The Norwegian/Swedish words for someone from Finland is 'finne' or 'finlendere'/'finnländare'. The former is sometimes considered slightly derogatory in Swedish.
So is the word Norwegian in Swedish. I worked at a company in Sweden that made software for mobile phones. We had some prototype phones but a dire shortage of batteries. Some suggested a "Norwegian battery" - this was an empty shell of a battery with wires coming out which you could attach to a bench PSU.
You know what? I'd rather most websites did this. No stylesheet may be a bit ugly but it's readable. Also websites that don't use images, stylesheets or Javascript load fast as hell.
Actually my company's website is like this. I do use Javascript to display links from Google in a frameset, but I don't depend on it. There is no stylesheet. I have one small gif for the logo. Actually come to think of it I use gifs for email obfuscation too - on a javascript capable browser I use a script to write my email address in a way that hopefully isn't harvestable. On a non javascript browser I write the @ and . characters as gifs. I use an alt tag though, so it's readable in Lynx.
And I've had one person say that liked the minimalism. No one has ever complained that I don't use CSS or have a Web 2.0 look. And it works on all versions of IE, all versions of Opera, all versions of Firefox, Lynx, Safari. Hell if you telnet to port 80 you could probably find what you wanted.
See here's the thing. People go to your website to do something in my case to download a utility that is easy to find with Google. They want to do get that done and leave. If the site is broken, they will be pissed off. If it is ugly or oldfashioned they might raise their eyebrows. But if it works and is fast they'll soon forget.
In an odd sort of way, since I work as with embedded systems and device drivers I think a somewhat retro website with lots of links to source code probably inspires confidence that I'm not a Digg type who wastes times fiddling around with CSS.
It costs thousands of US$ per kilo to launch stuff into orbit, plus you still need to build the ground station.
You could build a bunch of solar arrays all around the Earth for the cost of launching one into orbit. And I'm not sure there is "no night" for a geosynchronous satellite.
Not at all. You can add a meta tag, force IE8 into standards mode and serve IE8 the same code you serve to Opera, Firefox and Safari. Or you can do nothing and your site will be in standards mode by default.
Or if you have an old site that works on IE6 by serving non standard html to IE and Firefox/Opera/Safari by serving standard html and you don't update it, people will click the compatibility mode button and add your site to the compatibility list. Then people that visit in future will see the site in compatibility mode. If you want to chuck out the non standard html you can add a meta tag to force IE8 into standards mode regardless of the list. Then IE8 can share the same code as other browsers.
So if solar cells became 3x more efficient you'd be better of using them? Come to think of it they don't need to be anything like that. Even a slight increase in efficiency or decrease in cost would make it more cost effective to use solar cells on the ground rather than a rectenna on the ground and solar cells plus a microwave emitter in space.
Of course if you had a space elevator maybe the economics changes a bit, but then again if you had a space elevator why not use it as a cable to transmit power back to Earth. Assuming the unobtanium you make it out of is a decent conductor of course. Still I read buckytubes would be a decent conductor.
Mind you it seems a better bet to try to reduce the cost per watt of solar cells on Earth than try to launch them into space and beam the power back. I actually think energy from solar cells will be very cheap in the long run because solar cell material will be built into roofs or sprayed onto the outside of buildings. Plus you can build arrays of solar cells out in the desert in the US.
It was reported earlier this week that lawyers acting for Psion were writing out to those using the term "netbook" to describe mini-laptops optimised for web/internet use. They were politely - indeed curiously politely - inviting people to 'transition' to using another name.
Transition? Politely? Since when do commercial IP lawyers behave like that?
[Declaration of interest: I'm a commercial lawyer, and IP, especially trademark law, is a significant part of what I do.]
There's something going on here which could prove very interesting if Psion proceeds to do anything silly. Like actually trying to enforce the rights they're asserting.
Some basics (skip this if you're familiar with trademark law):
A trademark is sign (normally but not exclusively words or images) which indicate the origin of goods or services.
In general (and specifically in the EU) they acquire protection in one of two ways; by being used - acquiring reputation and goodwill, i.e. people knowing the trademark and there being sufficient economic activity associated with it - or by being registered with the state.
An unregistered trademark has to be used to come into existance. A registered trademark doesn't have to be used, but if it is ever unused for a continuous period of five years it can be revoked for non-use.
