Just this week, I received a brand new HP nx9420 laptop with a 1.83Ghz Duo processor.
I use this laptop for 3D Solid CAD/CAM applications. For my application, it is definately faster. The CAM rendering is faster, the part rotation is smoother. Overall very efficient. I have done some stress testing by doing some long database queries at the same time I am rendering a part. My old computers would have joked. There is a noticable hit on rendering performance, but it is still able to complete both tasks in a reasonable manner.
We have the same CAD/CAM software on a 1.6Ghz PentiumM Laptop and two 2.8GHz Pentium-4 desktop machines. All the machines have 1024MB of RAM, and the two Desktops have 256MB video cards.
I have not noticed that heat issues that other folks have mentioned, but I don't hold it in my lap either. So far I am very impressed.
They gather information on friends, enemies, potential enemies, potential friends for the purpose of advance a country's foreign and domestic policies.
Valuable intelligence can be commercial, political, scientific, or military in nature. It all depends on the goals of the organization gathering the information.
Intelligence can be gathered by methods as benign as reading a local paper from a world capital to as active as trying to bug the private office of a world leader.
The opposite mission of a good intelligence agency is counter-intelligence. To be aware that other countries want to gather intelligence and to frustrate their ability to gather information that may harm your own interests.
This is a case of classic counter-intelligence. Using imagination and saying "what if they bugged the computers when they make them?". Now you have to investigate to see is it possible, how it might be done, how it could be detected if someone did it, and find out if someone did it to us.
It doesn't matter that this is a US/China situation or a Lithunia/Bulgaria situation. All countries gather intelligence in one form or another on each other. It is good tactics to recognize new possible ways of spying on each other.
China's intelligence agencies have long placed a priority on information in the US from as many sources as possible. Based on history over the past 50 years it would be foolish to consider them our bosom pals. At best they are neutral, at worst they consider us a threat to their own existence.
About a year ago, my parents returned from living in Japan for 18 months
While they lived there, Yahoo was their broadband and phone service provider.
When we needed to talk to them, we would email to set up the time and they would call us. They only paid.02 a minute to call the US. We paid.25 if we called them.
Cheap International Rates, Bring it on Yahoo!
I was a Nuclear Power Technician in the US Navy. The week I arrived in Idaho for prototype training at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, scientists and nuclear engineers arrived from around the world to recreate TMI.
INEL has about 200 nuclear reactors of all sizes and ages. They were all built for research purposes. They had one that they felt was similiar enough to the TMI reactor for their purposes. They recreated the conditions of TMI and let the reactor go to see just how bad it could have gotten.
The result? As predicted, the nuclear reaction stopped when all the water was gone, there was some core damage due to residual heat. But that was it. No catastrophic melt down. No failure of the primary reactor vessel, no breach of secondary shielding.
No measurable (ie higher than natural background) radiation levels were ever measured outside the fence at Three Mile Island. I don't minimize the emotions of the people who lived in the area at the time. Their fears were real. But those fears were a result of purposely inadequate education of the general public about nuclear science by the Government. It is much easier to protect a "secret" if no one understands what you are talking about.
Former Micron Employee Here,
What year did we quit making Computer Grade RAM? I seemed to have missed that page.
I was an employee from the late 80's through the early 90's. Once upon a time, Micron did have a reputation for poor quality RAM (early 80's), but it was our commitment to quality improvements that saved the company.
You may be confused by Micron's efforts in finding markets for below-Computer Grade RAM. Once upon a time, if RAM was not computer quality it was scrapped. Micron developed new testing techniques and new applications for RAM that wasn't good enough for use in a computer, but was still useful Audio RAM was an early example. This is what is used in the anti-skip function of portable CD-players.
Abandon Computer Grade RAM, never. Find additional sources of revenue from non-Computer Grade RAM, yes.
Although it agrees with my belief that there is a difference between how urban and rural people think, I had a hard time working my way through it.
