It's called Intellitext, and if you use Firefox with the Adblock extension (or better, Adblock Plus), you can block the script that creates the Intellitext, just as you can block banner ads, flash and iframes. Probably the extension I value most.
It could be easy to run Linux on a PC; as easy as it is to buy a PC pre-loaded with Windows. Don't assume that just because it's easy to get a PC running Windows that it's actually easy to install. I'd be surprised if it isn't easier to install, say, Ubuntu than it is Windows if you do it from scratch, not to mention that the Windows PC wouldn't actually have any useful software on it once you'd finished the install.
Actually, if this is in Britain, which it is, the people who will have been causing the shop owner trouble would be chavs; absolutely no doubt about it. Chavs don't listen to metal or punk, rather house or drum and bass, which funnily enough is probably even more likely to render the listener incapable of hearing high frequencies. Metalheads and punks aren't antisocial though; not very sociable, granted, but that just means they're even less likely to be hanging around a shop. Such people are few in number. Chavs on the otherhand, for whom a generation is 15-20 years, are not.:)
Random acceptance [or blind] of papers can lead to some low quality material.
True, but when bad papers are accepted into scientific journals (i.e. a confidence trick or simply a bad paper mistakenly entered), and undue amount of credibility is lent to that paper merely because it has appeared in the journal. When the review process is unselective, no new paper that goes on display for the wider community has any assumed level of credibility to start with, so the review process is much more fair, not least because there are going to be more readers who are adequately equipped to asses the validity of a paper than there are people in any initial selection committee of a traditional scientific journal.
Though this may seem a rather simplistic approach, I would have thought that the journal most able to draw attention to real scientific revelations or discoveries would be the one in which the initial review, i.e. the one that gets the paper into the publication in the first place, is the least selective. Because of the inevitably larger audience of an online publication, it is far more likely that members of the readership would be able to determine the validity of a given paper than a few reviewers deciding what gets into the publication, as is the case with the traditional scientific journals.
What I mean to say by this is that the better journal is far more likely to be the one with which the actual experts, rather than some selection committe of the publication, are the ones assessing the majority of the papers submitted to it. In this way, it is much less likely that valid papers would get rejected before they reach the wider community, and those papers which really don't hold up will have a greater number of people scrutinising them.
Though this is slightly off-topic, in a way the same applies to online publications like Slashdot. There are undoubtedly many stories that get published which really aren't newsworthy, and many that don't get published which really should. If it weren't for the fact that so many of the good commenters, if you will, already use Slashdot, a site like Digg, where the users themselves get to decide what is newsworthy or not, would be far better at ensuring that valuable stories get the coverage they deserve.
Though this has undoubtedly been said before, I think it holds up fairly well as an analogy to the traditional scientific journals, i.e., why should CmdrTaco (the reviewers who decide what makes it into the journal) have greater power to decide what stories (papers) are worthy of coverage, when there are members of the audience who are surely much better equipped to decide in the vast majority of cases, if not all. A better model would be one in which the users decide what gets coverage, e.g. by way of voting, where those users who have made the most valuable contributions to discussion in a given area have the most voting power - which would carry across into the model of a better scientific journal. Those scientists most distinguished in a given area should have the most power in deciding which papers get the coverage they need to be subject to a wider community review.
In sum: if the royal society doesn't want to adapt to a modern era where real publication costs approach zero, let them be sidelined.
This is exactly what we are seeing in the publishing industries (music, video/movie, literature, etc.): the traditional intstitutions are very unwilling to accept that distribution now costs nothing, the RIAA and MPAA being prime examples of this. Such associations' sole purpose is to maintain the stranglehold on the distribution market, by placing artificial constraints on distribution and by making sure that it is as difficult as possible for independents to form any real opposition to their power. In cases where the incumbent institution cannot so easily maintain their grip on the market or medium, as in the case of the Royal Society, they will have to move to accept the new distribution methods or fade into irrelevance.
