It'll help keep the consumer costs down for the product
Should probably qualify that by saying that it'll reduce the product for one product by subsidizing with the prices of several other products. It all equals out in the end.
The memory managment is not "turned over" to the system. There is an automagic Garbage Collector like Java, but you still have control if you don't want to wait for the automagic processes.
True but not true. You can explicitly "free" your objects, and you can politely request a garbage collection via gc.Collect(), however neither guarantees that all released objects will be collected and the memory released, and gc.Collect really is just a polite suggestion.
One of my prime criteria when buying technical tomes is ensuring that they didn't fill 2/3rd of the book full of "reference" type material (library function listings, etc). In the era of online help and resources, this is not only unnecessary, it's counter productive.
Good point, though I believe it's more an issue of altitude rather than speed. i.e. When you're on the ground the curve of the Earth (not to mention limited power) limits your cell phones reach to the relatively short cell towers, so your phone isn't confusingly trying to talk to multiple towers at once (and they lay out the seven different frequencies to facilitate this as well), but when you're at 30,000 feet suddenly you can equally talk to dozens of towers at the same frequency.
Re:But what does it actually sound like???
on
AAC vs. OGG vs. MP3
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· Score: 1
Where have you seen a spectrum graphic from Microsoft purporting the graphed advantage of Windows Media? Links please.
Personally I've never seen anything of the sort, and that has not been Microsoft's approach. Microsoft does claim that WMA sounds better in blind testing, and I will personally agree with that, and indeed I am busy listening to some Tori Amos ripped in WMA9 160Kbps, and my personal anecdotal tests with a wide variety of the music I listen to shows WMA to be the winner against MP3, even when MP3 is at a substantially higher bitrate.
Of course this is purely my own subjective opinion and nothing more. I would really like to see some large scale blind studies of all of the various codecs, and went searching for them before I started the process of ripping all of the CDs I own for convenience reasons. Of course such a study is basically a futile exercise: Whoever is on the losing end will complain that a different set of esoteric command line options should have been used, and since they weren't it's invalidated. Of course that's the nature of the argument whenever cult-type products come out on the losing end. MySQL lose the benchmark? Well you should have compiled it with version x.x.x and used the launching commands xyz on kernel x.x.x, etc.
No, but you appearantly would. See, I prefer to find out what's really going on. You, however, would accept graphs and statistics by some magazine simply because they're colorful.
Do you realize how absurd this sounds? On the one hand you're saying that the anecdotal evidence of one man's observation regarding the effectiveness of a single product; especially in light of the fact that, for larger purchases like the Ionic Breeze, people often become defensively non-critical; is sufficient proof of the worthiness of a product, but a comparative study between multiple competitive products with a documented, and reproducible, methodology where they observed the effectiveness isn't worthy (masked under the righteous "graphs and statistics". Uh huh). What makes this especially hilarious is that Consumer Report's #1 choice was a very similar product, but with a fan (rather invalidating your claims, btw).
Bah. You remind me of people who are certain that smoking is healthy because they have a friend whose smoking grandmother lived to be 95. No way will they be "mislead" by fancy graphs and statistics. No sireee!
As a bit of a anecdote that is similar to this argument: I remember back in the late 80s/early 90s when a local BBS in my hometown hosted a file in their download section called "386to486.exe" (or a variation thereof) that, when run, scrolled by pages of fascinating numbers and little "performance tests", assuring the user at the end "Upgrade complete. 386 converted to 486.", and surely it must really have morphed the silicon on the processor given all of those fancy computer-esque terms floating by. I petitioned for the sysop to remove it in an online discussion only to be met by several people fervently advocating that they'd run the program and, lo and behold, it worked! It really did turn their 386 into a 486! Suddenly Wordperfect just "felt faster", and games "played better", and of course, oddly they had "less crashes".
Here's where I think you and I differ. My natural instinct would be skepticism (though technically I know the feat was impossible, I'll play along just to humor them): Let's ensure that it didn't modify the click rate of the system clock (which is common for snake oil fixes like that), and run some actual benchmarks to get some before and actual metrics of the system (which is the CR methodology). Your belief, apparently, is that because they claimed that it sped up their PCs, therefore it does, and is undebatable fact that cannot be questioned or opposed. I think you can look forward to a long life of magic cleaners, oil additives, and miracle drugs.
Oh good grief. If you're going to attack my point, at least attack the ones you can reasonably attack well.:-P
Uh..ok. I'd turn that around and say the same thing to you for every reply in this entire conversation.
Fine. Get two of the devices. Turn one on. Leave one off. Watch the on one gather dust and the off one not.
