Guy in the office beside me has one. I've never seen it though as he doesn't use it in the office. The only reason I knew he had one was he was complaining about getting a charger because he had to plug it into his computer to charge it. I explained that because USB is 5V standard he should be able to plug his USB cable into an iPod-USB wall socket charger which is the same voltage.
Worked apparently.
I was pretty surprised that he bought it. Probably just has a big collection of WMA files.
True, in the short term. Long term selling Ubuntu cheaper (even if they lost out on support) would get rid of the Microsoft tax. With experience the number of issues would drop and Dell would be able to sell cheaper computers. When margins are razor thin there are benefits to dropping something that adds so much cost.
Of course their discount is one of the things that makes them more competitive vis-a-vis smaller manufacturers.
Dyneema and Spectra (more or less the same) replaced Kevlar years ago in the high performance rope industry for sailing. It's more flexible and stronger. Also it doesn't fatigue and then fail suddenly with zero warning. Vectran, a similar but newer and more expensive material, is replacing them both.
They're also increasingly being used in the sails themselves in the place of kevlar.
All or nothing script/macro access where your options are confined to on/off/ask are such an obvious problem I'm amazed that they're not taken more seriously.
I don't get why anyone (with the users interests at heart) would add office scripting functionality without adding some form of permissions. Maybe back in the days before networking it was practical because most files were created on the computer itself or came on a trusted disk.
It's not even an option to inspect macros on Office before opening the file (yes, I know you can disable, open, inspect (if it will let you), close, re-enable and open). Why would a user want to run unsigned code from an unknown source that can't be read and give it permission to control your computer.
OOo deserves a slagging for falling into the same trap because - aside from compatibility with Office - it has no excuses. And it would be different if this had been a Word script that also functioned on OOo. This is a ball dropped by the OOo team because it's one obvious area where OOo has been better than Office.
That depends on where the extra 20hp comes from. If you just have an engine that can rev higher and can deliver better efficiency over a wider rev range (through say, VVT or a turbocharger) then you could have the same (smaller) size engine and no hybrid overhead.
Remember also that the alternator and electric motor aren't 100% efficient. They waste some of the energy they try to store.
Toyota are talking about 100% hybrids but some car models have 5 or 6 engine choices. I'm not sure if hybrids would be quite the same thing efficiency wise if they preserved those choices.
Regenerative braking isn't dependent on a hybrid motor though. You can achieve regenerative braking by controlling the load on the alternator. With proper control (no different from already necessary on a hybrid) you could implement it on any car. Really you need drive-by-wire braking though to get the electrical and hydraulic systems working together.
Hybrids typically include starter-alternators. These can be included without the car being a hybrid. A hybrid uses an electric motor to power the wheels at low speeds or as a boost to increase power. Both of these things can boost efficiency but there are no shortages of other things that can be done. Not all of them are compatible presently.
I'm a fan of hybrids. They are very useful in certain situations but they are not the Holy Grail of vehicle efficiency. I don't really think that Toyota think they will only make hybrids in 2020. It's just clever marketing and a statement about their future direction.
There's an opportunity cost involved in investing the next 13 years of your research effort on one particular area. It would be much better to set a target of 30% average mileage increase over the same time-scale than to set a target of 100% hybrids. It's trying to limit the solutions. Hybrids have done a fantastic job of capturing the public imagination but at times this has been at the expense of other more significant advances. For example 70% of the original improvement in the Insight was unrelated to the hybrid. 30% is still great but I have a feeling that Toyota are lumping starter-alternators into the hybrid category. It really only takes a little modification to make a very basic (very cheap) hybrid out of a starter-alternator
Hybrids are only more efficient for certain forms of driving. For cruising at motorway speeds the hybrid is just extra weight lowering efficiency. Improvements in diesel engines might well outpace hybrid technology.
Why would anyone wants to do this? It actually doesn't make any sense. 100% of cars represents a lot of recycling and a lot of cost (and pollution) in expired and leaking batteries.
A hybrid can't make an engine more efficient. It just makes it more efficient over certain parts of the power band. Unless they redefine hybrid to mean starter-alternator with minimal power assist there are going to be a lot of cars that don't see any gain. Incidentally I do think every car will (and should) have a starter-alternator in that timescale.
Other improvements in engine technology are negating the need for a hybrid motor at all. Going back to the Honda Insight the original hybrid: it doubled the milage of a Civic. 35% was due to exotic materials, aerodynamics, reduced rolling resistance; 35% was due to a more efficient engine and the last 30% was due to the expensive hybrid drivetrain.
