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Hardware

Submission + - Stephen Fry and DVD Jon back USB Sniffer Project (kickstarter.com)

An anonymous reader writes: bushing and pytey of the iPhone DevTeam and Team Twiizers have created a Kickstarter project to fund the build of an open-source/open-hardware high-speed USB protocol analyzer. The board features a high-speed USB 2.0 sniffer that will help with the reverse engineering of proprietary USB hardware, the project has gained the backing from two high-profile individuals Jon Lech Johansen (DVD Jon) and Actor and Comedian Stephen Fry
NASA

Critics Call For NASA TV To "Liven Up" 305

An article in the LA Times calls NASA out for failing to make broadcasts on their dedicated television network as entertaining as they can be. The author, David Ferrell, complains that fascinating subject matter is often fraught with boring commentary and frequent, extended silences, making most people quickly lose interest. Quoting: "Witness one recent segment about the recovery of a Soyuz capsule upon its return to Earth. The dark, bullet-like object landed in the featureless steppes of Kazakhstan, about 50 miles outside the unheard-of town of Arkalyk. Coverage consisted of video shot from an all-terrain vehicle approaching it — mostly soundless footage of tall grass going by — with an occasional word by an unnamed commentator. 'You can see the antenna that deployed shortly after landing,' the commentator said in that deadpan tone shared by scientists and golf announcers. The camera chronicled the tedious extraction of three crew members weakened by spending six months in orbit; they were loaded one by one onto stretchers. 'Again, a rather methodical process,' the commentator noted, as if grasping for something — anything — to say. Later: 'The official landing time has been revised to 1:15 and 34 seconds a.m., Central Time. The official time was recorded at the Russian Mission Control Center . . . by the Russian flight-control team.' ... Where is Carl Sagan when you need him?"
Power

10 IT Power-Saving Myths Debunked 359

snydeq writes "InfoWorld examines 10 power-saving assumptions IT has been operating under in its quest to rein in energy costs vs. the permanent energy crisis. Under scrutiny, most such assumptions wither. From true CPU efficiency, to the life span effect of power-down frequency on servers, to SSD power consumption, to switching to DC in the datacenter, get the facts before setting your IT energy strategy."

Comment The answer is "yes" (Score 2, Informative) 128

To answer the question asked, yes.

I'm currently using OSX running on a G4 Cube at home and a G4 Black and White in my office for most of my writing and research programming (my laptop still run linux and sees a good deal of use).

I do all of writing in LaTeX (using teTeX) and occasionally use mutt. OSX comes with GNU emacs installed, but I've started to use bbedit as my text editor of choice. X11 will run rootless in OSX, so you can use the X-enabled GNU emacs and xemacs if you want (and I have). All my documents end up in CVS, and transitioning them from one machine to another requires no changes what-so-ever.

I haven't touched mutt or fetchmail, my home mail server is still a linux box, which I ssh into, and the same in my office. I assume they work, however. I'm pretty sure there are fink packages available.

OSX isn't Linux, it is based on NeXT, and, therefore, does have a number of quirks. Besides one issue with the GUI [1], I have not found any issues that make me want to switch back to a Linux box as a primary machine. Yes, updates are not weekly, and the debacle of OSX 10.1 being released without Developer Tools was annoying (though we were clearly warned before hand). However, none of these things are insurmountable.

ProjectBuilder is ... interesting, and takes getting used to, but it powerful once you do spend some time in it.

-Seth
[1] I miss virtual workspaces that I can ctrl->right-arrow to terribly. The only current contender (a docklet called Spaces) doesn't have keyboard bindings and doesn't quite work 100%.

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