I'm not the one claiming it works. Indeed, I'm not the one claiming that it doesn't work. However simply claiming evidence that one has to clean dust off of a device therefore it works is pretty weak evidence, though if you're willing to set up two such devices I would be very interested.I'd be especially interested if you furthermore compared it against devices that used other forms of filtration, as the original skeptic claimed that the fanless ionic filtration was weak compared to other filters (no one has said that it does _nothing_, but just that as a filter it's rather piss poor).
a) This device doesn't create heat.
It consumes electricity but it doesn't create heat...okay......Really, look into the dynamics of the principle itself.
Oh, right, because I'm a big advocate/cynic of ionic air filtration. You're really trying for a strawman argument here aren't you? Please feel free to look thorugh my posts and deride where I wasn't specifically referring to someone else and their opinion, or a study.
For one thin, yes, his observation SHOULD be accepted as true, if it's a valid observation. Facts simply are. They're not subject to debate. You can question the person's motives or methods or say he's lying. That I have no problem with. But this skeptic guy didn't do that. He's believing Consumer Reports to such a great extent that he'll visiously attack someone who says "it works" because hey, authority said differently. The skeptic here blindly accepts his authority on the subject (Consumer Reports) and anyone else is obviously wrong.
Personally observations expressed as facts absolutely are open to debate. Your impression that they are faultless is truly a sign of great naivety. So when people respond favourably to placebos, that is an indication that sugar has medicinal qualities?
I don't believe CR for shit anymore, because they're wrong in nearly all cases I have personally investigated. You may disagree. Fine. But the point I made is not to believe anybody that blindly. Instead, get the damn thing and decide for yourself. That's the point I was trying to make.
Interesting consumer technique: Trust no-one and buy everything and see what you think personally (man I'm going to need a bigger drive way for my 200 cars). Oh, wait, simultaneously believe any subjective impression presented as fact online without question. This makes absolutely no sense.
To tell him he's been duped when he's the one cleaning the dust off the blades every couple of days is a bit ridiclous.
So my desk is a air filtration system? I'm literally cleaning a layer of dust off it every week (indeed I'm behind so there's a hearty layer of dust on it right now). Indeed, pretty much everything in my house must be a highly effective air filtration system as it all seems to magically attract dust. Maybe I should sell "picture frame air filtration systems" based upon the evidence that I have to clean dust off them frequently. I apologize for being sarcastic, however the observation that one cleans dust off something, without any sort of quantity or comparison to a placebo, is of limited value. Couple this with the fact that the skeptic specifically stated that the electrostatic filter approach is a good one, and will likely draw in dust in a close proximity, and one could accept that yes, sure it does draw in some dust, but it most certainly isn't a virtual fan. As far as your silk ribbon test, I suggest you declare any static object a air draw, specifically those that create heat, and hold a silk ribbon near them...they're defending the guy who makes personal observations and decides for himself rather than simply believing anyone and everyone else's opinions.
Your point is contradictory: You claim that his observation should be lauded and accepted as true without question, while simultaneously holding him (the fanless ionization guy) as deciding for himself rather than "simply believing anyone and everyone else's opinions". Huh?
Some people need air filtering, but cannot deal with noise. If you need air filtering and don't mind noise, then by all means get a fan system.
This is the first time I've seen noise brought up at all. The original skeptic pointed out that the device in question used a good approach if only it had a fan, and that there were other units with a fan that were a far better choices. The defenders, I'd say almost certainly owners of the device in question defending their judgement in buying such a device, have come out swinging in a rather bizarre way, blaming the methodology of the Consumer Reports testing (which is fair), or worse blaming the right of Consumer Reports to test at all.
The original poster claimed to have one installed, and claimed that it was pulling dust out of the air. You state that he's wrong because some magazine said so?... Calling someone's personal observations "wrong" because they have a claim that disagrees with what you've read about is an interesting tactic.
The magazine in question does actual scientific studies with equipment, such as dispersing a measurable amount of air pollution (dust) and then measuring the quantity remaining after a period of time: In the end there is simple scientific fact derived by experimentation.
An individual person, making a subjective observation, is widely acknowledged as having flawed perception and a hearty "placebo effect": People are certain that the magic marker around the outside of their CD makes it sound better, and putting a spoiler on their 89 Civic makes it go faster. There are numerous legendary examples I could give of people simply believing something works and convincing themselves of the same, and that seems to be what you're advocating.
You can't tell us we're wrong, because Consumer Reports said so, and expect to be believed by any reasonable human being.