By all means hybrids should become more popular, even more popular than conventionally powered but full replacement is based more on dogma and marketing than sound engineering reasons.
Ah, but if you have an Intel Mac then Microsoft Office uses Rosetta. So relatively speaking, NeoOffice is far better on a MacBook than it every could be on an iBook.
You fool! The entire online porn industry is just a way to fund the NSA. What better way to ensure they have enough bandwidth and ability to shift lots of data than to control a huge chuck of it. When the time comes the porn will be the first thing they switch off to keep their access. This way they have a network backup operational and ready to operate at the flick of a switch.
I was talking about the iMac/Mac Mini more than the laptop-desktop split. The iMac has dropped 60% in weight since it's introduction. Most of that is due to the CRT but not all. A standard Dell chassis is bigger and heavier than it needs to be for most users. The extra material contained within is material that should later be recycled, also. Essentially what I was saying it that it's (environmentally) better to recycle 0% of a current iMac than 10% of a 1st generation one because you're still left with less material.
Similarly, 5% of Dell by weight represents more than 10% of the weight of Apple's annual aggregate output because of their larger share of the market. Environmentalists should never allow themselves (ourselves) to be distracted by loud gestures at the expense of real progress. Greenpeace have a flawed methodology for assessing electronics that looks like it's deliberately designed to make Apple look bad instead of actually taking environmental impact. For example, some of the chemicals that Greenpeace are opposed to are not recognised as toxic (and indeed may not be), they want them excluded as a precautionary principle.
That is fair in some respects but it's insane to treat a company that uses chemicals that are universally agreed to be more dangerous but promises to get rid of them at some point better than a company that doesn't use them and got rid of all the known toxic chemicals. Instead they still are using ones that only Greenpeace say are toxic (based on the precautionary principle). To listen to Greenpeace you'd think that Apple were doing something far more serious, indeed many people do. It's only when you look closely at the details do you see that Greenpeace are flat out distorting the figures to give an unreasonable picture.
The moral high-ground is the one weapon that the environmental movement can rely on. Their importance of their integrity is paramount to the strength of their arguments. They're giving polluters an excuse to say that Greenpeace aren't credible and shouldn't be listened to. Greenpeace are doing more harm than good and as an environmentalist this irritates me.
Perhaps in a while people will be prepared to pay a premium (??$5?? per ipod, ??$20?? per laptop etc) for proper environmental handling.
In Ireland we already do. It's not just included in the price either. It has to be advertised separately so everyone knows that they're paying a fee towards recycling. For example, it's 50 cent more expensive to get a CFL long-life lightbulb.
I'd know a few for whom the idea gets an ominous smile after a few beers (if you bring it up).
Jobs correctly pointed out that Apple has got an unfair rap. For example they confirmed the rumour that their screens will have LED backlights (something I heard about in January). Just making the announcement is all that's important to how Greenpeace assessed Apple's environmental record. Apple aren't a more environmentally friendly company they just changed their longstanding policy on product pre-announcements to shut up some Greenpeace trolls who should have known better.
Also, Apple pointed out that they stopped using PVC in their packaging 12 years ago. But Greenpeace gave HP a better environmental score, in part because they are "promising" to remove PVC from their packaging. I've always been bemused by Greenpeace's campaign against Apple because it's complete dishonesty undermines everything else they say.
For example, looking at a figure like weight percentage of product recycled doesn't reflect the inherent differences between product weight. If Apple produce a computer that weighs half as much as a rival then the rival would need to recycle at least 50% just to catch up with Apple (assuming identical environmental impacts per unit weight, obviously).
Adobe would be a bit too expensive IMHO. They already do a really good job on OSX selling software. They're no danger of them leaving macs and they make Apple a lot of money.
Apple buy software companies that make good expensive sofware that sells in reasonably small numbers and then lowers the price so they can sell it to a much wider, mac only, market. Adobe's software portfolio is almost completely wrong for that. Apple couldn't add value to Adobe while killing off Windows versions.
I would have thought that someone like Autodesk would be much better. It would put Apple straight into the CAD market and hence bring cross platform versions of many other CAD programs. Also, they sell a lot of good software which is far too expensive for many prospective customers but profitable because of the high prices. Look at their stuff that's (arguably) less well known than AutoCAD like Fire, Smoke, Maya and an et cetera that covers a lot of things; that'd be worth Autodesks market cap on it's own to Apple (much of it already on OSX). They could port AutoCAD, one of the biggest software packages not already on OSX, and drop the price of the OSX version enough to generate some sales, knowing that they'd more than make the money back through direct sales of Mac Pros. On top of that it would be a big move into the university educational market.