It's interesting to see the same happening in many different areas, newspapers being another example, where the old institutions, the old bearers of power, are finding it very difficult to adopt the new paradigm that the Internet has brought about. What seems to happen is that they either find a way to fit into the new model, and thereby retain their relevance, or are pushed aside by other organisations which more readily adopt the new model. Of course there are also those, like the RIAA/MPAA, who try to hang on to the old model, but in the end I don't see that they will be able to survive. The collective might of their very audience will eventually overturn them, as it is the one power no amount of their money can fight.
Perhaps the immaturity isn't in the technology itself, but in the ways in which the use of the technology is regulated when you have a large number of people all trying to set up wireless networks on the same frequencies in a small area.
Well anyways, it's an issue for them city folks to resolve (either through cooperation or by going wired again, whatever) - right now there are just two WAPs nearby other than mine.
There was an interesting feature some time ago in the National Geographic about coffee. Though I've forgotten the details, the study in question showed coffee to be highly addictive, and showed that not having a cup of coffee in the morning has a seriously debilitating effect on the brain activity of a regular caffeine-user compared to that of a non-user. Put simply, the more you consume coffee, the more your brain actually requires it to function at the same level as a non-user, though caffeine does indeed seriously 'boost' the brain activity of an infrequent user (and obviously, by implication, less so the more frequently they use caffeine). Can't actually find the issue in question on the NG website; maybe there's a different, UK version?
I quite agree; Gentoo has been running solid as a rock on my family's main computerthat is, the one my parents use. All I need do to make sure they're all up to date is sync portage and emerge. I've set it up so they have GNOME, Ximianised OpenOffice.org, Thunderbird, Firefox and mplayer (for all media needs, including the Firefox plugin). Since setting up, the only maintenance has been updating.
Compare that to the Windows installation that my brother insists on using (despite the fact that there isn't a single app he uses without an alternative or better app for Linux), which is not only slower but requires frequent malware removal and virus scans, and which soon degenerates to a lumbering wreck (read: sloth; 5 minutes from boot to PC being usable, no joke) until a reinstall from scratch is needed again. For basic computing needs, Linux is likely to be much less of a hassle once set up; certainly less so than it is to reinstall Windows, losing everything, or to buy a new computer outright, both of which are practices several people I know carry out with unbelievable frequency (okay, not so much so the latter).
You might want to read the revised and expanded version of The Gunslinger (new as in less than 10 years old, I'm sure). I've only just got into the series but I suspect King has made an effort to bring more consistency between book and the others in the series given what he says in the lengthy foreword.
Actually, I think you'll find that the mplayer plugin for Mozilla/Firefox is quite capable of playing both WMV and Quicktime. Although I've only used it in Gentoo I'm sure it can be no more difficult to set up in Ubuntu, if not less so.
Hmm, fair comment about the graphics card overclock. I think this rather brings to light the difficulty there is with comparing mobile processors, given that it's pretty much impossible not to confound the results of such comparisons with greatly differing specs between test models, though the two machines in this case do actually compare pretty well save on the GPU.
About the point you made on the battery times, there was some feedback that raised similar concerns, which are addressed here. The "Life" test wasn't actually testing performance while the PC is idle, but rather while using the Business Winstone benchmarking app to simulate real user activity. They did say that they're going to be getting two new test models however to re-run the benchmarks anyway though.
LaptopLogic.com recently ran a comparison between the Pentium M (Dothan) and AMD's Turion, with a very comprehesive rundown of the technological differences between the two chips, and well, check out the review for the exact results, but the Turion beats the P-M in almost all of the non-synthetic benchmarks. The machines were set up so that they had almost identical specs save the processors, a pair of Acer machines (one of which sits under my hands now, the Ferrari 4005.. I was fairly pleased that the Turion did come out on top, especially for 3D gaming, given that I turned down the other reviewed machine, the TravelMate 8104, shortly before this comparison appeared).
One particularly interesting result is that while the P-M performed better at the 'battery eater' benchmark, i.e., constant battery usage, the Turion gave greater battery life with 'real life' usage, where the processor is not in constant use, when the power saving technologies come into play. So unless you really need to do CPU intensive tasks on the go, the Turion PowerNow gives better battery life.