What's with the CR hate? It's a non-profit organization just looking at avoiding "belief", but instead judging products based upon scientific experimentation. Question the method used to evaluate the product, but questioning the evaulation itself seems rather flawed.
You know I think people take the "Slashdot is my big brother!" Slashdotter way out of proportion: It really isn't THAT many hits from an average Slashdotting. I think one linked story administrator found that about 6000 people followed the link and read the article. Big deal. Do you really think that that is even more than a tiny blip to Microsoft? Yeah maybe if it's on some fringe server as a humor point that server might go down, but the likelihood of it having a measureable effect on the front-line Microsoft services (one of the top 3 most trafficked sites on the net. I don't think Slashdot.org is on the top 100) then you're nuts.
Errr, no it isn't. I think you're taking the use of the term "master" a little too literally: Obviously I'm not taking the picture and then putting the CompactFlash card into a shoebox for safekeeping: I can copy that file a million times with each copy being an exact replica of the original - A new master. Compare this to film where each replication of the origianl degrades, limiting such a scheme, but instead I can burn them all on a CD-R (actually several), and in a couple of years I'm sure I'll save space and increase convenience by copying all of those onto a DVD-R, and then a decade later on a super-high storage a DVD-Blu, and then a couple of years later on holographic online P2P storage, etc. This master, as mentioned, will never degrade with time: It is exactly like it was when I first took it.
Who cares if the printouts are durable? (though I will say that many digital printouts are as durable as print) With digital photographs you have the digital "master" that will never degrade with time. I can print it out every 10 years if I want.
Regarding the cost of digital versus film: I recently made the transition, getting myself a wonderful little Canon S50BK 5MP to replace my Minolta 5xi semi-pro SLR 35MM. Here are my observations:
-The S50 is tiny-> I actually bring it places, and use it without getting attention as a "wanna be professional photographer" (which large 35MM SLRs unfortunately do). It's much more convenient, yet unlike a standard cheap little POS the quality is not compromised whatsoever.
-Because it's digital, I take ___WAY___ more pictures than I used to. Because I instantly get feedback on how it turned out, the chances of getting a good picture are dramatically better. In the past 3 weeks or so I've taken some 400 pictures.
-To get professional quality, as-good-as-35mm-quality costs me $0.50 Canadian from FuturePhoto (printing it out on your own inkjet is generally lower quality, and usually higher priced, though of course there is tremendous versatility with that). When you add up film and processing, that's easily on par with standard 35mm, however here's the kicker: I only get the good pictures processed, whereas with 35mm I got the good and the bad, so probably 50% of the pictures (or more) I wouldn't have gotten developed if I had the option. Because of this in the end digital is far less expensive for me.
-Getting larger prints (ex. 8x10) definitely swings in favour of digital where I've found digital beats optical by a pretty good factor (apart from those shops that are just scanning the print and digitally printing)
But they don't even talk about upload, which is where DSL stomps all over cable's ass.
To the majority of users upload is largely irrelevant. Having said that, you dismiss the report and then unilaterally and conclusively proclaim that "DSL stomps all over cable's ass" when it comes to upload. In my area my Cogeco@Home is capped at 50KB/second (and gets it constantly) while the competing ADSL is capped at 25KB/second. My downstream is capped at 3Mbps (300KB/second) while the competing ADSL is capped at from 500Kbps to 1Mbps. Works great for grabbing software, playing online multiplayer games (my PC only needs to upload the information for me, but needs to download the information for more than a dozen or more other players).
Nor do they talk about terms of service, which is where DSL stomps all over what was left of cable's ass.
Geez you're defensive about your use of DSL. Most DSL services are run by the same large, faceless, "greedy" enterprises as cable, and most share the same sort of legaleze and restrictions. Is there something fundamental about DSL that makes it this bastion of freedom that you proclaim? Bah.
And if that's what you want -- to sit in front of a mouse-driven boob tube and salivate over pictures all day long -- then sure, cable modem service is for you. Go knock yourself out.
How in the world did you get moderated anything other than troll? Clearly you disagree with the article, but your retort seems to be venom to the exact opposite pole (rather than finding a middle ground which is most other comments have. Along the lines of "It really varies based upon your provider and region").
Brands are powerful things, Coke, Kleenex, Xerox, Viagra... And now Pentium.
Agree, but technological items don't carry brand association power than other goods and services do: A long-lasting brand in technology can often be an anchor more than it's a float. When I hear "Pentium" my natural association is with a very old processor line, not something cutting edge. When I hear "USB 2.0" I naturally think "obsolete" simply because I assocate it with USB 1.1, whereas Firewire is free from those brand associations so it sounds "fast".