Generally, trademarks give the owner a exclusive right to use the trademark for specific goods, and a right to prevent people using similar marks for the same goods or the same mark for similar goods.
The goods and services for trademarks are classified into one of 45 classes. Class 9, for example, covers electronic equipment and includes computers.
Way back when, when laptops were expensive, slow, and heavy, Psion was knocking out a successful range of palmtops. In the late nineties they obtained trademark registrations for the word NETBOOK covering electronics and printed goods, and used the brand for a device called the Psion Netbook (more familiar in it's consumer version, the Psion 7).
Several years ago - as they generally moved to an enterprise focus - they stopped producing the Psion Netbook, and Psion's lawyers now admit that these days all they do in connection with that product is produce accessories for extant equipment.
Psion still has valid trademark registrations. In the EU, for example, Community Trademark 428050 for the mark NETBOOK, covering a variety of electronic equipment and printed materials, is still in full force, was last renewed by Psion in December 2006, and will stay in force until 2016.
Unless, that is, it gets cancelled.
Anyone can apply to cancel a registered trademark on grounds of non-use, but as they'll only succeed if they can demonstrate that the mark hasn't been used for specific goods for 5 years.
Tantalisingly, Psion's own website admits that the "end of life" was in November 2003.
Game over? Maybe. Whilst the same document states that the last maintenance coverage from Psion will not be until 31 December 2008, maintenance services are not goods in Class 9. Psion might be able to argue their maintenance services were branded as "Netbook", or involved the supply of parts under the mark NETBOOK but from my experience of IT service provision I'd be surprised if that was the case.
So the tm is on the borderline of being considered abandoned. Hence the lawsuit presumably.
Actually some geoengineering schemes would be ok if the data was bad. Spraying sulphates into the stratosphere works quickly - it can cool the Earth by a degree per year over the arctic. If you stop the temperature goes back to normal in a year or so. So you could build a closed loop system. As new data becomes available, you can tweak to controls.
Also realistically you'd start off small so the total temperature difference would be say 0.1 degree C and make sure that you didn't break anything as you scaled up.
In the long run I think humans will need to geoengineer, though I'm not convinced that it is needed yet. Still run a small scale program, monitor extensively and scale up if it seems to be helping.
It's not just the Stockholm Convention though. Most places where malaria is a major problem are dependent on aid. USAID and other donors promoted half assed alternatives to DDT. Since they controlled the purse strings they could control policy. Even now the WHO wants to phase out DDT
The World Health Organization intends to phase out chemotherapy drugs, due to concerns about their health effects, WHO Public Health and Environment director Dr. Maria Neira announced recently. Those effects include anemia, diarrhea, reduced resistance to infection, potential birth defects and hair loss.
"These drugs save lives, but they are dangerous," she stated. "WHO is determined to end their use, motivate researchers to develop safer cancer treatments, and emphasize acceptable alternatives, like broccoli."
Imagine the shock and outrage that would follow such an announcement. Europe and the United States would demand her ouster and threaten to slash WHO's budget, if it tried such a thing.
But of course Dr. Neira and WHO made no such proposal. Instead, she and her co-conspirators are promoting something even more irresponsible - and deadly. They want to reverse the September 2006 decision to restore DDT to the Organization's malaria-fighting arsenal.
"WHO is concerned about health effects associated with DDT," she said during a recent conference in Dakar, Senegal. Her position, not the September decision, represents WHO's position regarding DDT for malaria control and its commitment to phasing the chemical out, she asserted.
Dr. Arata Kochi, director of WHO's malaria division, made his decision based on decades of evidence, and because he recognized that no other chemical in existence, at any price, does what DDT does.
Sprayed just once or twice a year on the walls of houses, this powerful repellant keeps most mosquitoes from entering; irritates those that do come in, so they don't bite; and kills any that land. Used this way, DDT can reduce malaria rates by 75% - and it is perfectly safe for people and the environment.
In effect, DDT places a huge bednet over the entire house. From dusk to dawn, it protects the inhabitants, whether they are sleeping or doing housework and homework.
The US Agency for International Development also reversed its policies and redeployed DDT. And European Commission President Barroso wrote that the EU recognizes and supports the right of countries to use DDT, under Stockholm Convention and WHO guidelines.
