A while ago I purchased an EZ-Watt meter so see how Much power that my system was consuming. I found that my system at max CPU and GPU load consumes about 350 W of power. So my question is why would I buy a green 800 Watt power supply when my system only needs 300 W? It seems that it would be best to match the power supply to the system in order to maximize savings since the efficiency of the power supply is calculated at its maximum rating. How much power doesn't 800 Watt power supply consume when the system is using only hundred to 200-300 W? It would be interesting to connect it to a wattmeter and find the answers. I suspect that a standard power supply matched to the system power requirements would result in a larger power/money savings then buying an oversized high-efficiency power supply.

With my 3-year old I started with the iPad instead of the PC. It has a much more natural touch interface and they can get going in minutes vs. struggling to figure out the archaic QWERTY keyboard and mouse/touchpad. As of August the iPad has 30,000+ educational titles and I would recommend Letter School for tracing letters, Doodle Buddy for drawing, Hungry Fish for math, Reading Rainbow for tons and tons of books, Screen Chomp for making basic screen casts, iMove for making videos and of course Amazon Instant Video for watching endless Mr. Rodgers. I also picked up the Ion Midi keyboard at the Target on closeout for $20 and the iPad is also a piano teacher.

I don't think there is too much toddler specific stuff in the Linux realm unless you plan to install Wine and runs Windows Apps. I am not sure if you trying to promote game addiction or learning, but the iPad is a great learning platform for young kids. Also, I would limit screen time to 15-minutes per day until they are about 5-years old. I believe that computers tend to limit a young childs imagination.

I apologize that I didn't answer you question directly but wanted to provide an alternate solution. :)

I agree, but Apple decided to partner with TOM TOM of all companies. These are the guys that drive people into lakes and down railroad tracks. Google put a ton of work into their maps product and API and sent their cute little Google mapping cars all over the world to get Streetview done. Apple should have just bought Garmin instead or just worked out a map revenue sharing deal with Google. It seems that our egos are what always get us in trouble.

IMHO Apple is on a very self destructive course with respect to Google. Google can do services on a scale that other companies can't even conceive and the backend is where the magic happens. Apple might have new shinier lights out data centers and Google products might have clunkier front ends but the backends (especially GMAIL, Google Docs, and Google Search) are untouchable. We see this everyweek as Apple mail and iTunes struggles to scale up. Hey everybody, don't forget, the next round of the Google Power Searching class starts tomorrow. Power Searching with Google Registration and the presenter at Google is confident enough in his company to use a MAC.

I am really late to the party here but I will give you my perspective. To get going in the world of Linux, try looking for an engineering company/college where you can be the junior admin and grow. Good Linux admins are classically trained. By this I mean then know DNS (inside and out), then can telnet to a port and see if a service is running, they understand databases and web-servers, they understand why a system is slow (is it disc I/O, swapping, CPU), they can program and know enough about system architecture to help keep developers from destroying systems and databases, and they generally understand voodoo networking like VLANS and SANS. It is a great field and if you like to learn and be involved in solving large, complex problems where computing actually supports research/engineering/medicine then it is the place to be.

I wouldn't recommend a small shop until you have had the chance to work with a larger community and worked with some of the wizards. After that you can specialize and seek a small to medium business if you like. So many IT people wildly theorize about problems and the root causes. Good Linux/Unix admins can usually pinpoint it with certainty. Good luck, have fun, you only get one life. Also, the Red Hat Certified Engineer program is very good.

Windows 8 - Review http://www.pcgamesn.com/article/why-i-m-uninstalling-windows-8

If you beamed down with Captain Kirk and were on the "red team" wearing a "red shirt" it wasn't going to end well for you. I wonder if the same will be true at Google as they bring daylight into the dark corners of Google.

and I just made friends with the Ribbon interface and finally found everything again..... Why Microsoft? Why?

Yes, you are correct. It should be 20% and my source is the MMA. I gave a talk on this recently and I think I subconsciously typed the statistic for the number of manufacturing companies with less than 20 workes, which is around 60%, source MMA,

Good point, but consider that Ford's World HQ is still located in Dearborn, Michigan along with the Light Truck Engineering Group. When you buy from Ford you support both engineering, prototyping, and manufacturing jobs in the USA. You could buy other vehicles that are "assembled here" but the engineering is all done offshore.

America is still the #1 manufacturer of all globally produced goods. We manufacture 60% of all globally produced goods and China/Japan account for the majority of the balance. The difference is that the scale of manufacturing has shrunk from 10,000 person factories to small shops that employ under 50 people. The real issue I see is training. If you open the want ads you will see many, many worker wanted ads for machinists, CNC operators, lathe operators, CAD detailers etc .... The problem is that the small shops don't have training facilities or do apprenticeship programs or journeyman programs anymore.

