Comment Re:Syndication and a bit obscure... (Score 1) 480
I came here to search to see if somebody had mentioned it. Glad you did. Awesome Show. I think Apple missed it by not calling Siri "Selma" :)
Comment Maybe a slight modification to your strategy... (Score 1) 325
Like you, I've had reasonable performance from Clevo/Sager for software development. One thing I would possibly look for: Get the _heaviest_ laptop you can find with them. Those typically have much more aggressive cooling systems than the lighter models. Case in point: Sager 9377s at XoticPC. If you go to the gallery and locate the view of the bottom of the laptop, you'll notice multiple intakes with extensive venting out the back. XoticPC in particular can do a copper cooling upgrade which might be worthwhile to evaluate. (Haven't tried it personally)
I'm mentioning XoticPC in particular because I've gotten 3 or 4 laptops through them and have been happy. They're pretty slow to ship for custom options (they don't keep a ton of custom parts in inventory), but I've been happy with the customized product.
Laptops will always be a bit of a problem due to small packaging/weight requirements, but perhaps these tweaks can help get you there.
Submission + - Sony selling off VAIO computer business (theverge.com) 1
Kensai7 writes: Confirming reports from earlier in the week, Sony has announced plans to sell off its VAIO computer division to a Japanese investment fund. Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) will take control of the operation for an undisclosed fee, and Sony will "cease planning, design and development of PC products." For a variety of reasons "including the drastic changes in the global PC industry," Sony says "the optimal solution is to concentrate its mobile product lineup on smartphones and tablets and to transfer its PC business to a new company."
Comment Dickens' "The Chimes" (Score 1) 796
Hey, its even a New Year's Story. If you take a moment to understand the picture he's painting, it'll give you some good perspective on your life.
eBook Here
Submission + - Why Don't Open Source Databases Use GPUs? (gatech.edu) 1
An anonymous reader writes: A recent paper from Georgia Tech describes a system than can run the complete TPC-H benchmark suite on an NVIDIA Titan card, at a 7x speedup over a commercial database running on a 32-core Amazon EC2 node, and a 68x speedup over a single core Xeon. A previous story described an MIT project that achieved similar speedups.
There has been a steady trickle of work on GPU-accelerated database systems for several years, but it doesn't seem like any code has made it into Open Source databases like MonetDB, MySQL, CouchDB, etc. Why not? Many queries that I write are simpler than TPC-H, so what's holding them back?
There has been a steady trickle of work on GPU-accelerated database systems for several years, but it doesn't seem like any code has made it into Open Source databases like MonetDB, MySQL, CouchDB, etc. Why not? Many queries that I write are simpler than TPC-H, so what's holding them back?
Submission + - Fedora 20 released (muktware.com)
sfcrazy writes: The Fedora Project has announced the release of Fedora 20, code named Heisenbug. Fedora 20 is dedicated to Seth Vidal the lead developer of Yum and the Fedora update repository who recently died in a road accident. Gnome is the default DE of Fedora, and so it is for Fedora 20. However unlike Ubuntu (where they had to create different distros for each DE) Fedora comes with KDE, XFCE, LXDE and MATE. You can install the DE of your choice on top of base Fedora.
Comment Proper ZDNet Link (Score 4, Informative) 143
ZDNet link was bad. Proper one is Here
Submission + - Civet poop coffee may be threatening wildlife (mongabay.com)
Damien1972 writes: Popularization of the world's strangest coffee may be imperiling a a suite of small mammals in Indonesia, according to a new study in Small Carnivore Conservation. The coffee, known as kopi luwak (kopi for coffee and luwak for the civet), is made from whole coffee beans that have passed through the gut of the animal. The coffee is apparently noted for its distinct taste, though some have argued it is little more than novelty. Now, this burgeoning kopi luwak industry is creating "civet farms," whereby civets are captured from the wild and kept in cages to eat and crap out coffee beans.
Submission + - Amazon Patents Strange New Lightweight, Transparent Kindle
destinyland writes: Amazon's just filed a patent about a lightweight, transparent Kindle technology that can also be embedded in your eyeglasses or your car windshield — and which never needs to be recharged. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is listed on the patent as a co-inventor of the technology, which converts the handheld Kindle devices into simplified display mechanisms receiving data and electricity from a larger, more powerful central station. This would allow Amazon to create much lighter and cheaper devices, notes one Kindle blog, speculating that Kindles could become not just lighter than paper, but disappearing altogether into other devices, "leaving nothing behind but the words from your ebooks."