Fed up with the sickness and death, African countries are again using DDT and other sprays, not just to stabilize or "roll back" malaria, but to eradicate it.
Dr. Neira and her colleagues, however, appear wedded to the disastrous policies that kept malaria at unconscionable levels: 400 million cases and up to 2 million deaths a year â" half of them children. They continue to oppose insecticides, especially DDT, and insist that bednets, drugs, education and other "acceptable," non-chemical interventions will suffice.
These other interventions are also essential. But they are not enough to end malaria's reign of terror.
The nasty effects of chemo drugs are real. The alleged risks of using DDT are pure speculation. They are trumpeted by radical groups like Pesticide Action Network, who insist: Some researchers think DDT could be inhibiting lactation and might be related to premature births, low birth weights and slow reflexes in babies.
These risks are unproven and trivial, compared to the undeniable risks that DDT can prevent.
"Millions cannot work or go to school for weeks every year because of malaria," Ugandaâ(TM)s Fiona Kobusingye points out. "Countless people die. Mothers have anemia, premature births and tiny babies because of it. Parents and children get severe permanent brain dama
If you assume that the costs of a replaceable battery's case, contacts, latches, and other hardware might cancel out the labor cost of the MacBook Pro's battery replacement, the Apple laptop battery isn't inexpensive when compared with batteries for other 17-inch laptops. The battery for the HP Pavilion dv7t series is $139, for example, and the battery for the Toshiba Satellite P300-ST3712 runs $149.99. Of the laptops we looked at, only the battery for the Dell XPS M1730 is more expensive, at $189.99.
Furthermore, the 17-inch MacBook Pro's integrated battery makes it impossible for the frugal MacBooker to pick up a third-party replacement (or spare), such as the $129 battery from MacConnection.com for the previous 17-inch MacBook Pro.
We're willing to bet, however, that when the first 17-inch MacBook Pro batteries need replacement in three to five years, enterprising shops such as TechRestore will offer less-expensive alternatives.
See from Apple's point of view the integrated battery is much better. They get $179 instead of MacConnection.com getting $129. From the user's point of view they are $50 down on the deal. In fact I'm surprised they don't add some authentication to the battery to stop TechRestore taking their money.
Presently, the only apparent way to turn this feature on is if you connect your iPod to a device with an Apple authentication chip built in. Authentication chips are only available in Apple products, and in a handful of products made by Apple-licensed third-party developers. The chips are not available to unlicensed developers, and add additional costs to the prices of iPod accessories. Upcoming Apple video cables that will work with the new iPods will sell for a staggering $49.
They irritated me by stopping my iPod touch from charging from a 5V adapter with a USB socket. Official Apple chargers put non standard voltages on D+ and D- to authenticate themselves.
Actually I think NVidia could kick ass in the CPU business. Here's how.
Via has a 10 year license for x86, and after that most of the patents won't matter. NVidia either buy them or collaborate.
Via have the C7, a small (25 million transistors) in order design. In a joint ventue, NVidia tweak the SSE unit. So you end up with a chip that can run at a decent speed but is still about in order.
Now you put a lot of these small, in order cores onto a die. According to this article
A NVidia G200 has 1,400,000,000 transistors. I can fit 56 C7s into the same space.
The problem is what to do with them. Mind you Intel wrote a paper on Larrabee, which is about putting lots of fast in order cores on one die and then (I think) doing DirectX in software - you split the screen into tiles and do one tile on each core. Hence the tweaked SSE, the chip needs to be tuned a bit to run in this slightly odd mode.
Intel's SIGGRAPH 2008 paper describes simulations of Larrabee's projected performance.[7] Graphs show how many 1 GHz Larrabee cores are required to maintain 60 FPS at 1600x1200 resolution in several popular games. Roughly 25 cores are required for Gears of War with no antialiasing, 25 cores for F.E.A.R with 4x antialiasing, and 10 cores for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 with 4x antialiasing. It is likely that Larrabee will run faster than 1 GHz, so these numbers are conservative.[13] Another graph shows that performance on these games scales nearly linearly with the number of cores up to 32 cores. At 48 cores the performance drops to 90% of what would be expected if the linear relationship continued.