While the US doesn't do large scale industrial widget manufacturing anymore, we still do lot's of manufacturing for the military, oil/gas industries, medical industry, auto and aerospace industry. Many companies are now pulling out of China as the cost benefit is vanishing as the Yuan has been allowed to float. These companies are creating automated assembly lines and pulling as much labor out as possible to produce goods here that are higher quality and at the same cost (or lower) as manufacturing in China. Additionally, companies are finding they can have much more agile supply chains and can cut lead times tremendously.

My advice to the 300 million people is find something that you like to do and get good at it. Competency is a rare commodity these days. And if you can't find something you love to do, then find a field and specialize in something that can't be outsourced, examples: pipe-fitter, welder, electrician, plumber, amazon warehouse picker robot repairer, physical therapist... and the list goes on.

Let me give you a brief list of the items in my home (purchased in the last 2-years that are Made in USA) * Garage Doors * Garbage Disposal (InSinkerator) * Entry Doors * Lumber to Construct Split Rail Fence * Roofing Shingles * Insulation (for Walls) * Drywall * Craftsman Tools (with lifetime breakage guarantee) * Spatula (for cooking, yes I found one made in USA) * Ford Mercury Mariner * Step2 - Playground Equipment * Open Sprinker Valve Controller * Paint * Various adhesive products * Worktables * Furniture * Mattresses * Toothpaste/Shampoo/Deodorant/BandAids and the list goes on and on. While the USA is not producing electronics (which is really stupid for national security reasons) we still produce lots and lots of stuff.

That's because Bill Gates doesn't have an iPad 2/3 with iBooks, iTunesU, and 20,000+ educational apps. :) The iPad ecosystem supports Bill's vision of the flipped classroom and it works quite well and Bill has supported great apps like the Khan Academy. I have been in several flipped classes and they were fantastic. I dread going in an instructor led, painfully slow, "sage of the stage", blah, blah blah type of class. I want to move through learning at my own pace and really understand what I am doing and take topics that are of interest, like more computer science classes. Teachers just have to start using this model and Bill, if you are reading Slashdot, the best place to change all this is at the teacher factory, the Universities where teachers are trained. If teachers aren't trained to flip classroom and integrate technology into their curriculum, guess what, they won't.

Four months ago, I had no clue about iPads and thought, whatever, it's a fad, a picture frame I can touch and play games on but after digging and learning about the educational apps I am blown away. I am sure you could piece together a similar experience on a PC using a CMS (Content Management System), but it wouldn't be as efficient.

If you have a passion for learning and haven't tried iTunesU on the Ipad2/3 you own it to yourself to install the app and take it for a test drive. All the flipped/free education you could ever want. I am currently in CS193P at Stanford and 6-046J at MIT. I am learning at my own pace as my schedule permits. I wish I could just lock myself in a room and learn all day :) Thanks to these two courses, I am almost done with my first iPad app.

I agree the recording was horrible. However, it is a developer conference and you have to do something to spice it up since all of the cool people like "Eric Raymond" only speak at Open Source conferences. For me this just falls in the category of "whatever" and "bad taste" that it seemed like a good idea at the time. I will keep an eye out for the "official" meme T-shirt at the next conference I attend. On the plus side, this is the most attention Microsoft has gotten in awhile. MS has actually been doing some cool stuff lately like the "Microsoft Robotics Studio", but I haven't been able to get it to run on my Linux box or iPad.

Ok.. I just updated Wikipedia. The Universe is now 13.5 billion years, it was at 13.7. Sorry for my skepticism. I also apologize for doubting that we mere mortals can measure cosmological constants from an unknown point in the universe of unknown size undergoing a mysterious accelerating expansion. :)

Amen brother. Even in Einstein's own thought experiments regarding time, simultaneity doesn't make since (to me) either. When they say the universe is 13.5 billion years old, my question is by which watch are you measuring. Time dilation really, really bugs me. Why can't it just be the 'same time' everywhere at once. But yes, I agree, the article makes no sense and it just a headline grab. And I might say, a bit of an arrogant headline grab as they are seeking to define a universal clock constant where one does clearly not exist outside of your own inertial reference frame. There are other problems that I won't even go into, like the speed of light being a universal constant, the size of the universe, and the fact that we can supposedly see objects from distances where the light wouldn't have had enough time in which to propagate from. It is all just maddening. We need to find a way to get outside of the universe so we can study it. I think that making the measurements from inside the system will never ever work.