Oh, and the Turion's also significantly cheaper, which unless you're lucky enough not to be on a budget, is definitely a plus (the article goes through the differences in cost if you want to see the figures).
Well, don't take my word for it, the article can be found here.
You really don't understand the hacker mentality, do you? It's not about saving money, it's about taking on challenges and getting Linux to run on things that were never intended to run it. For what reason do you think Linux itself exists anyway?
There was a programme on the BBC some time ago looking at the development of computers and the implications of their widespread introduction into consumers' lives, (hosted by Jeremy Clarkson). Quite rightly, it highlighted the fact that Xerox pioneered the desktop computer and the 'paperless office', but even on such a program for which there had evidently been a great deal of research conducted, there was a complete failure to distinguish between computers themselves and the platform upon which almost all personal computing is done, Windows.
Jeremy Clarkson confessed, despite his stated amazement at some of the things that computers enable us to do, (including, in his case, writing a news report on a plane over the Atlantic and then sending it to London to be printed before he even landed), he abolutely despised computers. And what gave rise to this hatred? Cryptic error messages, frequent crashes, the increasing risk of having your credit card/identity stolen, the huge cost of replacing hardware quickly obsoleted by bloated and inefficient applications, the cost of upgrading software that quickly becomes unsupported, the opaqueness of interfaces and their general unintuitiveness, the ease with which a machine can become 'fucked up' (by spyware, adware, viruses, worms, et al.), etc. . Okay, so I extended the list to include common computer complaints of friends and relatives, but the point remains; this is how people expect computers to perform. However none of these problems are necessary compromises of desktop computing; they're a direct result of the platform: Windows.
I don't really see that Apple and OS X are a solution, as I don't see that Apple would be any more dedicated to creating open standards for application development were they to achieve a position of such widespread adopted as Microsoft has had. Linux is certainly no panacea, as for the average Joe, there are a world of other difficulties to deal with. (Although, in my case, I probably havn't made it any easier for myself, having made Gentoo my distribution of choice. That said, I have a perfectly functional desktop environment that both of my near computer-phobic parents can happily use, and that requires maintenance of almost zero now that I have everything functional (oh, go on, tell me recompiling sucks, but I did choose to use a source distribution).) Anyway, the difficulty of finding a platform in which the same or other problems exist is a direct result of Mircrosoft's practices. Despite the huge benefits of Linux's open development model, the fact that Windows is the dominant desktop operating system is the root cause of its greatest problem: support. That is, support both in terms of compatibility and in terms of financial support. Any platform for application development that is to be successful in terms of support really needs to have the majority share in the market, which is exactly how Microsoft have ensured that there is 'a world of software and devices that work on Windows', to quote one of their adverts (aside: since when did Microsoft need to advertise? I wonder what motivated them to do so). Personally, I can't see that there is anything beneficial to developing for Windows other than the guaranteed compatibility, given the proprietary nature of the entire operating system. How could this ever be better than developing for an open platform, were there ever to be a platform with such widespread adoption as Windows?
Though it is my no means determined to happen, web applications and open standards have the possibility to act as a complete replacement to the OS, or at least provide an OS agnostic platform for which software developers can write their applications. Microsoft, knowing that they have a huge deal to lose should their OS become no longer a requisite for the greatest availability of software, will likely do the best they can to kill any widespread adoption of such standards, or at least give it the backseat with regards to mainstream appli
Try Luxi Sans with grayscale antialiasing (or sub-pixel if you're on an LCD screen) with hinting off. See my my desktop. It's an incredibly nice looking font, nicer than MS' or Apple's fonts IMHO, at large and small sizes. I don't know what there is to complain about really, however most screenshots of GNOME have the not-so-nice Bitstream Vera Sans, so maybe people are not aware of the Luxi set of font's existence/niceness
Slashdot Mirror
It's called Intellitext, and if you use Firefox with the Adblock extension (or better, Adblock Plus), you can block the script that creates the Intellitext, just as you can block banner ads, flash and iframes. Probably the extension I value most.