Linear scaling upto 32 CPU cores is pretty impressive. Actually maybe you can spend more transistors on your cores. Larrabee has 4 way SMT too. Via have these cores
C3 - 15 million C7 - 25 million Nano - 95 million
They could use Nanos too but they seem too big, you only get 14. Intel's paper makes me think that a lot of small, in order cores is the way to go because tile based rendering can use lots of threads.
On a server of course you often have loads of threads naturally, e.g. one per client.
And for netbooks you just shrink things down. I.e. same core design but less of them. This architecture is ultimately scaleable, because you don't need to worry about things like out of order execution.
Now these chips would actually be mostly Via IP. NVidia would provide the DirectX stack and maybe some SSE tweaks. Actually I like the idea of merging with Via in a way that the merged company still has an x86 license.
Of course in the long run the patents for small, in order x86 cores will expire. And this beast doesn't need out of order cores. You could build a CPU/GPU that would be awesome for games, and awesome for servers just by bolting together a lot of primitive cores. And a you can build a netbook by bolting together a lot less.
Of course you don't need to stay symmetric either. You could expose a couple of Nano cores to the OS and hide the C7 cores inside a GPU that only interacts with the outside world via DirectX.
Hmm, so before you paid for AppleCare and once the battery wore out you bought a third party battery which you could fit yourself.
Now you pay for AppleCare and get them to fit a new battery. They force you to buy a more expensive Apple battery and once you are out of warranty they charge you to fit it too. Unless of course you're happy taking your notebook apart, but the whole point of Apple is that they sell things to people who aren't.
I think the reason people mock Apple is because they do user hostile things like this which seem designed to charge people extra for 'servicing', tell the users that it is for their own good "You get 40% more battery life!" and the users believe it. I dunno about you, but looking at the design of laptop batteries that 40% figure seems obviously untrue.
A car analogy would be if GM decided to make the tires on their cars non user replaceable so you had to go to the service center and claimed that you got 50% better mileage because of the new tires.
All US companies screw their customers of course, the reason people mock Apple is because Apple customers are on average a lot more likely to believe the excuses Apple makes for doing it.
It also means when your battery dies you need to go to the AppleStore to swap it rather than doing it yourself. Which probably means extra $ for Apple.
I find it highly amusing that so many conservatives had no problem dropping two trillion dollars and five thousand dead to bring democracy to the Iraqi people, but balk at spending a few bucks to accept responsibility for their national responsibility to create level playing field with our international competitors.
Well I think Iraq War = waste of money. Bailing out the UAW, which is really what a Big 3 bailout is = waste of money too.
Let 'em go bankrupt, that apparently allows them to renegotiate the contracts. In which case they'll end up looking a lot more like the ones Toyota has. Or if they can agree let Toyota buy up the factory and rehire people on whatever terms they like.
Of course, this would kill the UAW. Now the Democrats are in power I'm sure they'll spend public money on bailing out the UAW, given the UAW was a major campaign contributor.
But it's good you bring up the Iraq war. The Republicans links to scum like Haliburton corrupted them, and the Democrats links to scum like the UAW will corrupt them in just the same way.
Same shit basically, just different people defending it.
But an age of consent of 14 in places like Serbia is probably the reason that there are so many trafficked East European girls working as prostitutes in the UK.
No.
Yes.
If your one word response is a valid argument, so must mine be.
Slashdot Mirror
Opera works perfectly on Windows 2000.
It's the same with $group_i_hate. Everyone knows they are less efficient than $my_group so in these tough times I'd expect them to die out.
Failing that $my_groups_media can always organise a final solution to the $group_i_hate problem.
'finn' means 'find'.
The Norwegian/Swedish words for someone from Finland is 'finne' or 'finlendere'/'finnländare'.
The former is sometimes considered slightly derogatory in Swedish.
So is the word Norwegian in Swedish. I worked at a company in Sweden that made software for mobile phones. We had some prototype phones but a dire shortage of batteries. Some suggested a "Norwegian battery" - this was an empty shell of a battery with wires coming out which you could attach to a bench PSU.
You know what? I'd rather most websites did this. No stylesheet may be a bit ugly but it's readable. Also websites that don't use images, stylesheets or Javascript load fast as hell.
