay.
This notebook, however, has a full year warranty: hardly impressive, but relative to eBay's usual "no returns unless DOA," it's rather nice. Not to mention it probably hasn't been kicked around, dropped repeatedly, or left in a hot trunk for a few days. Notebooks are inherently mistreated and abused. I don't think Average Jane wants a used notebook.
And as nice of a distro as Slack is, it's still more difficult for the typical person migrating from an MS OS to learn than Linspire. There's definitely a nice market for this machine.
Not that I'll ever purchase anything from evil WalMart, though.
I know it's quite uncool to read the article and all. ..
But even with sophisticated presentation software, there's still a basic problem: when you're reading a screen, you're not looking directly at the camera. And that's bad. Which is why this guy's teleprompter is directly in front of the camera, and he can maintain proper eye contact throughout.
It's certainly an impressive piece of technology, but it's definitely not the pinnaclce of robotics. It's newsworthy primarily because it's in humanoid form, and if there's anything I've learned from 1950's sci-fi, it's that everyone wants their own little robot butler.
ASIMO is, at most, a PR move. "Look! We can build an incredible robot! Imagine how great our automobiles must be!"
I, too, have wondered why Lenovo would pay so much for IBM's PC division. I expect we'll see a new logo almost immediately: most likely the current IBM logo with a small "powered by Lenovo" line underneath. In a few years, the logos will be reversed, with Lenovo's name as the more prominent one. Within five years, the logo will have no reference to IBM. This is the route IBM took with Lexmark when they spun them off.
I think the laptop market is nearing saturation in the U.S. A few years back, we thought the desktop PC would die off; laptops would become so inexpensive and so powerful that there would be no reason to purchase a desktop. That notion, however, has proved to be untrue.
With IBM holding nearly a 20 percent stake in Lenovo, it's likely that they'll provide them with whatever relevant IP they develop. That's they key. IBM will still be financially tied to Lenovo, so it's in both of their best interests to insure their laptops and PC's remain competitive. I wonder, though, if IBM might eventually sell off their portion of Lenovo.
I didn't take the survey (as I'm on a Celeron 500 with integrated video that's entirely incapable of playing games), but I'm curious to know if the detection tool allowed users to correct mistakes or otherwise alter the data. I wonder about the:
- 1,500 people still stuck on 14.4 modems. - The 94 people who attempted to play the game with 32 megabytes of RAM or less. - The 111 people with processors no faster than 200 mhz. - The one person with a 4-CPU system! - Lastly, both of the following screen widths had exactly one user: 5 pixels and 3,072 pixels.
Were people with these systems actually playing Half-Life 2, or can it be better explained as users with a sense of humor?
When 911 is doWn, you just call your local police station - they do have a phone there after all.
They may have a phone, but they often won't pick it up. In my city (New York City), very few precincts will answer their phones; they simply don't have the available manpower to answer repititive mundane questions. They will, however, respond to questions asked in person, but most people aren't willing to invest 10 or 15 minutes of their time to go out to the precinct.
Serious emergencies are all dealt with through 911. Non-emergency police matters (blocked driveway, illegally parked car, noise complaint) are routed to the city's 311 call center.
Most residents don't even know what precinct they live in (and there are close to 150 throughout the city), and it's impossible to know what precincts cover what areas. If, for instance, you're driving in an area that you're unfamiliar with, and you have an emergency, figuring out the proper precinct can be a delay of numerous minutes.
Your small-town centric post is disturbing: in a large city, the 911 system is extremely important.
You misread the article: Ballmer hasn't endorsed this specific product, but he's endorsed the idea of an inexpensive, basic PC (running a variant of Windows, of course) for third world countries.
His point, though, was that one wouldn't build a cluster like this for performance, but for the technical experience and knowledge when under a strict budget (hence his suggestion that vocational schools might have an interest in this).
