To counter anecdote: Here in Chicago diesel prices can vary somewhat widely. Now a gal of diesel was usually at a 10% or so premium over the 87 octane stuff. If your near any of the highways (i57, i94, i294, i55, etc), expect a 10-15Â premium on top of that. Diesel was cheaper than gas last maybe 4-5 years ago right around when gas was hitting the $3 to $3.50 mark, though there was a brief time when the economy crashed that it was cheaper than normal unleaded by about 15Â. Now local gas prices are anywhere from $2.45-$2.65, and diesel is usually around $2.55-$2.75.

More on topic though, it sounds like its a pretty cool hack. I've investigated diesels as a potential first car in the past due to the advantages it had at the time like: more torque at lower rpms which is better for quick off the green light but never exceeding 45 mph city driving, no hybrid premium, cheaper diesel fuel, and quietness. I don't know if the last one applies to all new diesels, but I remember reading a car and driver 4-ish years ago about some near-production BMW prototype that when going full out on some random racetrack barely produced more noise than the ambient noise of the track itself (say 3-5 decibels). Contrast this to my 1999 plymouth grand caravan (affectionately known as the big purple monster) with just short of 180k miles, which roars like a aged muscle car that smoked from when it was a sweet sixteen until it had to have its voice box removed and sounds like a brick wall in a wind tunnel at 65+ mph.

Unfortunately however, diesel fuel is not cheaper than gas is anymore (at least where I live). Hybrids have hit mainstream with the Prius, which has brought down the hybrid premium down by maybe 1/5th or so of what it used to be. And last, but certainly not least, varying state environmental regulations have kept most the good diesel cars out of the states. A diesel hybrid could mix up the game a bit, but really only time will tell.

Arguably the apps that were available for Palm at the time are why they are still around today. Its my very minimal understanding that Palm was the top dog by a reasonable amount and then shot themselves in the foot over and over until it nearly killed them as a company, and that the majority of the few loyal Palm users that never left *didn't* leave because of X necessary application/feature.

Last year when the x25-m first came out the 80 gig version cost $595, or just a little less than $7.50/gig. Now the same 1st gen drive costs $314 with a -10 dollar discount and free shipping on newegg, or about $3.92/gig.

The new 2nd generation drive 80 gig drive sells for $225, or $2.81/gig. If it follows the same price trend as the 1st gen model around this time next year it should cost ~125 dollars, or about $1.53/gig.

Here are the quick results of the xbench of my 5400rpm 160gig drive in my two year old macbook pro:

Sequential
        Uncached Write 35.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
        Uncached Write 38.42 MB/sec [256K blocks]
        Uncached Read 10.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
        Uncached Read 40.71 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
        Uncached Write 0.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
        Uncached Write 21.42 MB/sec [256K blocks]
        Uncached Read 0.42 MB/sec [4K blocks]
        Uncached Read 16.66 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Compare those to the results of the new drive here: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3607&p=4

Sequential read on the SSD is over 6x faster, and sequential write is 2x faster, but for the performance where it matters the difference is much more noticeable. Random read on the SSD is nearly 140x faster, and random write is over 40x faster.

Couple that performance difference with the lower power consumption, lower noise, and higher threshold for damage, and its a no brainer as to what is the single most price-efficient possible upgrade you can make to a laptop to boost overall performance, responsiveness, and battery life.

I wish I could justify buying one now, but I can't. However, 12 to 18 months from now I will probably be shopping around for a new laptop, and when I do I won't be settling for anything but a SSD. The benefits are just to great to ignore.

Mod parent up, FreeBSD switched to using LLVM as their main compiler back in march.

You forgot to yell.

HI, BILLY MAYS HERE WITH A FANTASTIC NEW PRODUCT....

Filter fodder: "Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING."

Maybe I'm behind the times, but since when was "Time taken to add a line to your hosts file" considered the final word in OS benchmarks?

Of all the things you could argue are better about Linux when compared to Windows: price, security, speed, support for old hardware, package management, faster release cycles, and better consumer rights, you chose how long it takes to add a line to the hosts file.

Mod parent +1 funny to immortalize the single greatest fanboy post I've ever seen.

What really needs to happen is the W3C needs to grow some fucking balls and put their foot down on a codec. I really don't care what codec they use, but they should absolutely pick one, because the vendors are never going to agree on a standard when each vendor is pushing its own agenda and there is no perfect codec solution. The result of *not* picking one and furthering the continuation of flash/silverlight bullshit is much worse than only half the vendors supporting the standard.

Good luck getting the masses of users to "grow a pair" and not get locked in. They just want to watch their funny cat videos and porn. The so called good guys representing the masses of users need to realize that they are basically THE authority on standardizing the web, and act accordingly for the users benefit.

If you upgraded from the first iPhone to the 3GS you are going to see a battery life loss because of the 3G.

See: http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3353

Those results are from nearly a year ago so battery life will have likely improved some from the 2.0 -> 2.1 -> 2.2 -> 2.3 -> 3.0 OS updates, but it gives you an approximation for the difference between the edge vs 3g power consumption.

Farming gold isn't what most players find fun about MMO's, hence peoples willingness to pay for it.

For the a lot of people who grew up during his heyday, Michael Jackson was "The King of Pop". As a singer/performer, he helped define a genre during his time. People remember the emotions of getting pumped up before a game to a song, or losing their virginity to a song, or getting through a rough time with a song. Those emotional attachments create powerful memories and connections.

When my grandfather died my mom listened to the same Yanni CD for like 12 months straight and it never occurred to me why until like 4 years later when I made the connection that that was what we would always listen to on our weekly visits to the nursing home, and that the songs soothed her and helped her cope with the loss. Because of that, Yanni (whose music I'm not even a fan of) evokes a pretty strong emotion to me, and a much stronger emotion from my mom. The completely intangible feelings that music can give you can feel _more_ tangible or be more rememberable than the changes to our lives brought about by the achievements of some guy in a lab, even if those lab achievements mean far more to mankind in the long or short run.

Pretty sure VLC doesn't do hardware acceleration on any platform period. Nvidia supports VDPAU in linux which allows you to play HD flawlessly with practically any card as long as the video player supports it (and a number do, mplayer and XBMC are two that come to mind off the top of my head).

See: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_vdpau_gpu&num=1

Every hack in the competition was created early, and it was allowed within the rules to do so.

This made all the sensationalist "MAC CRACKED IN SECONDS" news/blogspam all the more annoying, and the _real_ news all the more painful. The real news was that the Safari exploit that the one dude used to win the Macbook Air had been around since the competition the year prior, and that he chose to save his exploit for the next years competition, and it wasn't fixed before he was able to use it for the CanSecWest 12 months later.

So I was looking around after seeing this earlier to try and make sense of what older generation codenames match to the newer generation codenames, and found this: http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_m_series.html (scroll down).

Basically it goes GTX > GTS > GT > GS > G

The old 9400/8400 line has become the 210/110
The old 9600/8600 line has become the 230/130
The old 9800/8800 GT/GS has become the 250/150
And The old 9800/8800 GTX/GTS has become the 280

There are a few other cards that fall in the middle of categories, but that seems to be the basic gist of it as far as I can tell.

Heres another useful resource for comparing mobile gpu's: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Graphic-Cards.130.0.html

"Hurr Durr Apple Fanboys suck lol." seems to be the fastest way to +5 insightful other than "Hurr Durr Linux rools GPLol."

The only thing more annoying on the internet than /b/tards and apple fanboys are the wannabe /b/tards and anti-apple zealots.

The $99 iPhone becomes a high margin product once you include a percentage of the subscription costs.