I agree the political priorities of the two populations are different, I had a very difficult time because the venom and contempt for rural America that was dripping from the words of the authors.
I believe their basic premise that urban populations should focus their political efforts on solving issues in their own communities is a good one.
I spent a lot of time working on arguments to refute their points, but changed my mind. I will close with this. Rural America relies on Urban populations as a market for our goods. We are aware of this interdependence. Based on this article, it would appear that some people in the cities, have forgotten that their survival depends on the rural populations around them as well.
I would argue the reason most slashdot posters are slightly left leaning are they are from major urban areas.
I don't agree that education is the sole determining factor. I believe the difference is rural vs urban.
I am a City Councilman in a small town in Idaho (population 5,000). My experiances in this office have colored my opinions about how people approach government. I experianced life in major urban areas only during my 6 years in the military. I am college educated. I am the child of college educated parents. My father was a social worker, my mother was a teacher.
My thesis is that urban populations are raised more dependent on government services. Water, roads, public transportation, schools, recreation, police, fire, social services and so on. When there is a problem, it is usually government related and they expect government to solve the problem. To a smaller extent, rural populations see less government in their daily lives. Local governments have leaner budgets and there is never enough money to go around. So rural people learn to look to themselves and their neighbors for solutions first.
I'm sure its more complicated than that, but that basic viewpoint is very strong. The personal belief that less government is better vs more government is better is very strong. Two people the same education and opposing viewpoints can look at the exact same incident and arrive at diametrically opposite opinions about what was the root cause of the problem and what would be the best solution. And in reality both may be exactly right. What is the proper solution to fix the problem in an urban environment vs what would fix it in a rural environment.
That is why I am an advocate of States rights and local governments. Federal solutions and programs tend to be monolithic and are compromises. They rarely, if ever, meet the needs of everyone. Local solutions tend to be better tailored for their communities. But again, my opinion is colored by my experiances. But I am open minded enough to admit that.
Slashdot Mirror
Just this week, I received a brand new HP nx9420 laptop with a 1.83Ghz Duo processor. I use this laptop for 3D Solid CAD/CAM applications. For my application, it is definately faster. The CAM rendering is faster, the part rotation is smoother. Overall very efficient. I have done some stress testing by doing some long database queries at the same time I am rendering a part. My old computers would have joked. There is a noticable hit on rendering performance, but it is still able to complete both tasks in a reasonable manner. We have the same CAD/CAM software on a 1.6Ghz PentiumM Laptop and two 2.8GHz Pentium-4 desktop machines. All the machines have 1024MB of RAM, and the two Desktops have 256MB video cards. I have not noticed that heat issues that other folks have mentioned, but I don't hold it in my lap either. So far I am very impressed.
They gather information on friends, enemies, potential enemies, potential friends for the purpose of advance a country's foreign and domestic policies.
Valuable intelligence can be commercial, political, scientific, or military in nature. It all depends on the goals of the organization gathering the information.
Intelligence can be gathered by methods as benign as reading a local paper from a world capital to as active as trying to bug the private office of a world leader.
The opposite mission of a good intelligence agency is counter-intelligence. To be aware that other countries want to gather intelligence and to frustrate their ability to gather information that may harm your own interests.
This is a case of classic counter-intelligence. Using imagination and saying "what if they bugged the computers when they make them?". Now you have to investigate to see is it possible, how it might be done, how it could be detected if someone did it, and find out if someone did it to us.
It doesn't matter that this is a US/China situation or a Lithunia/Bulgaria situation. All countries gather intelligence in one form or another on each other. It is good tactics to recognize new possible ways of spying on each other.
China's intelligence agencies have long placed a priority on information in the US from as many sources as possible. Based on history over the past 50 years it would be foolish to consider them our bosom pals. At best they are neutral, at worst they consider us a threat to their own existence.
Maybe I have lived in rural america for too long...
Why does a precint with only 600 voters need a voting machine?
Our local precints are all about that size, we use paper ballots and have election results posted within 2 hours of the end of voting.
