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Published 16. april 2008

Mac vs PC

PopularMechanics har testet ytelsen på Mac vs PC, og resulatet er gledelig for en Mac-geek som meg:

The Verdict: Apple

Mac: In both the laptop and desktop showdowns, Apple’s computers were the winners. Oddly, the big difference didn’t come in our user ratings, where we expected the famously friendly Mac interface to shine. Our respondents liked the look and feel of both operating systems but had a slight preference toward OS X. In our speed trials, however, Leopard OS trounced Vista in all-important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown and program-launch times. We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple’s platform-switching Boot Camp software—and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did.

PC: Simply put, Vista proved to be a more sluggish operating system than Leopard. Our PCs installed some software faster, but in general they were slower in our time trials. Plus, both PCs showed weaker performance on third-party benchmarks than the Macs. Our biggest surprise, however, was that PCs were not the relative bargains we expected them to be. The Asus M51sr costs the same as a MacBook, while the Gateway One actually costs $300 more than an iMac. That means for the price of the Gateway you could buy an iMac, boost its hard drive to match the Gateway’s, purchase a copy of Vista to boot—and still save $100.

Diverse IT/Internett Personlig

Apple Boot Camp Intel Mac operating system operating systems PC software—and USD Vista Windows

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Published 18. mars 2008

Debbie Nathan som spåkone

En fin artikkel fra journalisten Debbie Nathan hvor hun forteller om sin fortid som «teletorg spåkone».

Afterward I learned that the biggest company, Psychic Friends, was taking in $150 million a year before it was bankrupted last year by competition from numerous smaller companies including Psychic Readers, Kenny Kingston and LaToya Jackson. By the late 1990s, these businesses had jacked the industry’s earnings up to at least $300 million annually. For this we can thank the Reagan administration; in 1984, the Federal Communications Commission lifted its 16-minute-an-hour restriction on TV advertising, paving the way for monster hourlong infomercials. Add to this a dramatic proliferation of 800- and 900-number marketing and computerized billing technologies. The result was an enormous “futures” market.

At the time, I was a struggling freelance journalist, so I decided to write about the industry after working in it. As someone who’s so skeptical of the paranormal that half the time I can’t remember my astrological sign, I thought it would be revealing if someone like myself could do a good job as a dial-a-clairvoyant.

Men ting ble mer personlig og komplisert enn hun hadde forestilt seg…

Blogger Diverse Skepsis

computerized billing technologies Debbie Nathan Federal Communications Commission Kenny Kingston LaToya Jackson paranormal Psychic Friends Psychic Readers Reagan administration spåkone synsk teletorg USD

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Published 26. november 2007

The Problems with Copyright

Fra Bruce Schneiers blogg:

Excellent article by John Tehranian: “Infringement Nation: Copyright Reform and the Law/Norm Gap”:

By the end of the day, John has infringed the copyrights of twenty emails, three legal articles, an architectural rendering, a poem, five photographs, an animated character, a musical composition, a painting, and fifty notes and drawings. All told, he has committed at least eighty-three acts of infringement and faces liability in the amount of $12.45 million (to say nothing of potential criminal charges). There is nothing particularly extraordinary about John’s activities. Yet if copyright holders were inclined to enforce their rights to the maximum extent allowed by law, he would be indisputably liable for a mind-boggling $4.544 billion in potential damages each year. And, surprisingly, he has not even committed a single act of infringement through P2P file sharing. Such an outcome flies in the face of our basic sense of justice. Indeed, one must either irrationally conclude that John is a criminal infringer — a veritable grand larcenist — or blithely surmise that copyright law must not mean what it appears to say. Something is clearly amiss. Moreover, the troublesome gap between copyright law and norms has grown only wider in recent years.
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Blogger Diverse IT/Internett Media Politikk

Bruce Schneiers copyright law file sharing John Tehranian P2P USD

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Westboro Baptist Church konkurs?

Published 1. november 2007

Westboro Baptist Church konkurs?

De syke, syke kristne gærningene i Westboro Baptist Church har gått på en skikkelig smell:

A grieving father won a nearly $11 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals in the belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.

Albert Snyder of York, Pennsylvania, sued the Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified damages after members demonstrated at the March 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.

The jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned later in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress.

U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett noted the size of the award for compensating damages “far exceeds the net worth of the defendants,” according to financial statements filed with the court.

Diverse Religion/overtro Samfunn og verden

Albert Snyder Baptist Church Iraq Kansas Matthew Snyder Pennsylvania Richard Bennett United States USD York

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Audio-humbug?