Personally I think sticking with the Pentium name has been a massive disaster for Intel: There's a marketing push to move from the "obsolete" Pentium to the "new, faster" "OmniproTM" processor (man, you still have a "Pentium" in yours?), but when it's "Pentium III 1.2Ghz -> Pentium IV 2Ghz -> Pentium IV 2Ghz HT.13" It just sounds more like moving laterally than vertically.
Every now and then I get a moderation stalker, and it gives me the warm fuzzies inside knowing that I've inspired someone. Someone, presumably offended by something I've stated as of late, just went through my message history moderating them all "troll". I wish like Kuro5hin you could see the moderators as I really do get a kick out of rather psychotic actions like that.
Remember that these were supposed answers to "what are your greatest weaknesses", so obviously if someone answers "perfectionist" or "work too hard" then clearly, if they are answering the question and not just lying through their teeth, they are weaknesses in the way that I said. If someone is so arrogant and personally blind that they truly don't think they have any weaknesses, or that it's none of the interviewer's businesses, then they could answer as such, but if they profess them as weaknesses then there definitely are negative connotations to them.
How about I judge you right now for posting what you did?
Be my guest! I'm hardly looking for you to hire me, and given that this is the best we have to evaluate and understand each other, of course you judge me based upon what I post. The same should be expected in an interview: Perhaps you are the smartest person who has ever existed, and is God's gift to mankind, but if you don't answer the questions that the interviewer asks to their satisfaction, then so be it. It's probably for the best if the interviewee thinks the questions are moronic that they don't get the job, as clearly they won't fit into the corporate or social culture of the job anyways.
I wouldn't call it a "moronic question" whatsoever: Certainly no worse than pulling a "brainteaser for dummies" out of the net archives, which is what the majority of "clever" Microsoft-like questions are. It's like being the Jeopardy host and smirking in self-satisfaction because you know all the answers...because you have them in front of you.
Questions like "What is your greatest weakness" can show a tremendous amount about the applicant, and is more of a discussion starter than a literal questions. As far as how the applicant answers, I can see definite downsides to "I'm a perfectionist" (meaning: I never finish projects because I'm always working on "just one last issue") or "I work too hard" (meaning: I'm a martyr and will likely have a serious case of burn-out several months down the road, not to mention upsetting the work apple-cart).
Any question at an interview, asked and interpreted by someone with intelligence, is a powerful question. Do you eat lunch? What are your career goals? What is an optimal work day? All of these questions can give great insight into the honesty and character of the interviewee. Personally I think the "Microsoft questions" are grossly overstated, and asking brainteasers most certainly didn't make Microsoft the success that it is (especially true to those that believe that Microsoft is more of a marketing success than a technical success. Personally I believe that they're a great technical success as well, but just pointing out the paradox).
Re:What's the Point...
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The Virus Did It
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The point of trojans generally is that they let the evil hacker commit crimes in a less trackable way: Whether it's DOSing Yahoo, defacing websites, or cracking into banks. It seems logical to extrapolate that that they could use it to download and archive their child pornography as well, leaving all tracks pointing to the poor trojaned PC owner, while the hacker disappears into the night. While it's obvious that defenses like this mean that every child porn fanatic is going to stick a trojan on their PC to have a legal out, realistically it means that law enforcement should consider options when they move in on a suspect, such as monitoring all incoming and outgoing traffic for control commands, etc, or replacing the user's PC with a honeypot.
Interesting that the fix is a software fix. While this sounds like some sort of BIOS patch or the like, apparently the P4 has downloadable microcode so perhaps it's actually reprogramming the chips themselves. Dvorak, of PC Magazine fame, had a conspiratorial article once about the threat that this presents in that information on how to reset the microcode in the hands of a virus writer could be devastating (and achieve the holy pinnacle of computer vandals of actually damaging hardware, and least perceptably).
On a whole other topic, isn't it about time that Intel dumped the "Pentium" name? Pentium of course was named to be a variation of pent*, meaning 5, which was natural given that it followed the 486. Here we are how many years later still using the term "Pentium" despite a processor core that shares virtually nothing with its predecessors. Will we have a "Pential Pentium"? Should the HT P4 be a Pentium Pentium? And of course naming the newly designed mobile chip "Pentium M" was an absolutely moronic branding maneuver. Maybe they should call their consumer 64-bit processor the "Triber SX"?
I digress but just wanted to complain about Intel naming conventions as of late.
Slashdot Mirror
47 cents...$700...what's the diff, eh?
Oh, I get it: Funny! Ha ha ha ha.
Here's one. Hardly technical (the site is a high level type site) but very interesting.
