I think I'll stick with my Thinkpad X61s. It has mobile broadband (real air! - Verizon or Cingular) which is crucial for me when I'm traveling. It is hundreds (to thousands) of dollars cheaper than the Mac Air. It is also a tad lighter, has removable batteries (the big ones last over 10 hours), a much faster HDD (than the 1.8" HDD), is just about as thin (0.8"), can connect to a dock, has multiple USB ports, ethernet, a microphone, PCMCIA slot, SD card reader, keyboard light, , a full size video connector (no dongles to lose), and tough construction. In addition, the Thinkpad keyboards are legendary.
Of course - it's not an Apple - but if that's not an issue then it is a much more flexible and cheaper alternative if you're looking for a small laptop which is truly wireless nearly everywhere.
You should really watch the video at the link that I provided. Estimates for wind power are ~4TW globally while current global energy demands are 12TW per year. While wind power is great and a better replacement for fossil fuels than more nuclear there is NO way that wind can power the world. This is ignoring the storage problems associated with wind. There is a reason why oil (read hydrocarbons) is so popular - it is easy to store and move.
In any case - I don't mean to start a flame war - there is no magic bullet solution to our energy needs, but wind can only provide a partial solution.
Nowhere near enough wind energy to power the world. It's a nice idea though. Have a look at this biofuel lecture to have the technical details clearly explained.
Nuclear might be better than fossile fuels from a greenhouse gas perspective, but we'd have to build a new nuclear plant every two days to supply the world this way. And we would still have the issues of nuclear waste to deal with on an even larger scale than the one we can't seem to solve today. Nuclear energy from the sun provides us with over 10,000 times the energy that humans use every day! Harvesting a small amount of this energy using photosynthesis is probably the most sustainable long term solution for the world's energy problems.
To hear these issues explained very clearly and logically watch the argument for biofuels . This is a lecture by Dr. Chris Somerville for the American Society of Cell Biology. Dr. Somerville is the head of the new $500 million biofuels institute at UC Berkeley and is a true visionary in the field.
One way to completely avoid the issue of commercial scientific publishers is to publish in an open access journal such as one of the Public Library of Science http://www.plos.org/ journals.
The open access model works as follows: "Open Access: Everything we publish is freely available online for you to read, download, copy, distribute, and use (with attribution) any way you wish." Pretty straight forward.
As an author you pay a small amount to support the publication of the journal - often smaller than the cost for color pages at a commercial journal, and then your work is freely available. These are high quality journals and are one important part of the free future of scientific publishing. The more people who make this choice, the more pressure there will be on the traditional journals to open up their content if they want to survive.
"Macs, on the other hand, tend to be kept a lot longer" - I wonder where the data to support this statement is? It certainly is not true in my experience.
The computer hardware in my laboratory (Macs and PC's running both Windows and Linux) is all on a four year replacement cycle. We are pretty agnostic about the platforms (hardware and software) - as long as everyone in the lab is happy and productive.
Anecdotally, when taking about people's personal machines, many of the Mac users I know are constantly buying the latest and greatest Apple offerings. Windows users don't seem to be quite as attuned to all of the new features they just "can't live without". My own Windows machines are six and four years old and do everything I want them to - when I need to perform computationally intensive tasks I log on to the newest and most powerful machine I can (remotely), for everyting else I don't see a need to buy new hardware anytime soon.
I have to agree. My university uses Blackboard and some parts of it work with one browser but not others, other parts have different buggy behavior but with slightly different details. I cannot use many important functions using Safari in OSX, others don't work using Firefox in either OSX or Windows. I mainly use IE7 and Windows XP and everything 'works'. By 'works' I mean that this is a crap application that can be made to do what you want in a totally non-intuitive, slow, painful way. There is nothing even close to standards compliant about Blackboard. They have continually kludged a horrible interface onto an application that feels like it was originally developed long before people used web browsers.
