The Age of Netbooks? Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
Posted by carltonstedman in ideas, netbook, pc, toys.add a comment
Even with the massive inundation of so-called “netbooks” over the last two years, most notably the last year as a top seller on Amazon, there is some concern over whether or not they will exist in the future. The author of the linked article mentions price as being the dominant feature of netbooks, but I’m a bit skeptical about this. As many commenters point out, there are other unique features to the netbook category, which some recent “netbooks” have been stretching (specifically: size and battery life).
The author mentions that people are flocking in droves to Windows-based netbooks, acting as a laptop replacement. This seems to be the case, but this market is still in it’s infancy. My own opinion would be for a device that uses largely web-based or lightweight desktop/laptop replacement programs, such as throwing out Word for Google Docs, running some user-friendly Linux (while still having enough flexibility for the power user). On disk drive size: right now, people are buying up hard-drive based systems, but moving to more data sharing across the Internet could remove this requirement, allowing faster, much less power-hungry SSDs to be the norm (while price drops on them). It has yet to be seen, but, with the (hopefully) wide-spread adoption of technologies such as WiMax offering inexpensive always-on mobile Internet access, netbooks could become their namesake.
My own intentions of using a netbook would be for a lightweight web-based portable computer. My ideal specifications:
- Small, sub-10″ screen, but VGA/DVI output up to 1080p resolutions
- Sufficient video acceleration for 1080p video output to hook up to TVs, monitors, et cetera
- Minimal SSD, largely for programs and little space used for personal data
- Very fast start-up time (out of hibernation)
- 2+ GB RAM, with RAMdisk for main applications
- SDXC (or mini-/microSDXC) slot(s) for personal data storage/transfer
- eSATA/USB combo ports
- Decent sound card, ideally with a line-out and an amplified headphone-out
- A really good keyboard and multi-touch trackpad
- User-replaceable large battery for maximized battery life
- Gigabit ethernet and WiFi 802.11n for streamed audio / video over network, UPnP
- WiMax support
- Basic software interface is browser to web applications
Most of this stuff is either available now or right in the pipeline, with minimal effort. Ideally, a distro of Linux specifically for netbooks (which already exist) could be used, with web-based computing being the norm. Something like Google Gears really has potential in this segment.
Of course, this is something I’d love to use, but I can’t speak for the market. Here’s hoping it does pan out this way!
eReader Wishlist, or, How to Get Me to Buy a Kindle Monday, December 8th, 2008
Posted by carltonstedman in books, toys.add a comment
So, although I can’t afford one anytime in the near future, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about getting an eReader, and, most likely, an Amazon Kindle. However, there are a number of issues that stop me from getting a Kindle. Here’s what I want Amazon to do for Kindle 2.0:
- Lower the price point: $360 is still too much, guys. I don’t want to pay for EVDO that I’d hardly ever use — make the Whispernet a subscription fee to lower the initial cost, instead of bumping the initial price up to subsidize expected bandwidth uses. Which brings me to the next point…
- Lower the book prices even more. It’s a fact: the book prices include mark-up to cover bandwidth use, but, with a subscription model, this won’t be necessary. As it stands, I have to buy over 100 books before I can justify the cost. That assumes books at 30-50% the cover price, but for most of the stuff in my wish list, the books are the same cost as paper or not available! And you really should…
- Offer public domain books as free downloads! This means, right away, without any fiddling on my part, I can just go an grab a bunch of books for free. This is added value for the Kindle for sure. And for Christ’s sake…
- Get rid of the fee for RSS feeds! Again, go with a subscription fee to EVDO only. This was a stupid idea. Even at $0.99 / feed, it’d cost me over $40 a month. And we can even lower EVDO use if you just…
- Build in WiFi support. This will allow use of internet connections already available without having to pay the EVDO fee, while also increasing speed and lowering EVDO bandwidth usage — win, win, win. And I could really use…
- Native PDF support. This would be great for use at work, storing, reading and annotating all sorts of documents, including datasheets and more. Yes, I can do that email-conversion dealie, but just being able to grab documents like that would be great. Course, if I could do that, what I’d really want is…
- A touchscreen with simple pen to mark-up documents. Heck, let me create note documents too, that’d be sweet. I don’t even need text recognition or anything. This could even be in a more expensive model, perhaps, but could use on-screen buttons to…
- Cut down on the number of buttons. Better ergonomics and aesthetics is low on my list, but, jeesh, these are ugly as sin. While we’re at it…
- Add full support for SDHC. 4 GB is fine and all, but I’d really like support for 16 GB cards and even 32 GB (although they are currently ridiculously expensive, I’m thinking long-term).
Now, the Sony PRS-700 has most of the above features, but is $400. Ouch. And Amazon has a much bigger collection of Kindle books, it seems. Plus the Sony Bookstore books cost more than the paper books on Amazon!
This could all get me more interested in the Kindle. Of course, DRM-ed books make me very unhappy, but I don’t see a solution anytime soon. I’ll probably just stick with paper books for quite a long time — they look nice, have unlimited battery life, can be gotten used for dirt cheap, will always be compatible, can be borrowed by friends and can be sold in a pinch or if you don’t like it. Give me a format that I can sell and buy used from others and then we’ll be talking — otherwise, the books better be damn cheap and make sure they’re in an open format, so I can use them years from now.