I would think, however, that commodity hardware would be a better idea; the total-cost for each XBox was around $180 (mod chip included), while an extremely low end system could be built for less (using old Durons, for instance, coupled with a few megs or RAM). It certainly wouldn't compare very well to most other clusters, but it would provide the builder with a lot of "hands-on" experience that would be difficult to obtain otherwise.
See this guy's Mini-ITX cluster for more information.
A DLS modem is a small piece of hardware that is now believed to be extinct by most credible computer scientists. Current available evidence suggests the item was once used as a telecommunication device.
Alternate theories include a submitter without a spell-check device.
If you know you're about to get hit, minimize the graphics and streamline the code; this guy's got a page that's just over 30 kb (including graphics). Provided the page isn't generated dynamically, it shouldn't be too tough for a decent server to handle.
Throw in some flash and a bunch of fancy images and you've got a recipe for disaster.
when they hit the "TURBO" button on the front of the boxes they'll really scream.
They did! According to C-Net article they "quietly submitted another, faster result: 51.9 trillion calculations per second" (equivalent to 51.9 teraflops).
From what I've seen, AOL has a large amount of respect in the Anti-Spam community.
Let me first expand on my original statement. Wall Street does not look highly upon AOL: they dramatically overpaid for Netscape, a division that is, for all intensive purposes, dead; they were involved in one of the most under-reported merger scams of the past decade (Time Warner, a long-profitable company was, many believe, duped); and their growth prospects are extremely limited. They've proved their inability to display original content, and the slow atrophy of their user-base has begun.
The user community, too, has a seemingly endless list of complains--those who remember their growth problems (myself included), the constant busy-signals, buggy and bloated software, high prices, and extremely poor technical support--they place the blame soley with AOL, regardless of who is at fault.
But you argue that the anti-spam community respects AOL? I would disagree. True, they've pursued legal action against several high-profile spammers, but I would normally expect far more from a company with legal abilities such as theirs. They've acted in their own interest, and not in the interest of their users (not surprising, of course, as their obligation is to the shareholder, and not the consumer).
AOL could have, and indeed should have done more; they, however, have remained largely apathetic.
AOL is certainly not a highly respected corporation, especially in the tech-world. They've agreed to ally themselves with Microsoft for this particular issue, but until some other notable corporations or organizations (particlarly Yahoo!, Google, and Apache) accept sender-ID as a "standard," there's no way it will make any difference in the fight against spam.
It's important to note, too, that if one has no need for a modem, and is willing to forgo the super-drive in favor of a combo-drive, the price will be US $130 less.
Of course, after one adds the obligatory 512 MB memory stick, the price is back up to US $1500.
It was just a matter of time before our own bodies figured out how to survive this virus.
I don't think that's exactly the case. HIV is only twenty-five years old, which certainly isn't enough time for genetic evolution to take place (especially considering the relatively slow reporductive rate of humans).
It's more likely they've an odd mutant gene that by coincadence makes them immune to the virus.
Microsoft doesn't make any money on the browser itself; however, the broswer allows them to make money through associated activities. IE's default home-page (MSN) sells more than enough advertising to make the entire operation profitable.
For the time being, Sony customers will have to be satisfied with MP3 support in flash-based players, which could come as early as this year... The company is also considering expanding MP3 support to hard disk devices, sources told ZDNet France, but no decision has yet been made on that front.
Is it that hard to one unified plan? Why the restrictions on HD-based models. "It's OK to pirate music, provided it's less than 256 MB!"
I guess apple had the right idea a while back when they stopped using floppies
Apple did have the right idea, they just implemented it poorly.
Most everyone who purchased the original iMac went out and purchased an external USB floppy drive as well. The problem was people didn't have a way to reliabley back up their documents since the original iMacs did not come with a CD-RW, but rather with a basic read-only CD drive. This, in my opinion, was a huge mistake. People don't like to have a computer that isn't capable of backing up important data (they could do so via the internet back then, but transfering files at 33.6k is painful, and that assumes owners had an FTP account somewhere).