This is not a IE7/Vista issue - It is yet another Blackboard issue. They need to rewrite their software from scratch.
The biggest reason that I cannot switch to OO is that there is no bilbiographic (reference) software worth using with it. I use Endnote extensively and have no desire to go back to the days when I had to deal with formatting references in publications by hand without a database.
Verizon came and fixed my voice line last week - we had a lot of noise and other people's phone calls on our line. Unfortunately this also 'fixed' my DSL connection, which hasn't worked since then. Perhaps by using a separate set of wires for voice and data this kind of problem will go away. Of course once everyone starts using VoIP for thier phone calls....
Even though it is not free, I would suggest trying Spy Sweeper from Webroot. I have had very good luck cleaning up friends horribly infested (Windows machines) with this program and avoiding having to reinstall the OS. An added bonus is that apart from getting rid of uninvited guests it will monitor your registry and prevent subsequent infections.
Just my 2c.
It's also dead easy to take multiple OO Impress presentations and splice them together into one big presentation. However, try doing it in Office. Again, how to do that is not obvious at all, and it should be.
In Powerpoint, highlight the slides you want to copy in one file, drag them to the file you want to incorporate them in, and drop them (or copy and paste). It is as simple as that.
Ease of use or how intuitive a program is tends to be a function of the user's understanding of the program (in most cases) and not a function of one program being easier or more intuitive to use than another. I can use the programs I know well very effectively and when I have to perform the same tasks in different programs it is often frustrating. However, this is mostly due to my lack of familiarity with the programs, not because the functions don't exist or are somehow harder to use. In most cases, asking someone who uses a program regularly solves my problems very quickly, and then the problem no longer exists.
At the institution I work at, the cost of XP and office is less than a thrid of the prices you listed, and I am sure that at bigger institutions the price is even lower. Do not confuse list prices and the actual prices that corporations and other large institutions pay for software.
For free identity theft monitoring, please send your name, social security number, birth date, credit card numbers with expiration dates, and address to protectmyidentity@gmail.com. We will take care of your credit record for you and guarantee that you will never have to worry about your good credit record ever again.
From the wired coverage of this story:
'No one knows exactly why OSx86 appears to be running faster on the PCs than the Mac OS does on today's Macs.
"To be honest, we're not sure," said a hacker nicknamed "cmoski," who said he works for a large software company.'
As a practicing plant molecular biologist with friends on the NASA Mars pork barrel train, I feel qualified to call the spin on this research bogus. We sit around at meetings drinking beer and lauighing about how much money NASA gives us for stupid ideas which will never be realized because radiation will kill any astronauts long before they get to Mars (see story ~3 days ago). The shielding required to protect humans for this trip weighs too much for this to ever really happen.
The enzyme these researchers put into plants only functions down to four degrees celcius. Boy, that will really help on Mars.
The results they get will be that you may be able to enigineer plants to survive stress using this enzyme. There are many existing ways of doing this. This kind of research is routine and the normal goal is to produce hardier plants for here on earth.
I'm all for funding basic (plant biology) research, but who are they trying to fool with this kind of ? The undergrads in their class?
I had the same problem, and rather than waste a bunch of time figuring it out I rebooted my machine. Suprise suprise - it update started working. Kind of old school, but not suprising.
For free identity theft monitoring, please send your name, social security number, birth date, credit card numbers with expiration dates, and address to protectmyidentity@gmail.com. We will take care of your credit record for you and guarantee that you will never have to worry about your good credit record ever again.