It could be easy to run Linux on a PC; as easy as it is to buy a PC pre-loaded with Windows. Don't assume that just because it's easy to get a PC running Windows that it's actually easy to install. I'd be surprised if it isn't easier to install, say, Ubuntu than it is Windows if you do it from scratch, not to mention that the Windows PC wouldn't actually have any useful software on it once you'd finished the install.
Actually, if this is in Britain, which it is, the people who will have been causing the shop owner trouble would be chavs; absolutely no doubt about it. Chavs don't listen to metal or punk, rather house or drum and bass, which funnily enough is probably even more likely to render the listener incapable of hearing high frequencies. Metalheads and punks aren't antisocial though; not very sociable, granted, but that just means they're even less likely to be hanging around a shop. Such people are few in number. Chavs on the otherhand, for whom a generation is 15-20 years, are not. :)
Random acceptance [or blind] of papers can lead to some low quality material.
True, but when bad papers are accepted into scientific journals (i.e. a confidence trick or simply a bad paper mistakenly entered), and undue amount of credibility is lent to that paper merely because it has appeared in the journal. When the review process is unselective, no new paper that goes on display for the wider community has any assumed level of credibility to start with, so the review process is much more fair, not least because there are going to be more readers who are adequately equipped to asses the validity of a paper than there are people in any initial selection committee of a traditional scientific journal.
Though this may seem a rather simplistic approach, I would have thought that the journal most able to draw attention to real scientific revelations or discoveries would be the one in which the initial review, i.e. the one that gets the paper into the publication in the first place, is the least selective. Because of the inevitably larger audience of an online publication, it is far more likely that members of the readership would be able to determine the validity of a given paper than a few reviewers deciding what gets into the publication, as is the case with the traditional scientific journals.
What I mean to say by this is that the better journal is far more likely to be the one with which the actual experts, rather than some selection committe of the publication, are the ones assessing the majority of the papers submitted to it. In this way, it is much less likely that valid papers would get rejected before they reach the wider community, and those papers which really don't hold up will have a greater number of people scrutinising them.
Though this is slightly off-topic, in a way the same applies to online publications like Slashdot. There are undoubtedly many stories that get published which really aren't newsworthy, and many that don't get published which really should. If it weren't for the fact that so many of the good commenters, if you will, already use Slashdot, a site like Digg, where the users themselves get to decide what is newsworthy or not, would be far better at ensuring that valuable stories get the coverage they deserve.
Though this has undoubtedly been said before, I think it holds up fairly well as an analogy to the traditional scientific journals, i.e., why should CmdrTaco (the reviewers who decide what makes it into the journal) have greater power to decide what stories (papers) are worthy of coverage, when there are members of the audience who are surely much better equipped to decide in the vast majority of cases, if not all. A better model would be one in which the users decide what gets coverage, e.g. by way of voting, where those users who have made the most valuable contributions to discussion in a given area have the most voting power - which would carry across into the model of a better scientific journal. Those scientists most distinguished in a given area should have the most power in deciding which papers get the coverage they need to be subject to a wider community review.
In sum: if the royal society doesn't want to adapt to a modern era where real publication costs approach zero, let them be sidelined.
This is exactly what we are seeing in the publishing industries (music, video/movie, literature, etc.): the traditional intstitutions are very unwilling to accept that distribution now costs nothing, the RIAA and MPAA being prime examples of this. Such associations' sole purpose is to maintain the stranglehold on the distribution market, by placing artificial constraints on distribution and by making sure that it is as difficult as possible for independents to form any real opposition to their power. In cases where the incumbent institution cannot so easily maintain their grip on the market or medium, as in the case of the Royal Society, they will have to move to accept the new distribution methods or fade into irrelevance.