I think most people don't make backups on a regular basis, but they certainly like the option to do so if they wish.
I'd furthermore be insulted if my school possibly spent my tuition money on lures for people who may not really care about school or take it seriously.
Did you go to a school without a sports program? They haven't much of a point, other than to draw in prospective students and build the college's name up ("they have such an excellent basketball team that I can't imagine they'd employ professors of poor quality!").
Nearly every school spends money to attract students; often they'll intentionally misrepresent the school to in one way or another to attract students. Why? Because, like every other institution, they must perpetuate or die. The latter alternative is the less pleasant one.
How much will it cost me to have my ebay link posted on the front page? Sure, you can find just about any sucker to buy a product if you show it to enough people; while it may take time, eventually you'll find either a person with too much money, or a person who lacks the ability to comprehend the value of money.
It's "going" for $400 right now, yet there isn't a single bid.
Please repeat after me: capitalism with a hundred thousand government rules and regulations functions the same way as communism. a + 100000*b = c.
Is that a statement I somehow missed while reading Marxist literature?
A capitalist system, even a protective one such as the one found in the U.S., encourages corporations to maximize their profits, and even to be exploitive. In a communist economy, state owned monopolies protect the proletariat at the expense of profits and efficiency.
The capitalist system, at least here in the U.S., is firmly in place.
The internet, in addition to other new technologies, only aid the consumer mentality that has become so prevalent. Has he not seen a newspaper of a TV? They're filled with ads, and, for the most part, people don't mind: they want to know about the latest and greatest new product; they want to know what hip new clothes they ought to be wearing; they have to know how to formulate their images.
Companies will identify the problem and address it. The internet is a valuable marketing tool, a fact they'll surely figure out (though most already have).
Slashdot Mirror
there will be a little more horsepower for your buck with that purchase from Ebay.
This notebook, however, has a full year warranty: hardly impressive, but relative to eBay's usual "no returns unless DOA," it's rather nice. Not to mention it probably hasn't been kicked around, dropped repeatedly, or left in a hot trunk for a few days. Notebooks are inherently mistreated and abused. I don't think Average Jane wants a used notebook.
And as nice of a distro as Slack is, it's still more difficult for the typical person migrating from an MS OS to learn than Linspire. There's definitely a nice market for this machine.
Not that I'll ever purchase anything from evil WalMart, though.
I know it's quite uncool to read the article and all. . .
But even with sophisticated presentation software, there's still a basic problem: when you're reading a screen, you're not looking directly at the camera. And that's bad. Which is why this guy's teleprompter is directly in front of the camera, and he can maintain proper eye contact throughout.
It's certainly an impressive piece of technology, but it's definitely not the pinnaclce of robotics. It's newsworthy primarily because it's in humanoid form, and if there's anything I've learned from 1950's sci-fi, it's that everyone wants their own little robot butler.
ASIMO is, at most, a PR move. "Look! We can build an incredible robot! Imagine how great our automobiles must be!"
I, too, have wondered why Lenovo would pay so much for IBM's PC division. I expect we'll see a new logo almost immediately: most likely the current IBM logo with a small "powered by Lenovo" line underneath. In a few years, the logos will be reversed, with Lenovo's name as the more prominent one. Within five years, the logo will have no reference to IBM. This is the route IBM took with Lexmark when they spun them off.
I think the laptop market is nearing saturation in the U.S. A few years back, we thought the desktop PC would die off; laptops would become so inexpensive and so powerful that there would be no reason to purchase a desktop. That notion, however, has proved to be untrue.
With IBM holding nearly a 20 percent stake in Lenovo, it's likely that they'll provide them with whatever relevant IP they develop. That's they key. IBM will still be financially tied to Lenovo, so it's in both of their best interests to insure their laptops and PC's remain competitive. I wonder, though, if IBM might eventually sell off their portion of Lenovo.