It seems to me that a big part of the problem is that the default is that anyone with your credit information can get credit in your name without contacting you. You can put a hold on this (ie opt out) where they have to contact you at your home phone number before granting credit. A lot of identity theft problems would be solved if the default was no (instant) credit, and you could choose to opt in.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I'll stick with my Thinkpad X61s. It has mobile broadband (real air! - Verizon or Cingular) which is crucial for me when I'm traveling. It is hundreds (to thousands) of dollars cheaper than the Mac Air. It is also a tad lighter, has removable batteries (the big ones last over 10 hours), a much faster HDD (than the 1.8" HDD), is just about as thin (0.8"), can connect to a dock, has multiple USB ports, ethernet, a microphone, PCMCIA slot, SD card reader, keyboard light, , a full size video connector (no dongles to lose), and tough construction. In addition, the Thinkpad keyboards are legendary. Of course - it's not an Apple - but if that's not an issue then it is a much more flexible and cheaper alternative if you're looking for a small laptop which is truly wireless nearly everywhere.
You should really watch the video at the link that I provided. Estimates for wind power are ~4TW globally while current global energy demands are 12TW per year. While wind power is great and a better replacement for fossil fuels than more nuclear there is NO way that wind can power the world. This is ignoring the storage problems associated with wind. There is a reason why oil (read hydrocarbons) is so popular - it is easy to store and move. In any case - I don't mean to start a flame war - there is no magic bullet solution to our energy needs, but wind can only provide a partial solution.
Nowhere near enough wind energy to power the world. It's a nice idea though. Have a look at this biofuel lecture to have the technical details clearly explained.
Nuclear might be better than fossile fuels from a greenhouse gas perspective, but we'd have to build a new nuclear plant every two days to supply the world this way. And we would still have the issues of nuclear waste to deal with on an even larger scale than the one we can't seem to solve today. Nuclear energy from the sun provides us with over 10,000 times the energy that humans use every day! Harvesting a small amount of this energy using photosynthesis is probably the most sustainable long term solution for the world's energy problems. To hear these issues explained very clearly and logically watch the argument for biofuels . This is a lecture by Dr. Chris Somerville for the American Society of Cell Biology. Dr. Somerville is the head of the new $500 million biofuels institute at UC Berkeley and is a true visionary in the field.
The open access model works as follows: "Open Access: Everything we publish is freely available online for you to read, download, copy, distribute, and use (with attribution) any way you wish." Pretty straight forward.
As an author you pay a small amount to support the publication of the journal - often smaller than the cost for color pages at a commercial journal, and then your work is freely available. These are high quality journals and are one important part of the free future of scientific publishing. The more people who make this choice, the more pressure there will be on the traditional journals to open up their content if they want to survive.
"Macs, on the other hand, tend to be kept a lot longer" - I wonder where the data to support this statement is? It certainly is not true in my experience. The computer hardware in my laboratory (Macs and PC's running both Windows and Linux) is all on a four year replacement cycle. We are pretty agnostic about the platforms (hardware and software) - as long as everyone in the lab is happy and productive. Anecdotally, when taking about people's personal machines, many of the Mac users I know are constantly buying the latest and greatest Apple offerings. Windows users don't seem to be quite as attuned to all of the new features they just "can't live without". My own Windows machines are six and four years old and do everything I want them to - when I need to perform computationally intensive tasks I log on to the newest and most powerful machine I can (remotely), for everyting else I don't see a need to buy new hardware anytime soon.
I have to agree. My university uses Blackboard and some parts of it work with one browser but not others, other parts have different buggy behavior but with slightly different details. I cannot use many important functions using Safari in OSX, others don't work using Firefox in either OSX or Windows. I mainly use IE7 and Windows XP and everything 'works'. By 'works' I mean that this is a crap application that can be made to do what you want in a totally non-intuitive, slow, painful way. There is nothing even close to standards compliant about Blackboard. They have continually kludged a horrible interface onto an application that feels like it was originally developed long before people used web browsers.
This is not a IE7/Vista issue - It is yet another Blackboard issue. They need to rewrite their software from scratch.
These commuters seem to be doing just fine
The biggest reason that I cannot switch to OO is that there is no bilbiographic (reference) software worth using with it. I use Endnote extensively and have no desire to go back to the days when I had to deal with formatting references in publications by hand without a database.