Actually my company's website is like this. I do use Javascript to display links from Google in a frameset, but I don't depend on it. There is no stylesheet. I have one small gif for the logo. Actually come to think of it I use gifs for email obfuscation too - on a javascript capable browser I use a script to write my email address in a way that hopefully isn't harvestable. On a non javascript browser I write the @ and . characters as gifs. I use an alt tag though, so it's readable in Lynx.
And I've had one person say that liked the minimalism. No one has ever complained that I don't use CSS or have a Web 2.0 look. And it works on all versions of IE, all versions of Opera, all versions of Firefox, Lynx, Safari. Hell if you telnet to port 80 you could probably find what you wanted.
See here's the thing. People go to your website to do something in my case to download a utility that is easy to find with Google. They want to do get that done and leave. If the site is broken, they will be pissed off. If it is ugly or oldfashioned they might raise their eyebrows. But if it works and is fast they'll soon forget.
In an odd sort of way, since I work as with embedded systems and device drivers I think a somewhat retro website with lots of links to source code probably inspires confidence that I'm not a Digg type who wastes times fiddling around with CSS.
Way too many Windows stories on the front page recently. This is Slashdot, lest we forget.
Do you mind? A friend of my great great grandfather died in WWI.
Or we could ask them to be logical and considerate of us.
Haven't you heard the expression "the customer is always right?"
When the cybot collective becomes President, CNN will keep telling what good that is.
It costs thousands of US$ per kilo to launch stuff into orbit, plus you still need to build the ground station.
You could build a bunch of solar arrays all around the Earth for the cost of launching one into orbit. And I'm not sure there is "no night" for a geosynchronous satellite.
Not at all. You can add a meta tag, force IE8 into standards mode and serve IE8 the same code you serve to Opera, Firefox and Safari. Or you can do nothing and your site will be in standards mode by default.
Or if you have an old site that works on IE6 by serving non standard html to IE and Firefox/Opera/Safari by serving standard html and you don't update it, people will click the compatibility mode button and add your site to the compatibility list. Then people that visit in future will see the site in compatibility mode. If you want to chuck out the non standard html you can add a meta tag to force IE8 into standards mode regardless of the list. Then IE8 can share the same code as other browsers.
That reminds me of this article on CSS sprites
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/css-sprites/
The idea is that you groupt a bunch of small images into one large one and use background-position to select the right one.
So if solar cells became 3x more efficient you'd be better of using them? Come to think of it they don't need to be anything like that. Even a slight increase in efficiency or decrease in cost would make it more cost effective to use solar cells on the ground rather than a rectenna on the ground and solar cells plus a microwave emitter in space.
Of course if you had a space elevator maybe the economics changes a bit, but then again if you had a space elevator why not use it as a cable to transmit power back to Earth. Assuming the unobtanium you make it out of is a decent conductor of course. Still I read buckytubes would be a decent conductor.
Mind you it seems a better bet to try to reduce the cost per watt of solar cells on Earth than try to launch them into space and beam the power back. I actually think energy from solar cells will be very cheap in the long run because solar cell material will be built into roofs or sprayed onto the outside of buildings. Plus you can build arrays of solar cells out in the desert in the US.
Hmm I found this
http://www.mtpt.co.uk/2008/12/a-netbook-by-any-other-name-or-how-psion-is-going-discover-you-have-to-use-it-or-lose-it.html
It was reported earlier this week that lawyers acting for Psion were writing out to those using the term "netbook" to describe mini-laptops optimised for web/internet use. They were politely - indeed curiously politely - inviting people to 'transition' to using another name.
Transition? Politely? Since when do commercial IP lawyers behave like that?
[Declaration of interest: I'm a commercial lawyer, and IP, especially trademark law, is a significant part of what I do.]
There's something going on here which could prove very interesting if Psion proceeds to do anything silly. Like actually trying to enforce the rights they're asserting.
Some basics (skip this if you're familiar with trademark law):
A trademark is sign (normally but not exclusively words or images) which indicate the origin of goods or services.
In general (and specifically in the EU) they acquire protection in one of two ways; by being used - acquiring reputation and goodwill, i.e. people knowing the trademark and there being sufficient economic activity associated with it - or by being registered with the state.