It'll help keep the consumer costs down for the product
Should probably qualify that by saying that it'll reduce the product for one product by subsidizing with the prices of several other products. It all equals out in the end.
Now with aspartame goodness!
The memory managment is not "turned over" to the system. There is an automagic Garbage Collector like Java, but you still have control if you don't want to wait for the automagic processes.
True but not true. You can explicitly "free" your objects, and you can politely request a garbage collection via gc.Collect(), however neither guarantees that all released objects will be collected and the memory released, and gc.Collect really is just a polite suggestion.
One of my prime criteria when buying technical tomes is ensuring that they didn't fill 2/3rd of the book full of "reference" type material (library function listings, etc). In the era of online help and resources, this is not only unnecessary, it's counter productive.
Good point, though I believe it's more an issue of altitude rather than speed. i.e. When you're on the ground the curve of the Earth (not to mention limited power) limits your cell phones reach to the relatively short cell towers, so your phone isn't confusingly trying to talk to multiple towers at once (and they lay out the seven different frequencies to facilitate this as well), but when you're at 30,000 feet suddenly you can equally talk to dozens of towers at the same frequency.
Where have you seen a spectrum graphic from Microsoft purporting the graphed advantage of Windows Media? Links please.
Personally I've never seen anything of the sort, and that has not been Microsoft's approach. Microsoft does claim that WMA sounds better in blind testing, and I will personally agree with that, and indeed I am busy listening to some Tori Amos ripped in WMA9 160Kbps, and my personal anecdotal tests with a wide variety of the music I listen to shows WMA to be the winner against MP3, even when MP3 is at a substantially higher bitrate.
Of course this is purely my own subjective opinion and nothing more. I would really like to see some large scale blind studies of all of the various codecs, and went searching for them before I started the process of ripping all of the CDs I own for convenience reasons. Of course such a study is basically a futile exercise: Whoever is on the losing end will complain that a different set of esoteric command line options should have been used, and since they weren't it's invalidated. Of course that's the nature of the argument whenever cult-type products come out on the losing end. MySQL lose the benchmark? Well you should have compiled it with version x.x.x and used the launching commands xyz on kernel x.x.x, etc.
Tis rather odd that bsd.slashdot.org brings you to BSD-centric content, but linux.slashdot.org just brings you to the standard front page.
No, but you appearantly would. See, I prefer to find out what's really going on. You, however, would accept graphs and statistics by some magazine simply because they're colorful.
Do you realize how absurd this sounds? On the one hand you're saying that the anecdotal evidence of one man's observation regarding the effectiveness of a single product; especially in light of the fact that, for larger purchases like the Ionic Breeze, people often become defensively non-critical; is sufficient proof of the worthiness of a product, but a comparative study between multiple competitive products with a documented, and reproducible, methodology where they observed the effectiveness isn't worthy (masked under the righteous "graphs and statistics". Uh huh). What makes this especially hilarious is that Consumer Report's #1 choice was a very similar product, but with a fan (rather invalidating your claims, btw).
Bah. You remind me of people who are certain that smoking is healthy because they have a friend whose smoking grandmother lived to be 95. No way will they be "mislead" by fancy graphs and statistics. No sireee!
As a bit of a anecdote that is similar to this argument: I remember back in the late 80s/early 90s when a local BBS in my hometown hosted a file in their download section called "386to486.exe" (or a variation thereof) that, when run, scrolled by pages of fascinating numbers and little "performance tests", assuring the user at the end "Upgrade complete. 386 converted to 486.", and surely it must really have morphed the silicon on the processor given all of those fancy computer-esque terms floating by. I petitioned for the sysop to remove it in an online discussion only to be met by several people fervently advocating that they'd run the program and, lo and behold, it worked! It really did turn their 386 into a 486! Suddenly Wordperfect just "felt faster", and games "played better", and of course, oddly they had "less crashes".
Here's where I think you and I differ. My natural instinct would be skepticism (though technically I know the feat was impossible, I'll play along just to humor them): Let's ensure that it didn't modify the click rate of the system clock (which is common for snake oil fixes like that), and run some actual benchmarks to get some before and actual metrics of the system (which is the CR methodology). Your belief, apparently, is that because they claimed that it sped up their PCs, therefore it does, and is undebatable fact that cannot be questioned or opposed. I think you can look forward to a long life of magic cleaners, oil additives, and miracle drugs.
Oh good grief. If you're going to attack my point, at least attack the ones you can reasonably attack well. :-P
...Really, look into the dynamics of the principle itself.
Uh..ok. I'd turn that around and say the same thing to you for every reply in this entire conversation.