Submission + - Opera Confirms It Will Follow Google And Ditch WebKit For Blink
An anonymous reader writes: Google on Wednesday made a huge announcement to fork WebKit and build a new rendering engine called Blink. Opera, which only recently decided to replace its own Presto rendering engine for WebKit, has confirmed with TNW that it will be following suit. "When we announced the move away from Presto, we announced that we are going with the Chromium package, and the forking and name change have little practical influence on the Opera browsers. So yes, your understanding is correct," an Opera spokesperson told TNW. This will affect both desktop and mobile versions of Opera the spokesperson further confirmed.
Submission + - MIT to end open-network policy in response to recent attacks
An anonymous reader writes: MIT announced that despite a long history of running an open network (so that any student can run a server on any port, without any questions asked), it will now end this policy due to recent denial-of-service attacks and gunman hoax. Thanks, Anonymous, for ruining a good thing.
Submission + - Mozilla And Samsung Are Building A New Multi-Core Browser Engine For Android
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla and Samsung on Wednesday announced a new partnership to build a "next generation" web browser engine called Servo. The ultimate goal is to bring the technology to Android and ARM, though the two companies have not shared a timeframe for a possible launch.
With the help of Samsung, Mozilla is bringing both the Rust programming language as well as Servo to Android and ARM. Samsung's contribution so far has been an ARM backend to Rust as well as the build infrastructure necessary to cross-compile to Android. In fact, the code is available now on GitHub, as is the source for Rust and Servo.
With the help of Samsung, Mozilla is bringing both the Rust programming language as well as Servo to Android and ARM. Samsung's contribution so far has been an ARM backend to Rust as well as the build infrastructure necessary to cross-compile to Android. In fact, the code is available now on GitHub, as is the source for Rust and Servo.
Terminator Sparrows? 138
AstroPhilosopher writes "In a move not far removed from the model T-101, U.S. researchers have succeeded in re-animating a dead sparrow. Duke scientists were studying male behavior aggression among sparrows. They cleverly decided to insert miniaturized robotics into an empty sparrow carcass and operate it like a puppet (abstract). It worked; they noticed wing movements were a primary sign of aggression. Fortunately the living won out this time. The experiment stopped after the real sparrows tore off the robosparrow's head. But there's always a newer model on the assembly-line. Good luck sparrows."
Bad Horse has not yet made a decision on the researchers' application.
Comment Try XoticPC (Score 1) 570
Xotic PC has quite a few good laptops and a ton of customization options. I've purchased several laptops for myself, my wife, and my customers through them. The one big warning I would say about them is do NOT order them if you are in a hurry. They do take time to build and ship if you get customization options, and they don't seem to carry a large supply of their parts on hand. (Don't blame them for inventory tax $)
Other than that, they're always super friendly to deal with and I always get my laptop just the way I want it.
Massachusetts May Soon Change How the Nation Dies 439
Hugh Pickens writes "Lewis M. Cohen reports that this Election Day, Massachusetts is poised to approve the Death With Dignity Act, a modernized, sanitized, politically palatable term that replaces the now-antiquated expression 'physician-assisted suicide.' Oregon's Death With Dignity Act has been in effect for the past 14 years, and the state of Washington followed suit with a similar law in 2008. But the Massachusetts ballot question has the potential to turn death with dignity from a legislative experiment into the new national norm, because the state is the home of America's leading medical publication (the New England Journal of Medicine), hospital (Massachusetts General), and four medical schools (Harvard, Boston University, University of Massachusetts, and Tufts). If the act passes in Massachusetts, other states that have previously had unsuccessful campaigns will certainly be emboldened to revisit this subject. The initiative would allow terminally ill patients with six months or less to live to request from their doctor a prescription for a lethal dose of a drug. Doctors do not have to offer the option at all, and patients must make three requests, two verbal and one written. They must self-administer the drug, which would be ingested. The patients must be deemed capable of making an informed decision. 'It's all about choice,' says George Eighmey, a key player in instituting the Oregon law, defending it against repeal and shepherding it into reality. 'You decide. No one else can decide for you. No can can force you into it, coerce you into it or even suggest it to you unless you make a statement: "I don't want to live like this any more" or "I'm interested in that law out there, doctor, can you give me something to alleviate this pain and suffering."'"