I didn't take the survey (as I'm on a Celeron 500 with integrated video that's entirely incapable of playing games), but I'm curious to know if the detection tool allowed users to correct mistakes or otherwise alter the data. I wonder about the:
- 1,500 people still stuck on 14.4 modems.
- The 94 people who attempted to play the game with 32 megabytes of RAM or less.
- The 111 people with processors no faster than 200 mhz.
- The one person with a 4-CPU system!
- Lastly, both of the following screen widths had exactly one user: 5 pixels and 3,072 pixels.
Were people with these systems actually playing Half-Life 2, or can it be better explained as users with a sense of humor?
When 911 is doWn, you just call your local police station - they do have a phone there after all.
They may have a phone, but they often won't pick it up. In my city (New York City), very few precincts will answer their phones; they simply don't have the available manpower to answer repititive mundane questions. They will, however, respond to questions asked in person, but most people aren't willing to invest 10 or 15 minutes of their time to go out to the precinct.
Serious emergencies are all dealt with through 911. Non-emergency police matters (blocked driveway, illegally parked car, noise complaint) are routed to the city's 311 call center.
Most residents don't even know what precinct they live in (and there are close to 150 throughout the city), and it's impossible to know what precincts cover what areas. If, for instance, you're driving in an area that you're unfamiliar with, and you have an emergency, figuring out the proper precinct can be a delay of numerous minutes.
Your small-town centric post is disturbing: in a large city, the 911 system is extremely important.
You misread the article: Ballmer hasn't endorsed this specific product, but he's endorsed the idea of an inexpensive, basic PC (running a variant of Windows, of course) for third world countries.
Previous Slashdot article is: here.
GREAT IDEA!
Provided one's server isn't mistakenly targeted (and I'm positive they'll eventually either friendly-fire or mistype an IP).
Also covered by the NY Times here.
His point, though, was that one wouldn't build a cluster like this for performance, but for the technical experience and knowledge when under a strict budget (hence his suggestion that vocational schools might have an interest in this).
I would think, however, that commodity hardware would be a better idea; the total-cost for each XBox was around $180 (mod chip included), while an extremely low end system could be built for less (using old Durons, for instance, coupled with a few megs or RAM). It certainly wouldn't compare very well to most other clusters, but it would provide the builder with a lot of "hands-on" experience that would be difficult to obtain otherwise.
See this guy's Mini-ITX cluster for more information.
Alternate theories include a submitter without a spell-check device.
Hasn't Microsoft tried the set-top box approach before? Didn't WebTV fail? Why might it work this time?
Oh, that's right: they're copying a service that's already been proved. Tivo--meet Apple.
If you know you're about to get hit, minimize the graphics and streamline the code; this guy's got a page that's just over 30 kb (including graphics). Provided the page isn't generated dynamically, it shouldn't be too tough for a decent server to handle.
Throw in some flash and a bunch of fancy images and you've got a recipe for disaster.
when they hit the "TURBO" button on the front of the boxes they'll really scream.
They did! According to C-Net article they "quietly submitted another, faster result: 51.9 trillion calculations per second" (equivalent to 51.9 teraflops).
From what I've seen, AOL has a large amount of respect in the Anti-Spam community.
Let me first expand on my original statement. Wall Street does not look highly upon AOL: they dramatically overpaid for Netscape, a division that is, for all intensive purposes, dead; they were involved in one of the most under-reported merger scams of the past decade (Time Warner, a long-profitable company was, many believe, duped); and their growth prospects are extremely limited. They've proved their inability to display original content, and the slow atrophy of their user-base has begun.
The user community, too, has a seemingly endless list of complains--those who remember their growth problems (myself included), the constant busy-signals, buggy and bloated software, high prices, and extremely poor technical support--they place the blame soley with AOL, regardless of who is at fault.
