Unfortunately, the title should be "The Sierra of Titan". The word sierra refers to an entire mountain range, and the plural is rarely appropriate. This might weaken the Vonnegut allusion a bit, but at least it uses the word correctly.
This is a common mistake. TFA quotes one of the scientists behind the work saying: "One could call them Titan's Sierras." While I might not expect much of slashdot summaries, he should know better.
I believe all new automobile tires in the U.S. come with unique, tamper-proof RFID chips in them already.
No. Not yet, anyway. There is a standard for auto tire RFIDs, that meets both automobile industry and retail requirements, but RFID industry sources say it will be years before these are widely deployed. Michelin is testing them. Goodyear has them to track leased race tires. Your car does not.
Even so, it may be time to start thinking of ways to extend that tin foil hat.
I have not seen evidence supporting that claim. On the contrary, Bertrand Serlet, SVP of Software Engineering at Apple, was quoted in August deriding Windows activation.
Too bad it is not a model of arithmetic. Nonstandard analysis, with its infinite and infinitessimals is, but you still can't divide by zero. IEEE floats, by the way, have both positive and negative infinity as well as NaN.
TFA is all but useless, mercifully so because I don't expect this "invention" breaks any new ground.
Finder is dandy for adding files to an MP3 player, but I don't know how to use it to delete them. I saw the free memory on my player quickly disappear and discovered all the "deleted" content in.Trashes. Maybe someone has a
Aha! You like trackpoints because you keep your fingers on the home row.
Good for you. That helps explain your preference.
Still, you said not having three buttons was part of the problem without
explaining why. And that makes me wonder since my experience shows it works quite well, even for applications that need 2 or 3 buttons.
I am also puzzled because you confirmed my complaint about 3-button laptops - that you have to move your thumb sideways for every mouse click - and then said Apple's interface is the awkward one. Have you tried them both long enough to get used to them?
Anyway, my point is that many people who are used to three-button laptops may well find Apple's one-button approach more than adequate. Having used both for thousands of hours, I have - to my own surprise - come to prefer the single button trackpad. Not only for native OS X applications, but for Windows (under parallels and via VNC) and X11, using 2- or 3-button emulation. So much so, that I prefer using my laptop to interface with my Windows box rather than the very nice keyboard and mouse on it.
Apple's trackpad is very good. I'm not asking you to like it. But I'd like you to accept that it will be adequate (even excellent) for many users.
Not having three mouse buttons and a track point is a major reason not to get one.
Whatever floats your boat. On the other hand, many people won't see a need for the extra buttons.
I run a VNC (desktop sharing) server on my windows box so I can interact with windows programs from my MacBook Pro. Recently, I've noticed that I spend far more time using windows-based CAD/CAM software this way rather than directly on the windows box. Right button clicks are easily simulated. The middle button is useful with this program, but not necessary, and I find myself working just as well without it.
Ergonomically, I have come around to the belief that the single button is very nice. Two button laptops now feel uncomfortable, requiring a little stretch of the thumb for every left click. As for trackpoints, I'm willing to call that personal preference. More power to you if you don't get a sore index finger using them.
Apple's practice of bundling of Safari with OS X is very different from Microsoft's IE policy.
First, as I recall, Apple provided IE when I bought my old PowerBook. Safari had to be downloaded separately. Microsoft dropped IE support for OS X in 2003, leaving Apple unable to offer an up to date IE.
Second, Safari is an application like any other. I could uninstall it like any other app, but it happens to be useful and reliable (though Firefox is my browser of choice). Conversely, IE holds a privileged position in Windows and cannot be removed easily.
Third, Apple has not used Safari to crush competitors.
Forced abortions in the Cayman islands??? Perhaps you were thinking of the scandal in the Northern Mariana Islands (a US territory). The Economy of the Cayman Islands (a British Overseas territory) is largely based on tourism and internatinal banking, and the standard of living is among the highest in the West Indies.
If you want to be pedantic, you should also mention that 10% refers to a historical meaning of the word "decimate". The common meaning (in this context) is "remove a large percentage of".
The patent linked in the article is about clustering gift orders in a client/server network, or some similar business practice. I did not see anything about aggregating customer information. A careful reading of the article's text shows the security expert is stating a hypothetical ("If Amazon...") conclusion, not directly criticizing the company, though said expert has been acutely critical of Amazon in the past. The Electronic Privacy Information Center website does not mention this news.