Fine. Get two of the devices. Turn one on. Leave one off. Watch the on one gather dust and the off one not.
I'm not the one claiming it works. Indeed, I'm not the one claiming that it doesn't work. However simply claiming evidence that one has to clean dust off of a device therefore it works is pretty weak evidence, though if you're willing to set up two such devices I would be very interested.I'd be especially interested if you furthermore compared it against devices that used other forms of filtration, as the original skeptic claimed that the fanless ionic filtration was weak compared to other filters (no one has said that it does _nothing_, but just that as a filter it's rather piss poor).
a) This device doesn't create heat.
It consumes electricity but it doesn't create heat...okay...
Oh, right, because I'm a big advocate/cynic of ionic air filtration. You're really trying for a strawman argument here aren't you? Please feel free to look thorugh my posts and deride where I wasn't specifically referring to someone else and their opinion, or a study.
For one thin, yes, his observation SHOULD be accepted as true, if it's a valid observation. Facts simply are. They're not subject to debate. You can question the person's motives or methods or say he's lying. That I have no problem with. But this skeptic guy didn't do that. He's believing Consumer Reports to such a great extent that he'll visiously attack someone who says "it works" because hey, authority said differently. The skeptic here blindly accepts his authority on the subject (Consumer Reports) and anyone else is obviously wrong.
Personally observations expressed as facts absolutely are open to debate. Your impression that they are faultless is truly a sign of great naivety. So when people respond favourably to placebos, that is an indication that sugar has medicinal qualities?
I don't believe CR for shit anymore, because they're wrong in nearly all cases I have personally investigated. You may disagree. Fine. But the point I made is not to believe anybody that blindly. Instead, get the damn thing and decide for yourself. That's the point I was trying to make.
Interesting consumer technique: Trust no-one and buy everything and see what you think personally (man I'm going to need a bigger drive way for my 200 cars). Oh, wait, simultaneously believe any subjective impression presented as fact online without question. This makes absolutely no sense.
To tell him he's been duped when he's the one cleaning the dust off the blades every couple of days is a bit ridiclous.
..they're defending the guy who makes personal observations and decides for himself rather than simply believing anyone and everyone else's opinions.
So my desk is a air filtration system? I'm literally cleaning a layer of dust off it every week (indeed I'm behind so there's a hearty layer of dust on it right now). Indeed, pretty much everything in my house must be a highly effective air filtration system as it all seems to magically attract dust. Maybe I should sell "picture frame air filtration systems" based upon the evidence that I have to clean dust off them frequently. I apologize for being sarcastic, however the observation that one cleans dust off something, without any sort of quantity or comparison to a placebo, is of limited value. Couple this with the fact that the skeptic specifically stated that the electrostatic filter approach is a good one, and will likely draw in dust in a close proximity, and one could accept that yes, sure it does draw in some dust, but it most certainly isn't a virtual fan. As far as your silk ribbon test, I suggest you declare any static object a air draw, specifically those that create heat, and hold a silk ribbon near them.
Your point is contradictory: You claim that his observation should be lauded and accepted as true without question, while simultaneously holding him (the fanless ionization guy) as deciding for himself rather than "simply believing anyone and everyone else's opinions". Huh?
Some people need air filtering, but cannot deal with noise. If you need air filtering and don't mind noise, then by all means get a fan system.
This is the first time I've seen noise brought up at all. The original skeptic pointed out that the device in question used a good approach if only it had a fan, and that there were other units with a fan that were a far better choices. The defenders, I'd say almost certainly owners of the device in question defending their judgement in buying such a device, have come out swinging in a rather bizarre way, blaming the methodology of the Consumer Reports testing (which is fair), or worse blaming the right of Consumer Reports to test at all.
The original poster claimed to have one installed, and claimed that it was pulling dust out of the air. You state that he's wrong because some magazine said so? ... Calling someone's personal observations "wrong" because they have a claim that disagrees with what you've read about is an interesting tactic.
The magazine in question does actual scientific studies with equipment, such as dispersing a measurable amount of air pollution (dust) and then measuring the quantity remaining after a period of time: In the end there is simple scientific fact derived by experimentation.
An individual person, making a subjective observation, is widely acknowledged as having flawed perception and a hearty "placebo effect": People are certain that the magic marker around the outside of their CD makes it sound better, and putting a spoiler on their 89 Civic makes it go faster. There are numerous legendary examples I could give of people simply believing something works and convincing themselves of the same, and that seems to be what you're advocating.
You can't tell us we're wrong, because Consumer Reports said so, and expect to be believed by any reasonable human being.