It's interesting to see the same happening in many different areas, newspapers being another example, where the old institutions, the old bearers of power, are finding it very difficult to adopt the new paradigm that the Internet has brought about. What seems to happen is that they either find a way to fit into the new model, and thereby retain their relevance, or are pushed aside by other organisations which more readily adopt the new model. Of course there are also those, like the RIAA/MPAA, who try to hang on to the old model, but in the end I don't see that they will be able to survive. The collective might of their very audience will eventually overturn them, as it is the one power no amount of their money can fight.
Perhaps the immaturity isn't in the technology itself, but in the ways in which the use of the technology is regulated when you have a large number of people all trying to set up wireless networks on the same frequencies in a small area.
Well anyways, it's an issue for them city folks to resolve (either through cooperation or by going wired again, whatever) - right now there are just two WAPs nearby other than mine.
There was an interesting feature some time ago in the National Geographic about coffee. Though I've forgotten the details, the study in question showed coffee to be highly addictive, and showed that not having a cup of coffee in the morning has a seriously debilitating effect on the brain activity of a regular caffeine-user compared to that of a non-user. Put simply, the more you consume coffee, the more your brain actually requires it to function at the same level as a non-user, though caffeine does indeed seriously 'boost' the brain activity of an infrequent user (and obviously, by implication, less so the more frequently they use caffeine). Can't actually find the issue in question on the NG website; maybe there's a different, UK version?
I quite agree; Gentoo has been running solid as a rock on my family's main computerthat is, the one my parents use. All I need do to make sure they're all up to date is sync portage and emerge. I've set it up so they have GNOME, Ximianised OpenOffice.org, Thunderbird, Firefox and mplayer (for all media needs, including the Firefox plugin). Since setting up, the only maintenance has been updating.
Compare that to the Windows installation that my brother insists on using (despite the fact that there isn't a single app he uses without an alternative or better app for Linux), which is not only slower but requires frequent malware removal and virus scans, and which soon degenerates to a lumbering wreck (read: sloth; 5 minutes from boot to PC being usable, no joke) until a reinstall from scratch is needed again. For basic computing needs, Linux is likely to be much less of a hassle once set up; certainly less so than it is to reinstall Windows, losing everything, or to buy a new computer outright, both of which are practices several people I know carry out with unbelievable frequency (okay, not so much so the latter).
You might want to read the revised and expanded version of The Gunslinger (new as in less than 10 years old, I'm sure). I've only just got into the series but I suspect King has made an effort to bring more consistency between book and the others in the series given what he says in the lengthy foreword.
Remember , anyone?
*shudders*
How about: Uncyclopedia?
Let me add:
Actually, I think you'll find that the mplayer plugin for Mozilla/Firefox is quite capable of playing both WMV and Quicktime. Although I've only used it in Gentoo I'm sure it can be no more difficult to set up in Ubuntu, if not less so.
Hmm, fair comment about the graphics card overclock. I think this rather brings to light the difficulty there is with comparing mobile processors, given that it's pretty much impossible not to confound the results of such comparisons with greatly differing specs between test models, though the two machines in this case do actually compare pretty well save on the GPU.
About the point you made on the battery times, there was some feedback that raised similar concerns, which are addressed here. The "Life" test wasn't actually testing performance while the PC is idle, but rather while using the Business Winstone benchmarking app to simulate real user activity. They did say that they're going to be getting two new test models however to re-run the benchmarks anyway though.
LaptopLogic.com recently ran a comparison between the Pentium M (Dothan) and AMD's Turion, with a very comprehesive rundown of the technological differences between the two chips, and well, check out the review for the exact results, but the Turion beats the P-M in almost all of the non-synthetic benchmarks. The machines were set up so that they had almost identical specs save the processors, a pair of Acer machines (one of which sits under my hands now, the Ferrari 4005.. I was fairly pleased that the Turion did come out on top, especially for 3D gaming, given that I turned down the other reviewed machine, the TravelMate 8104, shortly before this comparison appeared).