As a confirmed skeptic, I do worry about customer databases. I also worry about being mislead by media with a hidden agenda. I have to ask the question: Is this article unadulterated FUD, designed to smear Amazon, sell papers, or otherwise manipulate readers? Have you been had?
Pssh, any hard vibration alone will screw a vacuum tube over.
I'd say a shell fired out of a 5" gun is subject to hard vibration. WWII proximity fuzes in these shells used vacuum tubes designed to work in severe conditions.
The problem is that the MacBook Pro can turn into a hot plate that is uncomfortable to set on your lap and downright painful to rest the "heel" part of your hand on. At least that's the case with my MacBook Pro. Once the fan turns on, air is blown out the back of the case and the hot spots cool down. Except for the strip of metal on the far side of the keyboard, which becomes too hot to touch for any length of time.
Thats funny. My etc/hosts defines the IP address of img-cdn.mediaplex.com as 127.0.0.1. Also, since I use the flashblock Firefox extension, I've never seen that warning message.
In case you haven't guessed, I don't like seeing ads. One site I frequent added a Google Adsense ad in a big box taking up 25% of the window height near the top the each page. Even these ads are annoying because I now how to scroll down to see the content. Put ads like this near the bottom of the page, not the top.
Here's my observation of the way the study is being presented: Playing an intensely violent and realistic video game led students to say that alcohol and marijuana use are less harmful than they would have otherwise.
Where was this published, in the journal "DUH!"? Since when is it a surprise that people reduce their assessment of other risks when confronted with a specific risk? I don't worry about government wiretapping when I'm high off the deck rock climbing. We are, quite simply, wired to deal with the risk we are facing. A real control in this experiment would have put some of these randomly selected students in a risky, blood pressure raising situtaion (climbing could work, ethics guidelines are not likely to allow a simulated mugging), and ask them the same question.
Games like GTA really do induce a "reptile brain" response. I'm 45 years old, and find it kind of scary getting behind the wheel after virtually driving wrong way the length of the Las Veturas strip at full tilt with a mob goon tied to the hood of the car. In that situation, I am hypersensitive to driving risks, and likely not worrying about other things.
Last, somebody needs to point out that you can't reasonably play these games when you are wasted. GTA is freakin hard to play. I assume that computer games provide an alternative to drug use, rather than fostering it as is implied by the headlines.
I played Tomb Raider in the 1996 and found it to be a groundbreaking game. The lead character's gender and appearance were minor details to me. I've played through several sequels (none of which lived up to the possibilities the franchise promised), and I honestly didn't notice sexual innuendo, paternalism, etc.
I experienced negative reactions to the Lara Croft character only from non-gamers looking at the cover artwork (esp. from my ex-wife). My instinct tells me that many of the criticisms are based on first impressions of the advertising for Tomb Raider, not the games themselves.
In the same way, I am not persuaded by this "final girl" nonsense. Eidos could have used an Indiana Jones type male character and still had a great game. Claiming the game is sexist because the hero is female strikes me as, well, sexist.
Of course, I'm concerned with gameplay. I won't argue about Lara Croft's image in advertising. I'm just not interested in advertising.
RF power spreads in a spherical wavefront, so there is a 1/R^2 power falloff. BUT, you need to recognize that this is in terms of wavelength (lambda), which is mathematically equal to C/f (speed of light / frequency). The net result is that doubling the frequency on a radio link incurs a 4-fold power fallof for a fixed distance.
Sorry, but this last point is wrong. The inverse square law for
power is, indeed, in terms of power, not wavelength. Actual radiated power depends on the power input to the final stage of the transmitter times the efficiency of that stage, the transmission line, and antenna. It does not drop simply because of an increase in frequency.
Wavelength and frequency are related to a photon's energy, by the equation e = h*f (= h*c/lambda), but this is not relevant here.
the problem is, even in "standby" the phone does a lot of transmitting, and that transmitting is still a power hog.
I'm having a tough time trying to understand what you mean by "a lot".
My GSM phone transmits short pulses (less than 1us) at irregular intervals. The mean time betwen pulses looks to be roughly two minutes, though my sample is admittedly small. Thus the duty cycle is less than 10E-8, which is only a little in my book.
So the question is whether transmit power is on the order of 100,000,000 times greater than the phone's quiescent power draw. Somehow I doubt it.