What's with the CR hate? It's a non-profit organization just looking at avoiding "belief", but instead judging products based upon scientific experimentation. Question the method used to evaluate the product, but questioning the evaulation itself seems rather flawed.
Or Slashdot in general... One fullscreen Goatse ascii art snuck past the filter might confuse and frighten coworkers.
You know I think people take the "Slashdot is my big brother!" Slashdotter way out of proportion: It really isn't THAT many hits from an average Slashdotting. I think one linked story administrator found that about 6000 people followed the link and read the article. Big deal. Do you really think that that is even more than a tiny blip to Microsoft? Yeah maybe if it's on some fringe server as a humor point that server might go down, but the likelihood of it having a measureable effect on the front-line Microsoft services (one of the top 3 most trafficked sites on the net. I don't think Slashdot.org is on the top 100) then you're nuts.
This is, of course, completely wrong.
Errr, no it isn't. I think you're taking the use of the term "master" a little too literally: Obviously I'm not taking the picture and then putting the CompactFlash card into a shoebox for safekeeping: I can copy that file a million times with each copy being an exact replica of the original - A new master. Compare this to film where each replication of the origianl degrades, limiting such a scheme, but instead I can burn them all on a CD-R (actually several), and in a couple of years I'm sure I'll save space and increase convenience by copying all of those onto a DVD-R, and then a decade later on a super-high storage a DVD-Blu, and then a couple of years later on holographic online P2P storage, etc. This master, as mentioned, will never degrade with time: It is exactly like it was when I first took it.
Who cares if the printouts are durable? (though I will say that many digital printouts are as durable as print) With digital photographs you have the digital "master" that will never degrade with time. I can print it out every 10 years if I want.
Regarding the cost of digital versus film: I recently made the transition, getting myself a wonderful little Canon S50BK 5MP to replace my Minolta 5xi semi-pro SLR 35MM. Here are my observations:
-The S50 is tiny-> I actually bring it places, and use it without getting attention as a "wanna be professional photographer" (which large 35MM SLRs unfortunately do). It's much more convenient, yet unlike a standard cheap little POS the quality is not compromised whatsoever.
-Because it's digital, I take ___WAY___ more pictures than I used to. Because I instantly get feedback on how it turned out, the chances of getting a good picture are dramatically better. In the past 3 weeks or so I've taken some 400 pictures.
-To get professional quality, as-good-as-35mm-quality costs me $0.50 Canadian from FuturePhoto (printing it out on your own inkjet is generally lower quality, and usually higher priced, though of course there is tremendous versatility with that). When you add up film and processing, that's easily on par with standard 35mm, however here's the kicker: I only get the good pictures processed, whereas with 35mm I got the good and the bad, so probably 50% of the pictures (or more) I wouldn't have gotten developed if I had the option. Because of this in
the end digital is far less expensive for me.
-Getting larger prints (ex. 8x10) definitely swings in favour of digital where I've found digital beats optical by a pretty good factor (apart from those shops that are just scanning the print and digitally printing)
But they don't even talk about upload, which is where DSL stomps all over cable's ass.
To the majority of users upload is largely irrelevant. Having said that, you dismiss the report and then unilaterally and conclusively proclaim that "DSL stomps all over cable's ass" when it comes to upload. In my area my Cogeco@Home is capped at 50KB/second (and gets it constantly) while the competing ADSL is capped at 25KB/second. My downstream is capped at 3Mbps (300KB/second) while the competing ADSL is capped at from 500Kbps to 1Mbps. Works great for grabbing software, playing online multiplayer games (my PC only needs to upload the information for me, but needs to download the information for more than a dozen or more other players).
Nor do they talk about terms of service, which is where DSL stomps all over what was left of cable's ass.
Geez you're defensive about your use of DSL. Most DSL services are run by the same large, faceless, "greedy" enterprises as cable, and most share the same sort of legaleze and restrictions. Is there something fundamental about DSL that makes it this bastion of freedom that you proclaim? Bah.
And if that's what you want -- to sit in front of a mouse-driven boob tube and salivate over pictures all day long -- then sure, cable modem service is for you. Go knock yourself out.
How in the world did you get moderated anything other than troll? Clearly you disagree with the article, but your retort seems to be venom to the exact opposite pole (rather than finding a middle ground which is most other comments have. Along the lines of "It really varies based upon your provider and region").
Brands are powerful things, Coke, Kleenex, Xerox, Viagra... And now Pentium.
.13" It just sounds more like moving laterally than vertically.