An unregistered trademark has to be used to come into existance. A registered trademark doesn't have to be used, but if it is ever unused for a continuous period of five years it can be revoked for non-use.
Generally, trademarks give the owner a exclusive right to use the trademark for specific goods, and a right to prevent people using similar marks for the same goods or the same mark for similar goods.
The goods and services for trademarks are classified into one of 45 classes. Class 9, for example, covers electronic equipment and includes computers.
Way back when, when laptops were expensive, slow, and heavy, Psion was knocking out a successful range of palmtops. In the late nineties they obtained trademark registrations for the word NETBOOK covering electronics and printed goods, and used the brand for a device called the Psion Netbook (more familiar in it's consumer version, the Psion 7).
Several years ago - as they generally moved to an enterprise focus - they stopped producing the Psion Netbook, and Psion's lawyers now admit that these days all they do in connection with that product is produce accessories for extant equipment.
Psion still has valid trademark registrations. In the EU, for example, Community Trademark 428050 for the mark NETBOOK, covering a variety of electronic equipment and printed materials, is still in full force, was last renewed by Psion in December 2006, and will stay in force until 2016.
Unless, that is, it gets cancelled.
Anyone can apply to cancel a registered trademark on grounds of non-use, but as they'll only succeed if they can demonstrate that the mark hasn't been used for specific goods for 5 years.
Tantalisingly, Psion's own website admits that the "end of life" was in November 2003.
Game over? Maybe. Whilst the same document states that the last maintenance coverage from Psion will not be until 31 December 2008, maintenance services are not goods in Class 9. Psion might be able to argue their maintenance services were branded as "Netbook", or involved the supply of parts under the mark NETBOOK but from my experience of IT service provision I'd be surprised if that was the case.
So the tm is on the borderline of being considered abandoned. Hence the lawsuit presumably.
You can
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />
Maybe we will see people selling Notbooks just like they used to talk about *nix.
Or maybe I should trademark the terms N[ou]b[(ook)(uck)(ux)]s
Actually some geoengineering schemes would be ok if the data was bad. Spraying sulphates into the stratosphere works quickly - it can cool the Earth by a degree per year over the arctic. If you stop the temperature goes back to normal in a year or so. So you could build a closed loop system. As new data becomes available, you can tweak to controls.
Also realistically you'd start off small so the total temperature difference would be say 0.1 degree C and make sure that you didn't break anything as you scaled up.
In the long run I think humans will need to geoengineer, though I'm not convinced that it is needed yet. Still run a small scale program, monitor extensively and scale up if it seems to be helping.
Geoengineering will save us if the worst case turns out to be correct for global warming I'd bet.
It's not just the Stockholm Convention though. Most places where malaria is a major problem are dependent on aid. USAID and other donors promoted half assed alternatives to DDT. Since they controlled the purse strings they could control policy. Even now the WHO wants to phase out DDT
http://www.malaria.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=107&Itemid=42
The World Health Organization intends to phase out chemotherapy drugs, due to concerns about their health effects, WHO Public Health and Environment director Dr. Maria Neira announced recently. Those effects include anemia, diarrhea, reduced resistance to infection, potential birth defects and hair loss.
"These drugs save lives, but they are dangerous," she stated. "WHO is determined to end their use, motivate researchers to develop safer cancer treatments, and emphasize acceptable alternatives, like broccoli."
Imagine the shock and outrage that would follow such an announcement. Europe and the United States would demand her ouster and threaten to slash WHO's budget, if it tried such a thing.
But of course Dr. Neira and WHO made no such proposal. Instead, she and her co-conspirators are promoting something even more irresponsible - and deadly. They want to reverse the September 2006 decision to restore DDT to the Organization's malaria-fighting arsenal.
"WHO is concerned about health effects associated with DDT," she said during a recent conference in Dakar, Senegal. Her position, not the September decision, represents WHO's position regarding DDT for malaria control and its commitment to phasing the chemical out, she asserted.
Dr. Arata Kochi, director of WHO's malaria division, made his decision based on decades of evidence, and because he recognized that no other chemical in existence, at any price, does what DDT does.
Sprayed just once or twice a year on the walls of houses, this powerful repellant keeps most mosquitoes from entering; irritates those that do come in, so they don't bite; and kills any that land. Used this way, DDT can reduce malaria rates by 75% - and it is perfectly safe for people and the environment.