Anyway, thanks for giving me an excuse to pull the oscilloscope out of the closet. It was getting lonely.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, the title should be "The Sierra of Titan". The word sierra refers to an entire mountain range, and the plural is rarely appropriate. This might weaken the Vonnegut allusion a bit, but at least it uses the word correctly.
This is a common mistake. TFA quotes one of the scientists behind the work saying: "One could call them Titan's Sierras." While I might not expect much of slashdot summaries, he should know better.
Even so, it may be time to start thinking of ways to extend that tin foil hat.
I have not seen evidence supporting that claim. On the contrary, Bertrand Serlet, SVP of Software Engineering at Apple, was quoted in August deriding Windows activation.
Too bad it is not a model of arithmetic. Nonstandard analysis, with its infinite and infinitessimals is, but you still can't divide by zero. IEEE floats, by the way, have both positive and negative infinity as well as NaN.
TFA is all but useless, mercifully so because I don't expect this "invention" breaks any new ground.
Finder is dandy for adding files to an MP3 player, but I don't know how to use it to delete them. I saw the free memory on my player quickly disappear and discovered all the "deleted" content in .Trashes. Maybe someone has a
Aha! You like trackpoints because you keep your fingers on the home row.
Good for you. That helps explain your preference.
Still, you said not having three buttons was part of the problem without explaining why. And that makes me wonder since my experience shows it works quite well, even for applications that need 2 or 3 buttons.
I am also puzzled because you confirmed my complaint about 3-button laptops - that you have to move your thumb sideways for every mouse click - and then said Apple's interface is the awkward one. Have you tried them both long enough to get used to them?
Anyway, my point is that many people who are used to three-button laptops may well find Apple's one-button approach more than adequate. Having used both for thousands of hours, I have - to my own surprise - come to prefer the single button trackpad. Not only for native OS X applications, but for Windows (under parallels and via VNC) and X11, using 2- or 3-button emulation. So much so, that I prefer using my laptop to interface with my Windows box rather than the very nice keyboard and mouse on it.
Apple's trackpad is very good. I'm not asking you to like it. But I'd like you to accept that it will be adequate (even excellent) for many users.
I run a VNC (desktop sharing) server on my windows box so I can interact with windows programs from my MacBook Pro. Recently, I've noticed that I spend far more time using windows-based CAD/CAM software this way rather than directly on the windows box. Right button clicks are easily simulated. The middle button is useful with this program, but not necessary, and I find myself working just as well without it.
Ergonomically, I have come around to the belief that the single button is very nice. Two button laptops now feel uncomfortable, requiring a little stretch of the thumb for every left click. As for trackpoints, I'm willing to call that personal preference. More power to you if you don't get a sore index finger using them.
Apple's practice of bundling of Safari with OS X is very different from Microsoft's IE policy.
First, as I recall, Apple provided IE when I bought my old PowerBook. Safari had to be downloaded separately. Microsoft dropped IE support for OS X in 2003, leaving Apple unable to offer an up to date IE.
Second, Safari is an application like any other. I could uninstall it like any other app, but it happens to be useful and reliable (though Firefox is my browser of choice). Conversely, IE holds a privileged position in Windows and cannot be removed easily.
Third, Apple has not used Safari to crush competitors.
Does that cover it?
Forced abortions in the Cayman islands??? Perhaps you were thinking of the scandal in the Northern Mariana Islands (a US territory). The Economy of the Cayman Islands (a British Overseas territory) is largely based on tourism and internatinal banking, and the standard of living is among the highest in the West Indies.
If you want to be pedantic, you should also mention that 10% refers to a historical meaning of the word "decimate". The common meaning (in this context) is "remove a large percentage of".
But the numbers were written in base 10 [Hint: 10 is always 10 when written in base 10. For all values of 10 greater than one]..
Huh? I don't recall this option. When I renewed mine, they sent me new passport and also returned the old, invalidated, one.
The patent linked in the article is about clustering gift orders in a client/server network, or some similar business practice. I did not see anything about aggregating customer information. A careful reading of the article's text shows the security expert is stating a hypothetical ("If Amazon ...") conclusion, not directly criticizing the company, though said expert has been acutely critical of Amazon in the past. The Electronic Privacy Information Center website does not mention this news.
As a confirmed skeptic, I do worry about customer databases. I also worry about being mislead by media with a hidden agenda. I have to ask the question: Is this article unadulterated FUD, designed to smear Amazon, sell papers, or otherwise manipulate readers? Have you been had?