Agree, but technological items don't carry brand association power than other goods and services do: A long-lasting brand in technology can often be an anchor more than it's a float. When I hear "Pentium" my natural association is with a very old processor line, not something cutting edge. When I hear "USB 2.0" I naturally think "obsolete" simply because I assocate it with USB 1.1, whereas Firewire is free from those brand associations so it sounds "fast".
Personally I think sticking with the Pentium name has been a massive disaster for Intel: There's a marketing push to move from the "obsolete" Pentium to the "new, faster" "OmniproTM" processor (man, you still have a "Pentium" in yours?), but when it's "Pentium III 1.2Ghz -> Pentium IV 2Ghz -> Pentium IV 2Ghz HT
Every now and then I get a moderation stalker, and it gives me the warm fuzzies inside knowing that I've inspired someone. Someone, presumably offended by something I've stated as of late, just went through my message history moderating them all "troll". I wish like Kuro5hin you could see the moderators as I really do get a kick out of rather psychotic actions like that.
Remember that these were supposed answers to "what are your greatest weaknesses", so obviously if someone answers "perfectionist" or "work too hard" then clearly, if they are answering the question and not just lying through their teeth, they are weaknesses in the way that I said. If someone is so arrogant and personally blind that they truly don't think they have any weaknesses, or that it's none of the interviewer's businesses, then they could answer as such, but if they profess them as weaknesses then there definitely are negative connotations to them.
How about I judge you right now for posting what you did?
Be my guest! I'm hardly looking for you to hire me, and given that this is the best we have to evaluate and understand each other, of course you judge me based upon what I post. The same should be expected in an interview: Perhaps you are the smartest person who has ever existed, and is God's gift to mankind, but if you don't answer the questions that the interviewer asks to their satisfaction, then so be it. It's probably for the best if the interviewee thinks the questions are moronic that they don't get the job, as clearly they won't fit into the corporate or social culture of the job anyways.
I wouldn't call it a "moronic question" whatsoever: Certainly no worse than pulling a "brainteaser for dummies" out of the net archives, which is what the majority of "clever" Microsoft-like questions are. It's like being the Jeopardy host and smirking in self-satisfaction because you know all the answers...because you have them in front of you.
Questions like "What is your greatest weakness" can show a tremendous amount about the applicant, and is more of a discussion starter than a literal questions. As far as how the applicant answers, I can see definite downsides to "I'm a perfectionist" (meaning: I never finish projects because I'm always working on "just one last issue") or "I work too hard" (meaning: I'm a martyr and will likely have a serious case of burn-out several months down the road, not to mention upsetting the work apple-cart).
Any question at an interview, asked and interpreted by someone with intelligence, is a powerful question. Do you eat lunch? What are your career goals? What is an optimal work day? All of these questions can give great insight into the honesty and character of the interviewee. Personally I think the "Microsoft questions" are grossly overstated, and asking brainteasers most certainly didn't make Microsoft the success that it is (especially true to those that believe that Microsoft is more of a marketing success than a technical success. Personally I believe that they're a great technical success as well, but just pointing out the paradox).
The point of trojans generally is that they let the evil hacker commit crimes in a less trackable way: Whether it's DOSing Yahoo, defacing websites, or cracking into banks. It seems logical to extrapolate that that they could use it to download and archive their child pornography as well, leaving all tracks pointing to the poor trojaned PC owner, while the hacker disappears into the night. While it's obvious that defenses like this mean that every child porn fanatic is going to stick a trojan on their PC to have a legal out, realistically it means that law enforcement should consider options when they move in on a suspect, such as monitoring all incoming and outgoing traffic for control commands, etc, or replacing the user's PC with a honeypot.
Interesting that the fix is a software fix. While this sounds like some sort of BIOS patch or the like, apparently the P4 has downloadable microcode so perhaps it's actually reprogramming the chips themselves. Dvorak, of PC Magazine fame, had a conspiratorial article once about the threat that this presents in that information on how to reset the microcode in the hands of a virus writer could be devastating (and achieve the holy pinnacle of computer vandals of actually damaging hardware, and least perceptably).
On a whole other topic, isn't it about time that Intel dumped the "Pentium" name? Pentium of course was named to be a variation of pent*, meaning 5, which was natural given that it followed the 486. Here we are how many years later still using the term "Pentium" despite a processor core that shares virtually nothing with its predecessors. Will we have a "Pential Pentium"? Should the HT P4 be a Pentium Pentium? And of course naming the newly designed mobile chip "Pentium M" was an absolutely moronic branding maneuver. Maybe they should call their consumer 64-bit processor the "Triber SX"?
I digress but just wanted to complain about Intel naming conventions as of late.