In effect, DDT places a huge bednet over the entire house. From dusk to dawn, it protects the inhabitants, whether they are sleeping or doing housework and homework.
The US Agency for International Development also reversed its policies and redeployed DDT. And European Commission President Barroso wrote that the EU recognizes and supports the right of countries to use DDT, under Stockholm Convention and WHO guidelines.
Fed up with the sickness and death, African countries are again using DDT and other sprays, not just to stabilize or "roll back" malaria, but to eradicate it.
Dr. Neira and her colleagues, however, appear wedded to the disastrous policies that kept malaria at unconscionable levels: 400 million cases and up to 2 million deaths a year â" half of them children. They continue to oppose insecticides, especially DDT, and insist that bednets, drugs, education and other "acceptable," non-chemical interventions will suffice.
These other interventions are also essential. But they are not enough to end malaria's reign of terror.
The nasty effects of chemo drugs are real. The alleged risks of using DDT are pure speculation. They are trumpeted by radical groups like Pesticide Action Network, who insist: Some researchers think DDT could be inhibiting lactation and might be related to premature births, low birth weights and slow reflexes in babies.
These risks are unproven and trivial, compared to the undeniable risks that DDT can prevent.
"Millions cannot work or go to school for weeks every year because of malaria," Ugandaâ(TM)s Fiona Kobusingye points out. "Countless people die. Mothers have anemia, premature births and tiny babies because of it. Parents and children get severe permanent brain dama
If you could replace it yourself you could buy a third party battery. Since you have a choice it seems likely you'd pay less than $179
As the register put it
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/14/17_inch_macbook_battery/
If you assume that the costs of a replaceable battery's case, contacts, latches, and other hardware might cancel out the labor cost of the MacBook Pro's battery replacement, the Apple laptop battery isn't inexpensive when compared with batteries for other 17-inch laptops. The battery for the HP Pavilion dv7t series is $139, for example, and the battery for the Toshiba Satellite P300-ST3712 runs $149.99. Of the laptops we looked at, only the battery for the Dell XPS M1730 is more expensive, at $189.99.
Furthermore, the 17-inch MacBook Pro's integrated battery makes it impossible for the frugal MacBooker to pick up a third-party replacement (or spare), such as the $129 battery from MacConnection.com for the previous 17-inch MacBook Pro.
We're willing to bet, however, that when the first 17-inch MacBook Pro batteries need replacement in three to five years, enterprising shops such as TechRestore will offer less-expensive alternatives.
See from Apple's point of view the integrated battery is much better. They get $179 instead of MacConnection.com getting $129. From the user's point of view they are $50 down on the deal. In fact I'm surprised they don't add some authentication to the battery to stop TechRestore taking their money.
They could use one of these chips
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/apple-locks-tv-out-in-new-ipods-breaks-video-add-ons/
Presently, the only apparent way to turn this feature on is if you connect your iPod to a device with an Apple authentication chip built in. Authentication chips are only available in Apple products, and in a handful of products made by Apple-licensed third-party developers. The chips are not available to unlicensed developers, and add additional costs to the prices of iPod accessories. Upcoming Apple video cables that will work with the new iPods will sell for a staggering $49.
They irritated me by stopping my iPod touch from charging from a 5V adapter with a USB socket. Official Apple chargers put non standard voltages on D+ and D- to authenticate themselves.
http://forums.ilounge.com/archive/index.php/t-166847.html
There's no user benefit to this feature, it's just an attempt to get people to buy official Apple chargers
Actually I think NVidia could kick ass in the CPU business. Here's how.
Via has a 10 year license for x86, and after that most of the patents won't matter. NVidia either buy them or collaborate.
Via have the C7, a small (25 million transistors) in order design. In a joint ventue, NVidia tweak the SSE unit. So you end up with a chip that can run at a decent speed but is still about in order.
Now you put a lot of these small, in order cores onto a die. According to this article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count
A NVidia G200 has 1,400,000,000 transistors. I can fit 56 C7s into the same space.