Adobe's too obvious and it's much too late for Apple to buy them.
Had AT&T won this would have strengthened software patents and increased damages across the board. That's because companies sued in the US for a software patent infringement could have damages set based on their worldwide sales, many (even the majority) in areas where software patents aren't valid.
It would be punishing companies for infringements that don't exist. If I use software in Ireland and the maker gets sued in the US they shouldn't be charged for patent violations that aren't violations here. If the software was legally sold here and didn't violate locally recognised patents then the maker didn't do anything wrong (except for directly exporting).
In the long run this will be good for Linux. It also has implications for other judgements such as the EOLAS case, I think.
There are a couple of carpet styles that most people use. It's nice to have the choice to pick whatever you want if you know exactly how you want it.
What most people do is talk to a few friends or just pick the same colour as someone who had a nice house.
Apple and Microsoft don't really give you much choice. The difference is that you're picking Steve Jobs' tastes instead of Steve Ballmers'. Jobs picks everything the way he likes it and seems best. Ballmer picks something that he thinks will go everywhere: hotels, offices, bedrooms, living rooms &c.
They should just charge a large deposit (in addition to the fee), refundable when the patent is granted. Then the patent office would have an incentive for examining and rejecting spurious patents. Some companies seem to have a throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach to patent applications.
This discourages spurious (and non-novel patents), reducing the workload on the patent office while giving the patent offices more resources to examine patents.
Really, of course they just shouldn't have software patents, period. Both ideas would lead to a better functioning patent system.
That's one option. If you already had a good screen you could just get a macbook and then you'd have a decent desktop setup and a laptop. Cost about the same too. Depends on how interested you are in screen spanning. I've been doing it a bit lately, it's nice but not essential for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Guy in the office beside me has one. I've never seen it though as he doesn't use it in the office. The only reason I knew he had one was he was complaining about getting a charger because he had to plug it into his computer to charge it. I explained that because USB is 5V standard he should be able to plug his USB cable into an iPod-USB wall socket charger which is the same voltage.
Worked apparently.
I was pretty surprised that he bought it. Probably just has a big collection of WMA files.
True, in the short term. Long term selling Ubuntu cheaper (even if they lost out on support) would get rid of the Microsoft tax. With experience the number of issues would drop and Dell would be able to sell cheaper computers. When margins are razor thin there are benefits to dropping something that adds so much cost.
Of course their discount is one of the things that makes them more competitive vis-a-vis smaller manufacturers.
It was an April Fool's joke. And it was done in bad taste (what do you expect from the Mail).
It's a pretty notorious one. Cmon editors.
Dyneema and Spectra (more or less the same) replaced Kevlar years ago in the high performance rope industry for sailing. It's more flexible and stronger. Also it doesn't fatigue and then fail suddenly with zero warning. Vectran, a similar but newer and more expensive material, is replacing them both.
They're also increasingly being used in the sails themselves in the place of kevlar.
All or nothing script/macro access where your options are confined to on/off/ask are such an obvious problem I'm amazed that they're not taken more seriously.
I don't get why anyone (with the users interests at heart) would add office scripting functionality without adding some form of permissions. Maybe back in the days before networking it was practical because most files were created on the computer itself or came on a trusted disk.
It's not even an option to inspect macros on Office before opening the file (yes, I know you can disable, open, inspect (if it will let you), close, re-enable and open). Why would a user want to run unsigned code from an unknown source that can't be read and give it permission to control your computer.
OOo deserves a slagging for falling into the same trap because - aside from compatibility with Office - it has no excuses. And it would be different if this had been a Word script that also functioned on OOo. This is a ball dropped by the OOo team because it's one obvious area where OOo has been better than Office.
That depends on where the extra 20hp comes from. If you just have an engine that can rev higher and can deliver better efficiency over a wider rev range (through say, VVT or a turbocharger) then you could have the same (smaller) size engine and no hybrid overhead.
Remember also that the alternator and electric motor aren't 100% efficient. They waste some of the energy they try to store.
Toyota are talking about 100% hybrids but some car models have 5 or 6 engine choices. I'm not sure if hybrids would be quite the same thing efficiency wise if they preserved those choices.
If you had a hardened system first then porn wouldn't be as useful.