But you argue that the anti-spam community respects AOL? I would disagree. True, they've pursued legal action against several high-profile spammers, but I would normally expect far more from a company with legal abilities such as theirs. They've acted in their own interest, and not in the interest of their users (not surprising, of course, as their obligation is to the shareholder, and not the consumer).
AOL could have, and indeed should have done more; they, however, have remained largely apathetic.
AOL is certainly not a highly respected corporation, especially in the tech-world. They've agreed to ally themselves with Microsoft for this particular issue, but until some other notable corporations or organizations (particlarly Yahoo!, Google, and Apache) accept sender-ID as a "standard," there's no way it will make any difference in the fight against spam.
It's important to note, too, that if one has no need for a modem, and is willing to forgo the super-drive in favor of a combo-drive, the price will be US $130 less.
Of course, after one adds the obligatory 512 MB memory stick, the price is back up to US $1500.
It was just a matter of time before our own bodies figured out how to survive this virus.
I don't think that's exactly the case. HIV is only twenty-five years old, which certainly isn't enough time for genetic evolution to take place (especially considering the relatively slow reporductive rate of humans).
It's more likely they've an odd mutant gene that by coincadence makes them immune to the virus.
Microsoft doesn't make any money on the browser itself; however, the broswer allows them to make money through associated activities. IE's default home-page (MSN) sells more than enough advertising to make the entire operation profitable.
Sony still doesn't get it:
For the time being, Sony customers will have to be satisfied with MP3 support in flash-based players, which could come as early as this year... The company is also considering expanding MP3 support to hard disk devices, sources told ZDNet France, but no decision has yet been made on that front.
Is it that hard to one unified plan? Why the restrictions on HD-based models. "It's OK to pirate music, provided it's less than 256 MB!"
I guess apple had the right idea a while back when they stopped using floppies
Apple did have the right idea, they just implemented it poorly.
Most everyone who purchased the original iMac went out and purchased an external USB floppy drive as well. The problem was people didn't have a way to reliabley back up their documents since the original iMacs did not come with a CD-RW, but rather with a basic read-only CD drive. This, in my opinion, was a huge mistake. People don't like to have a computer that isn't capable of backing up important data (they could do so via the internet back then, but transfering files at 33.6k is painful, and that assumes owners had an FTP account somewhere).
I think most people don't make backups on a regular basis, but they certainly like the option to do so if they wish.
I'd furthermore be insulted if my school possibly spent my tuition money on lures for people who may not really care about school or take it seriously.
Did you go to a school without a sports program? They haven't much of a point, other than to draw in prospective students and build the college's name up ("they have such an excellent basketball team that I can't imagine they'd employ professors of poor quality!").
Nearly every school spends money to attract students; often they'll intentionally misrepresent the school to in one way or another to attract students. Why? Because, like every other institution, they must perpetuate or die. The latter alternative is the less pleasant one.
How much will it cost me to have my ebay link posted on the front page? Sure, you can find just about any sucker to buy a product if you show it to enough people; while it may take time, eventually you'll find either a person with too much money, or a person who lacks the ability to comprehend the value of money.
It's "going" for $400 right now, yet there isn't a single bid.
Please repeat after me: capitalism with a hundred thousand government rules and regulations functions the same way as communism. a + 100000*b = c.
Is that a statement I somehow missed while reading Marxist literature?
A capitalist system, even a protective one such as the one found in the U.S., encourages corporations to maximize their profits, and even to be exploitive. In a communist economy, state owned monopolies protect the proletariat at the expense of profits and efficiency.
The capitalist system, at least here in the U.S., is firmly in place.
The internet, in addition to other new technologies, only aid the consumer mentality that has become so prevalent. Has he not seen a newspaper of a TV? They're filled with ads, and, for the most part, people don't mind: they want to know about the latest and greatest new product; they want to know what hip new clothes they ought to be wearing; they have to know how to formulate their images.
Companies will identify the problem and address it. The internet is a valuable marketing tool, a fact they'll surely figure out (though most already have).