The problem is what to do with them. Mind you Intel wrote a paper on Larrabee, which is about putting lots of fast in order cores on one die and then (I think) doing DirectX in software - you split the screen into tiles and do one tile on each core. Hence the tweaked SSE, the chip needs to be tuned a bit to run in this slightly odd mode.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_(GPU)
Intel's SIGGRAPH 2008 paper describes simulations of Larrabee's projected performance.[7] Graphs show how many 1 GHz Larrabee cores are required to maintain 60 FPS at 1600x1200 resolution in several popular games. Roughly 25 cores are required for Gears of War with no antialiasing, 25 cores for F.E.A.R with 4x antialiasing, and 10 cores for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 with 4x antialiasing. It is likely that Larrabee will run faster than 1 GHz, so these numbers are conservative.[13] Another graph shows that performance on these games scales nearly linearly with the number of cores up to 32 cores. At 48 cores the performance drops to 90% of what would be expected if the linear relationship continued.
Linear scaling upto 32 CPU cores is pretty impressive. Actually maybe you can spend more transistors on your cores. Larrabee has 4 way SMT too. Via have these cores
C3 - 15 million
C7 - 25 million
Nano - 95 million
They could use Nanos too but they seem too big, you only get 14. Intel's paper makes me think that a lot of small, in order cores is the way to go because tile based rendering can use lots of threads.
On a server of course you often have loads of threads naturally, e.g. one per client.
And for netbooks you just shrink things down. I.e. same core design but less of them. This architecture is ultimately scaleable, because you don't need to worry about things like out of order execution.
Now these chips would actually be mostly Via IP. NVidia would provide the DirectX stack and maybe some SSE tweaks. Actually I like the idea of merging with Via in a way that the merged company still has an x86 license.
Of course in the long run the patents for small, in order x86 cores will expire. And this beast doesn't need out of order cores. You could build a CPU/GPU that would be awesome for games, and awesome for servers just by bolting together a lot of primitive cores. And a you can build a netbook by bolting together a lot less.
Of course you don't need to stay symmetric either. You could expose a couple of Nano cores to the OS and hide the C7 cores inside a GPU that only interacts with the outside world via DirectX.
Hmm, so before you paid for AppleCare and once the battery wore out you bought a third party battery which you could fit yourself.
Now you pay for AppleCare and get them to fit a new battery. They force you to buy a more expensive Apple battery and once you are out of warranty they charge you to fit it too. Unless of course you're happy taking your notebook apart, but the whole point of Apple is that they sell things to people who aren't.
You could always buy the 3 year extension for what really amounts to a pittance.
Which of course is the real reason for Apple switching to non removable batteries.
I think the reason people mock Apple is because they do user hostile things like this which seem designed to charge people extra for 'servicing', tell the users that it is for their own good "You get 40% more battery life!" and the users believe it. I dunno about you, but looking at the design of laptop batteries that 40% figure seems obviously untrue.
A car analogy would be if GM decided to make the tires on their cars non user replaceable so you had to go to the service center and claimed that you got 50% better mileage because of the new tires.
All US companies screw their customers of course, the reason people mock Apple is because Apple customers are on average a lot more likely to believe the excuses Apple makes for doing it.
It also means when your battery dies you need to go to the AppleStore to swap it rather than doing it yourself. Which probably means extra $ for Apple.
I find it highly amusing that so many conservatives had no problem dropping two trillion dollars and five thousand dead to bring democracy to the Iraqi people, but balk at spending a few bucks to accept responsibility for their national responsibility to create level playing field with our international competitors.
Well I think Iraq War = waste of money. Bailing out the UAW, which is really what a Big 3 bailout is = waste of money too.
Let 'em go bankrupt, that apparently allows them to renegotiate the contracts. In which case they'll end up looking a lot more like the ones Toyota has. Or if they can agree let Toyota buy up the factory and rehire people on whatever terms they like.
Of course, this would kill the UAW. Now the Democrats are in power I'm sure they'll spend public money on bailing out the UAW, given the UAW was a major campaign contributor.
But it's good you bring up the Iraq war. The Republicans links to scum like Haliburton corrupted them, and the Democrats links to scum like the UAW will corrupt them in just the same way.
Same shit basically, just different people defending it.
But an age of consent of 14 in places like Serbia is probably the reason that there are so many trafficked East European girls working as prostitutes in the UK.
No.
Yes.
If your one word response is a valid argument, so must mine be.