Just wondering.
You may now resume trashing Amazon.com
The problem is that the MacBook Pro can turn into a hot plate that is uncomfortable to set on your lap and downright painful to rest the "heel" part of your hand on. At least that's the case with my MacBook Pro. Once the fan turns on, air is blown out the back of the case and the hot spots cool down. Except for the strip of metal on the far side of the keyboard, which becomes too hot to touch for any length of time.
Hope that help explain the problem.
Thats funny. My etc/hosts defines the IP address of img-cdn.mediaplex.com as 127.0.0.1. Also, since I use the flashblock Firefox extension, I've never seen that warning message.
In case you haven't guessed, I don't like seeing ads. One site I frequent added a Google Adsense ad in a big box taking up 25% of the window height near the top the each page. Even these ads are annoying because I now how to scroll down to see the content. Put ads like this near the bottom of the page, not the top.
Here's my observation of the way the study is being presented: Playing an intensely violent and realistic video game led students to say that alcohol and marijuana use are less harmful than they would have otherwise.
Where was this published, in the journal "DUH!"? Since when is it a surprise that people reduce their assessment of other risks when confronted with a specific risk? I don't worry about government wiretapping when I'm high off the deck rock climbing. We are, quite simply, wired to deal with the risk we are facing. A real control in this experiment would have put some of these randomly selected students in a risky, blood pressure raising situtaion (climbing could work, ethics guidelines are not likely to allow a simulated mugging), and ask them the same question.
Games like GTA really do induce a "reptile brain" response. I'm 45 years old, and find it kind of scary getting behind the wheel after virtually driving wrong way the length of the Las Veturas strip at full tilt with a mob goon tied to the hood of the car. In that situation, I am hypersensitive to driving risks, and likely not worrying about other things.
Last, somebody needs to point out that you can't reasonably play these games when you are wasted. GTA is freakin hard to play. I assume that computer games provide an alternative to drug use, rather than fostering it as is implied by the headlines.
I played Tomb Raider in the 1996 and found it to be a groundbreaking game. The lead character's gender and appearance were minor details to me. I've played through several sequels (none of which lived up to the possibilities the franchise promised), and I honestly didn't notice sexual innuendo, paternalism, etc.
I experienced negative reactions to the Lara Croft character only from non-gamers looking at the cover artwork (esp. from my ex-wife). My instinct tells me that many of the criticisms are based on first impressions of the advertising for Tomb Raider, not the games themselves.
In the same way, I am not persuaded by this "final girl" nonsense. Eidos could have used an Indiana Jones type male character and still had a great game. Claiming the game is sexist because the hero is female strikes me as, well, sexist.
Of course, I'm concerned with gameplay. I won't argue about Lara Croft's image in advertising. I'm just not interested in advertising.
Wavelength and frequency are related to a photon's energy, by the equation e = h*f (= h*c/lambda), but this is not relevant here.
Your physics inspector (and amateur extra, AB0VV)
My GSM phone transmits short pulses (less than 1us) at irregular intervals. The mean time betwen pulses looks to be roughly two minutes, though my sample is admittedly small. Thus the duty cycle is less than 10E-8, which is only a little in my book.
So the question is whether transmit power is on the order of 100,000,000 times greater than the phone's quiescent power draw. Somehow I doubt it.
Anyway, thanks for giving me an excuse to pull the oscilloscope out of the closet. It was getting lonely.
I don't use my cell phone much. Having several weeks of standby time would be convenient, even if talk time is not increased significantly.
You need to include something like this http://www.suunto.com/suunto/main/product_short.js p?CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198673958098&FOLDER%3C% 3Efolder_id=9852723697223384&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=8 45524442492820&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=140847439590 3526&bmUID=1140393060596 , which has GPS, altimeter, and compass, among other features. Naturally, data can be transferred to your computer.
What's that? You're a Slashdot reader so you don't go outside? Righto. Then my consider my favorite for a while, the Breitling Aerospace (http://www.breitling.com/en/models/professional/a erospace_avantage/).
One button interface with sophistication very much appreciated in this day of unforgivable human factors design. Little things like a alarm that beeps discretely at first, allowing the owner to silence it before it becomes a nuisance. It stopped being my favorite after the minute hand fell off and servicing that broke the speaker and introduced intermittent timing failures. Gott send it back for probably $300+ worth of repairs...