Published 18. oktober 2007

James Randi har i mange år gått hardt ut mot produsentene av ulike “audio-duppeditter” som visstnok skal gi bedre lyd i høyttalere, forsterker, CD-spillere osv. Markedsføringen av disse duppedittene bruker som regel et kvasi-vitenskapelig språk med mer eller mindre absurde forklaringsmekanismer. Randi har også kritisert en del HiFi-magasiner som gir positiv omtale til disse dingsene, basert på subjektive “lyttetester” uten noe blindtesting eller andre kontrollmekanismer.

Noen eksempler på Randis utspill kan man lese her, her, her og her:

That magazine, Stereophile, has published articles that make most pseudoscience look pale. The “Tate Clock,” a regular Radio Shack digital clock treated with liquid nitrogen and a “secret process” to align electrons in the power supply (?) is only one of the products it tested and approved, as well as $1800 speaker cables marked with arrows to indicate in which direction the electricity should travel. But, as with all obsessions, these are items that afficionados simply must have, because they’re expensive and “in.”

Nå har han valgt å bruke JREFs Million Dollar Challenge på saken:

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Media Musikk Skepsis

Adam Adam Blake Dave Clark electricity HDMI James Randi John Atkinson Michael Fremer NOK Radio Shack SGD USD

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Published 13. oktober 2007

The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing

Homeopater fikk bloggeren The Quackometer til å fjerne et kritisk blogginlegg om homeopati, og i tråd med bl.a. Orac, Skeptico og andre gjengir også jeg artikkelen i sin helhet som et uttrykk for støtte til bloggeren.

I starten av artikkelen bruker han mye av samme metode som jeg selv har brukt mot bl.a. I-Huset og Flekkefjord Akupunktur, men lenger uti artikkelen trekkes det frem betydelig mer groteske problemstillinger en hva disse aktørene er skyldige i. Jeg har selv bodd i Nairobi og sett fattigdommen og elendigheten i et av verdens største slumområder rett utenfor byen. Jeg har selv hatt malaria, en svært ubehagelig opplevelse, og vet hvor mange mennesker dette dreper hvert år. Tanken på at homeopater, fri fra alt vestlig lovverk om alternativ behandling, ser sitt snitt til å tjene penger på å tilby denne humbugen til lidende mennesker, finner jeg så motbydelig at det nesten ikke finnes ord.

Vennligst les følgende artikkel:

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Alternativ medisin Blogger Personlig Samfunn og verden Skepsis

Abha Light Foundation advertising leaflet Africa bbc David Colquhoun Julia M Wilson Julia Wilson Kenya London Homeopathic Hospital Nairobi Peter Fisher prevention of malaria Simon Singh Society of Homeopaths treatment of malaria United Kingdom USD web research World Health Organization

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Published 13. august 2007

Number of the Beast

Fra James Randis ukentlige commentary:

Reader Frank Womble has sent in these interesting variations on last weeks item at Another Favorite Myth Exploded, showing that we missed the boat on that one. Says Frank:

666 = number of the Beast
665 = older brother of the Beast
660 = approximate number of the Beast
66600 = zip code of the Beast
$665.95 = retail price of the Beast
DCLXVI = Roman numeral of the Beast
666.0000 = Number of the High-Precision Beast
0.666 = Number of the Millibeast
/666 = Beast Common Denominator
-666½ = Imaginary number of the Beast
6.66e3 = Floating point Beast
1010011010 = Binary number of the Beast
6, uh . . . what was that number again? = Number of the Blonde Beast
1-666 = Area code of the Beast
666 mph = Speed limit of the Beast
$699.30 = Price of the Beast plus 5% state sales tax
$769.95 = Price of the Beast with all accessories and replacement soul
$656.66 = Walmart price of the Beast
$646.66 = Next week’s Walmart price of the Beast
Phillips 666 = Gasoline of the Beast
Route 666 = Way of the Beast
666 F = Oven temperature for roast Beast
352 C– Oven temperature for roast Beast in Europe
666(k) = Retirement plan of the Beast
666 mg = Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast
6.66% = 5-yr CD interest rate at 1st Beast of Hell Nat. Bank, $666 min. deposit
$666/hr = Beast’s lawyer’s billing rate
Lotus 6-6-6 = Spreadsheet of the Beast
Word 6.66 = Word Processor of the Beast
i66686 = CPU of the Beast
665.9997856 = Number of the Beast on a Pentium
666i = BMW of the Beast
DSM-666 (revised) = Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Beast
1232 Octal, Apt. 29A = Beast’s hexed address
668 = Next-door neighbor of the Beast
333 = The semi-Christ

Humor Religion/overtro

Europe Frank Womble James Randis retail price USD

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