Regenerative braking isn't dependent on a hybrid motor though. You can achieve regenerative braking by controlling the load on the alternator. With proper control (no different from already necessary on a hybrid) you could implement it on any car. Really you need drive-by-wire braking though to get the electrical and hydraulic systems working together.
Hybrids typically include starter-alternators. These can be included without the car being a hybrid. A hybrid uses an electric motor to power the wheels at low speeds or as a boost to increase power. Both of these things can boost efficiency but there are no shortages of other things that can be done. Not all of them are compatible presently.
I'm a fan of hybrids. They are very useful in certain situations but they are not the Holy Grail of vehicle efficiency. I don't really think that Toyota think they will only make hybrids in 2020. It's just clever marketing and a statement about their future direction.
There's an opportunity cost involved in investing the next 13 years of your research effort on one particular area. It would be much better to set a target of 30% average mileage increase over the same time-scale than to set a target of 100% hybrids. It's trying to limit the solutions. Hybrids have done a fantastic job of capturing the public imagination but at times this has been at the expense of other more significant advances. For example 70% of the original improvement in the Insight was unrelated to the hybrid. 30% is still great but I have a feeling that Toyota are lumping starter-alternators into the hybrid category. It really only takes a little modification to make a very basic (very cheap) hybrid out of a starter-alternator
If you paid car owners so much you'd just create a market for stolen batteries.
Don't know if such a premium is sustainable if hybrids are ever to become cost competitive.
Hybrids are only more efficient for certain forms of driving. For cruising at motorway speeds the hybrid is just extra weight lowering efficiency. Improvements in diesel engines might well outpace hybrid technology.
Why would anyone wants to do this? It actually doesn't make any sense. 100% of cars represents a lot of recycling and a lot of cost (and pollution) in expired and leaking batteries.
A hybrid can't make an engine more efficient. It just makes it more efficient over certain parts of the power band. Unless they redefine hybrid to mean starter-alternator with minimal power assist there are going to be a lot of cars that don't see any gain. Incidentally I do think every car will (and should) have a starter-alternator in that timescale.
Other improvements in engine technology are negating the need for a hybrid motor at all. Going back to the Honda Insight the original hybrid: it doubled the milage of a Civic. 35% was due to exotic materials, aerodynamics, reduced rolling resistance; 35% was due to a more efficient engine and the last 30% was due to the expensive hybrid drivetrain.
By all means hybrids should become more popular, even more popular than conventionally powered but full replacement is based more on dogma and marketing than sound engineering reasons.
... the Flying Spaghetti Monster to protect us from the Scientologists.
Ah, but if you have an Intel Mac then Microsoft Office uses Rosetta. So relatively speaking, NeoOffice is far better on a MacBook than it every could be on an iBook.
You mean this one ? It's no longer owned by Sun.
You fool! The entire online porn industry is just a way to fund the NSA. What better way to ensure they have enough bandwidth and ability to shift lots of data than to control a huge chuck of it. When the time comes the porn will be the first thing they switch off to keep their access. This way they have a network backup operational and ready to operate at the flick of a switch.
[/tinfoilhat]
I was talking about the iMac/Mac Mini more than the laptop-desktop split. The iMac has dropped 60% in weight since it's introduction. Most of that is due to the CRT but not all. A standard Dell chassis is bigger and heavier than it needs to be for most users. The extra material contained within is material that should later be recycled, also. Essentially what I was saying it that it's (environmentally) better to recycle 0% of a current iMac than 10% of a 1st generation one because you're still left with less material.
Similarly, 5% of Dell by weight represents more than 10% of the weight of Apple's annual aggregate output because of their larger share of the market. Environmentalists should never allow themselves (ourselves) to be distracted by loud gestures at the expense of real progress. Greenpeace have a flawed methodology for assessing electronics that looks like it's deliberately designed to make Apple look bad instead of actually taking environmental impact. For example, some of the chemicals that Greenpeace are opposed to are not recognised as toxic (and indeed may not be), they want them excluded as a precautionary principle.
That is fair in some respects but it's insane to treat a company that uses chemicals that are universally agreed to be more dangerous but promises to get rid of them at some point better than a company that doesn't use them and got rid of all the known toxic chemicals. Instead they still are using ones that only Greenpeace say are toxic (based on the precautionary principle). To listen to Greenpeace you'd think that Apple were doing something far more serious, indeed many people do. It's only when you look closely at the details do you see that Greenpeace are flat out distorting the figures to give an unreasonable picture.