Read Slashdot articles the day before on digg. What is needed now is a RSS reader that will weed out duplicate stories from the feeds I subscribe to.
Verizon came and fixed my voice line last week - we had a lot of noise and other people's phone calls on our line. Unfortunately this also 'fixed' my DSL connection, which hasn't worked since then. Perhaps by using a separate set of wires for voice and data this kind of problem will go away. Of course once everyone starts using VoIP for thier phone calls....
I have Symantec's Norton Firewall and when I type startkeylogge
Now if a couple of the functions include running and blowing things up, this would be a really fun little toy.
It was too big in 2001 - you would assume that the size (among other things) has been worked on in the intervening 5 years.
Even though it is not free, I would suggest trying Spy Sweeper from Webroot. I have had very good luck cleaning up friends horribly infested (Windows machines) with this program and avoiding having to reinstall the OS. An added bonus is that apart from getting rid of uninvited guests it will monitor your registry and prevent subsequent infections. Just my 2c.
It's also dead easy to take multiple OO Impress presentations and splice them together into one big presentation. However, try doing it in Office. Again, how to do that is not obvious at all, and it should be. In Powerpoint, highlight the slides you want to copy in one file, drag them to the file you want to incorporate them in, and drop them (or copy and paste). It is as simple as that. Ease of use or how intuitive a program is tends to be a function of the user's understanding of the program (in most cases) and not a function of one program being easier or more intuitive to use than another. I can use the programs I know well very effectively and when I have to perform the same tasks in different programs it is often frustrating. However, this is mostly due to my lack of familiarity with the programs, not because the functions don't exist or are somehow harder to use. In most cases, asking someone who uses a program regularly solves my problems very quickly, and then the problem no longer exists.
American public stunned that the president lied about Iraqi WMD's as a pretext for going to war.
At the institution I work at, the cost of XP and office is less than a thrid of the prices you listed, and I am sure that at bigger institutions the price is even lower. Do not confuse list prices and the actual prices that corporations and other large institutions pay for software.
For free identity theft monitoring, please send your name, social security number, birth date, credit card numbers with expiration dates, and address to protectmyidentity@gmail.com. We will take care of your credit record for you and guarantee that you will never have to worry about your good credit record ever again.
But I can't seem to find any comments about this story
From the wired coverage of this story: 'No one knows exactly why OSx86 appears to be running faster on the PCs than the Mac OS does on today's Macs. "To be honest, we're not sure," said a hacker nicknamed "cmoski," who said he works for a large software company.'
As a practicing plant molecular biologist with friends on the NASA Mars pork barrel train, I feel qualified to call the spin on this research bogus. We sit around at meetings drinking beer and lauighing about how much money NASA gives us for stupid ideas which will never be realized because radiation will kill any astronauts long before they get to Mars (see story ~3 days ago). The shielding required to protect humans for this trip weighs too much for this to ever really happen. The enzyme these researchers put into plants only functions down to four degrees celcius. Boy, that will really help on Mars. The results they get will be that you may be able to enigineer plants to survive stress using this enzyme. There are many existing ways of doing this. This kind of research is routine and the normal goal is to produce hardier plants for here on earth. I'm all for funding basic (plant biology) research, but who are they trying to fool with this kind of ? The undergrads in their class?
I had the same problem, and rather than waste a bunch of time figuring it out I rebooted my machine. Suprise suprise - it update started working. Kind of old school, but not suprising.
For free identity theft monitoring, please send your name, social security number, birth date, credit card numbers with expiration dates, and address to protectmyidentity@gmail.com. We will take care of your credit record for you and guarantee that you will never have to worry about your good credit record ever again.
It seems to me that a big part of the problem is that the default is that anyone with your credit information can get credit in your name without contacting you. You can put a hold on this (ie opt out) where they have to contact you at your home phone number before granting credit. A lot of identity theft problems would be solved if the default was no (instant) credit, and you could choose to opt in.