And we can recount them
About a year ago, my parents returned from living in Japan for 18 months While they lived there, Yahoo was their broadband and phone service provider. When we needed to talk to them, we would email to set up the time and they would call us. They only paid .02 a minute to call the US. We paid .25 if we called them.
Cheap International Rates, Bring it on Yahoo!
I was a Nuclear Power Technician in the US Navy. The week I arrived in Idaho for prototype training at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, scientists and nuclear engineers arrived from around the world to recreate TMI. INEL has about 200 nuclear reactors of all sizes and ages. They were all built for research purposes. They had one that they felt was similiar enough to the TMI reactor for their purposes. They recreated the conditions of TMI and let the reactor go to see just how bad it could have gotten. The result? As predicted, the nuclear reaction stopped when all the water was gone, there was some core damage due to residual heat. But that was it. No catastrophic melt down. No failure of the primary reactor vessel, no breach of secondary shielding. No measurable (ie higher than natural background) radiation levels were ever measured outside the fence at Three Mile Island. I don't minimize the emotions of the people who lived in the area at the time. Their fears were real. But those fears were a result of purposely inadequate education of the general public about nuclear science by the Government. It is much easier to protect a "secret" if no one understands what you are talking about.
Former Micron Employee Here, What year did we quit making Computer Grade RAM? I seemed to have missed that page. I was an employee from the late 80's through the early 90's. Once upon a time, Micron did have a reputation for poor quality RAM (early 80's), but it was our commitment to quality improvements that saved the company. You may be confused by Micron's efforts in finding markets for below-Computer Grade RAM. Once upon a time, if RAM was not computer quality it was scrapped. Micron developed new testing techniques and new applications for RAM that wasn't good enough for use in a computer, but was still useful Audio RAM was an early example. This is what is used in the anti-skip function of portable CD-players. Abandon Computer Grade RAM, never. Find additional sources of revenue from non-Computer Grade RAM, yes.
I read the paper you linked to.
Although it agrees with my belief that there is a difference between how urban and rural people think, I had a hard time working my way through it.
I agree the political priorities of the two populations are different, I had a very difficult time because the venom and contempt for rural America that was dripping from the words of the authors.
I believe their basic premise that urban populations should focus their political efforts on solving issues in their own communities is a good one.
I spent a lot of time working on arguments to refute their points, but changed my mind. I will close with this. Rural America relies on Urban populations as a market for our goods. We are aware of this interdependence. Based on this article, it would appear that some people in the cities, have forgotten that their survival depends on the rural populations around them as well.
I would argue the reason most slashdot posters are slightly left leaning are they are from major urban areas.
I don't agree that education is the sole determining factor. I believe the difference is rural vs urban.
I am a City Councilman in a small town in Idaho (population 5,000). My experiances in this office have colored my opinions about how people approach government. I experianced life in major urban areas only during my 6 years in the military. I am college educated. I am the child of college educated parents. My father was a social worker, my mother was a teacher.
My thesis is that urban populations are raised more dependent on government services. Water, roads, public transportation, schools, recreation, police, fire, social services and so on. When there is a problem, it is usually government related and they expect government to solve the problem. To a smaller extent, rural populations see less government in their daily lives. Local governments have leaner budgets and there is never enough money to go around. So rural people learn to look to themselves and their neighbors for solutions first.
I'm sure its more complicated than that, but that basic viewpoint is very strong. The personal belief that less government is better vs more government is better is very strong. Two people the same education and opposing viewpoints can look at the exact same incident and arrive at diametrically opposite opinions about what was the root cause of the problem and what would be the best solution. And in reality both may be exactly right. What is the proper solution to fix the problem in an urban environment vs what would fix it in a rural environment.
That is why I am an advocate of States rights and local governments. Federal solutions and programs tend to be monolithic and are compromises. They rarely, if ever, meet the needs of everyone. Local solutions tend to be better tailored for their communities. But again, my opinion is colored by my experiances. But I am open minded enough to admit that.