The moral high-ground is the one weapon that the environmental movement can rely on. Their importance of their integrity is paramount to the strength of their arguments. They're giving polluters an excuse to say that Greenpeace aren't credible and shouldn't be listened to. Greenpeace are doing more harm than good and as an environmentalist this irritates me.
Perhaps in a while people will be prepared to pay a premium (??$5?? per ipod, ??$20?? per laptop etc) for proper environmental handling.
In Ireland we already do. It's not just included in the price either. It has to be advertised separately so everyone knows that they're paying a fee towards recycling. For example, it's 50 cent more expensive to get a CFL long-life lightbulb.I'd know a few for whom the idea gets an ominous smile after a few beers (if you bring it up).
Jobs correctly pointed out that Apple has got an unfair rap. For example they confirmed the rumour that their screens will have LED backlights (something I heard about in January). Just making the announcement is all that's important to how Greenpeace assessed Apple's environmental record. Apple aren't a more environmentally friendly company they just changed their longstanding policy on product pre-announcements to shut up some Greenpeace trolls who should have known better.
Also, Apple pointed out that they stopped using PVC in their packaging 12 years ago. But Greenpeace gave HP a better environmental score, in part because they are "promising" to remove PVC from their packaging. I've always been bemused by Greenpeace's campaign against Apple because it's complete dishonesty undermines everything else they say.
For example, looking at a figure like weight percentage of product recycled doesn't reflect the inherent differences between product weight. If Apple produce a computer that weighs half as much as a rival then the rival would need to recycle at least 50% just to catch up with Apple (assuming identical environmental impacts per unit weight, obviously).
Adobe would be a bit too expensive IMHO. They already do a really good job on OSX selling software. They're no danger of them leaving macs and they make Apple a lot of money.
Apple buy software companies that make good expensive sofware that sells in reasonably small numbers and then lowers the price so they can sell it to a much wider, mac only, market. Adobe's software portfolio is almost completely wrong for that. Apple couldn't add value to Adobe while killing off Windows versions.
I would have thought that someone like Autodesk would be much better. It would put Apple straight into the CAD market and hence bring cross platform versions of many other CAD programs. Also, they sell a lot of good software which is far too expensive for many prospective customers but profitable because of the high prices. Look at their stuff that's (arguably) less well known than AutoCAD like Fire, Smoke, Maya and an et cetera that covers a lot of things; that'd be worth Autodesks market cap on it's own to Apple (much of it already on OSX). They could port AutoCAD, one of the biggest software packages not already on OSX, and drop the price of the OSX version enough to generate some sales, knowing that they'd more than make the money back through direct sales of Mac Pros. On top of that it would be a big move into the university educational market.
Adobe's too obvious and it's much too late for Apple to buy them.
Had AT&T won this would have strengthened software patents and increased damages across the board. That's because companies sued in the US for a software patent infringement could have damages set based on their worldwide sales, many (even the majority) in areas where software patents aren't valid.
It would be punishing companies for infringements that don't exist. If I use software in Ireland and the maker gets sued in the US they shouldn't be charged for patent violations that aren't violations here. If the software was legally sold here and didn't violate locally recognised patents then the maker didn't do anything wrong (except for directly exporting).
In the long run this will be good for Linux. It also has implications for other judgements such as the EOLAS case, I think.
1. Get taken over by Oracle
2. Profit
3. Fork MySQL
4. ???
5. Profit (again)
Sounds good to me
There are a couple of carpet styles that most people use. It's nice to have the choice to pick whatever you want if you know exactly how you want it.
What most people do is talk to a few friends or just pick the same colour as someone who had a nice house.
Apple and Microsoft don't really give you much choice. The difference is that you're picking Steve Jobs' tastes instead of Steve Ballmers'. Jobs picks everything the way he likes it and seems best. Ballmer picks something that he thinks will go everywhere: hotels, offices, bedrooms, living rooms &c.
They should just charge a large deposit (in addition to the fee), refundable when the patent is granted. Then the patent office would have an incentive for examining and rejecting spurious patents. Some companies seem to have a throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach to patent applications.
This discourages spurious (and non-novel patents), reducing the workload on the patent office while giving the patent offices more resources to examine patents.
Really, of course they just shouldn't have software patents, period. Both ideas would lead to a better functioning patent system.
in that case they really are very similar to day traders
I hope you didn't work for RIM
That's one option. If you already had a good screen you could just get a macbook and then you'd have a decent desktop setup and a laptop. Cost about the same too. Depends on how interested you are in screen spanning. I've been doing it a bit lately, it's nice but not essential for me.