One particularly interesting result is that while the P-M performed better at the 'battery eater' benchmark, i.e., constant battery usage, the Turion gave greater battery life with 'real life' usage, where the processor is not in constant use, when the power saving technologies come into play. So unless you really need to do CPU intensive tasks on the go, the Turion PowerNow gives better battery life.
Oh, and the Turion's also significantly cheaper, which unless you're lucky enough not to be on a budget, is definitely a plus (the article goes through the differences in cost if you want to see the figures).
Well, don't take my word for it, the article can be found here.
You really don't understand the hacker mentality, do you? It's not about saving money, it's about taking on challenges and getting Linux to run on things that were never intended to run it. For what reason do you think Linux itself exists anyway?
In response to '2':
There was a programme on the BBC some time ago looking at the development of computers and the implications of their widespread introduction into consumers' lives, (hosted by Jeremy Clarkson). Quite rightly, it highlighted the fact that Xerox pioneered the desktop computer and the 'paperless office', but even on such a program for which there had evidently been a great deal of research conducted, there was a complete failure to distinguish between computers themselves and the platform upon which almost all personal computing is done, Windows.
Jeremy Clarkson confessed, despite his stated amazement at some of the things that computers enable us to do, (including, in his case, writing a news report on a plane over the Atlantic and then sending it to London to be printed before he even landed), he abolutely despised computers. And what gave rise to this hatred? Cryptic error messages, frequent crashes, the increasing risk of having your credit card/identity stolen, the huge cost of replacing hardware quickly obsoleted by bloated and inefficient applications, the cost of upgrading software that quickly becomes unsupported, the opaqueness of interfaces and their general unintuitiveness, the ease with which a machine can become 'fucked up' (by spyware, adware, viruses, worms, et al.), etc. . Okay, so I extended the list to include common computer complaints of friends and relatives, but the point remains; this is how people expect computers to perform. However none of these problems are necessary compromises of desktop computing; they're a direct result of the platform: Windows.
I don't really see that Apple and OS X are a solution, as I don't see that Apple would be any more dedicated to creating open standards for application development were they to achieve a position of such widespread adopted as Microsoft has had. Linux is certainly no panacea, as for the average Joe, there are a world of other difficulties to deal with. (Although, in my case, I probably havn't made it any easier for myself, having made Gentoo my distribution of choice. That said, I have a perfectly functional desktop environment that both of my near computer-phobic parents can happily use, and that requires maintenance of almost zero now that I have everything functional (oh, go on, tell me recompiling sucks, but I did choose to use a source distribution).) Anyway, the difficulty of finding a platform in which the same or other problems exist is a direct result of Mircrosoft's practices. Despite the huge benefits of Linux's open development model, the fact that Windows is the dominant desktop operating system is the root cause of its greatest problem: support. That is, support both in terms of compatibility and in terms of financial support. Any platform for application development that is to be successful in terms of support really needs to have the majority share in the market, which is exactly how Microsoft have ensured that there is 'a world of software and devices that work on Windows', to quote one of their adverts (aside: since when did Microsoft need to advertise? I wonder what motivated them to do so). Personally, I can't see that there is anything beneficial to developing for Windows other than the guaranteed compatibility, given the proprietary nature of the entire operating system. How could this ever be better than developing for an open platform, were there ever to be a platform with such widespread adoption as Windows?
Though it is my no means determined to happen, web applications and open standards have the possibility to act as a complete replacement to the OS, or at least provide an OS agnostic platform for which software developers can write their applications. Microsoft, knowing that they have a huge deal to lose should their OS become no longer a requisite for the greatest availability of software, will likely do the best they can to kill any widespread adoption of such standards, or at least give it the backseat with regards to mainstream appli
Try Luxi Sans with grayscale antialiasing (or sub-pixel if you're on an LCD screen) with hinting off. See my my desktop. It's an incredibly nice looking font, nicer than MS' or Apple's fonts IMHO, at large and small sizes. I don't know what there is to complain about really, however most screenshots of GNOME have the not-so-nice Bitstream Vera Sans, so maybe people are not aware of the Luxi set of font's existence/niceness