Why Aren’t the Dems for the War in Iraq? Thursday, December 4th, 2008
Posted by carltonstedman in objectivism, politics.add a comment
For some reason, this wasn’t converted correctly, going to WordPress, and was listed as unpublished. This was originally written up back in April of 2008, in my old blogger site (link). Anyway, here it follows.
One thing certainly seems clear: the Democrats and their supporters (I’ll just call them all “liberals”) really seem to think the USA should get out of Iraq, as soon as possible. I don’t think this is up to too much debate, but the problem I have is this: why do the liberals want to get out of Iraq?
First, think about this: the liberals clearly, focus a lot on so-called “social policies”. They are all for increasing funding to public education, getting a national health plan, pro-welfare and the ilk. Another way to put it: the liberals are socialists. This is really a better name, since they aren’t really “liberal” in the root way of the word, like liberty, pro-freedom; that doesn’t really seem to be the policy of the “liberals”, so let’s call them socialists.
Why do the socialists want to get out of Iraq, then? Socialists are all about the “rights” of the majority, the “common good” reaching some sort of averaged level of wealth and health. This “golden mean” is really a fallacy (I’ll expound on that at some later date), but that’s not my issue here. Certainly, a socialist in principle would be all for the global “common good”, and definitely for improving average conditions in Iraq, the whole “Operation: Iraqi Freedom” deal. Clearly, the only reasonable stance for someone that advocates socialist principles would be in favor of staying in Iraq and pouring USA efforts into attempting to improve the lives of Iraqis.
So, why aren’t the Dems for the war in Iraq? The answer is really simple: they’re big hypocrites. Don’t get me wrong; so are the “neo-conservatives” that are for staying in Iraq, which is against any really conservative principles (my meaning: anti-socialist, pro-capitalist).
By any rational standpoint, the war in Iraq has been an utter and complete failure. The only possible justification for war is protecting America citizens against physical attack and harm. What has the war in Iraq done, but drain the pockets of hard-working taxpayers, against their will? It has accomplished nothing in protecting American citizens from physical attack or harm and is therefore a complete failure.
There is a justified war to be fought in the present, and this is against people that actually present a physical danger to American citizens: Islamo-fascist terrorists. The USA should not waste American lives by going in on foot, but just bomb by air known terrorist locations throughout Iran, Saudi Arabia and other nations we know to be harboring terrorists, destroying synagogues, weapon factories, cells, training camps and more, without even asking the UN (which shouldn’t even exist). The USA could just about destroy all terrorist opposition in a few weeks. This is the justified action of the military in protecting America against known physical danger, attack and harm.
Although, this is unlikely to happen, due to the socialist mindset and unwarranted respect for nations harboring terrorists and paying homage to the socialist institution of the UN. Instead, the USA will just fight war after war, converting nation by nation in imperial fashion, sacrificing untold trillions of dollars and millions of American lives. That is exactly what would happen with a Democratic president (and I’m not sure McCain would be much better).
Hello, WordPress Thursday, September 25th, 2008
Posted by carltonstedman in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
My blog is now on WordPress, which I like better than blogger. Old blog: carltonstedman.blogspot.com.
With thanks to Sumner Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Posted by carltonstedman in capitalism, objectivism, politics.add a comment
Abe and Bob get together and see that Xavier is suffering from some illness. They feel bad about this and want to help and thus propose a Law that Carl should help Xavier, or perhaps even Abe, Bob and Carl should pool their funds to help out Xavier.
The problem here is Carl: maybe he wants to help out Xavier, maybe he doesn’t; maybe Xavier has been a real prick to Carl and Carl doesn’t want to help; maybe Carl really has a tight budget and needs what he has to feed his family, or maybe Carl has cancer and needs all the money he has for his own chemotherapy. Regardless, if Carl doesn’t want to help Xavier, Abe and Bob don’t care, and the Law forces Carl to pay, otherwise be in danger of breaking the Law and being thrown in prison or otherwise penalized.
Now, if Abe and Bob wanted to go ask Carl for help and Carl managed to re-budget and really wanted to help out Xavier and gave Abe and Bob some money to help Xavier, that’s different. They can’t force him to pay, but merely try to get him to voluntarily abide to their wishes: they have to convince to give them money. This is capitalism: Abe and Bob can get Carl’s money for Xavier only through Carl’s voluntary agreement.
But that’s not the situation; the situation is that Abe and Bob have a Law passed to force Carl to pay, regardless of his whim, at the threat of the physical force of the government. This is socialism: Carl, in Abe’s and Bob’s thoughts to help Xavier, is the Forgotten Man, and he is enslaved by the government because of the Law.
Perhaps Abe and Bob don’t want Carl to just help Xavier but thousands, even millions of Xaviers. Maybe even Carl could get some trickle-down benefit. These are moot points: the basic fact is that Carl is being forced to give up his money, against his will.
Many would say that Carl is only being forced to give up money, just money. But what is money? Money is what Carl uses to pay for his family’s health care, education, food and entertainment. Money is the tool used to trade with your fellow man. Money allows Carl to work in a highly-specialized field, unrelated to other industries, and yet still be able to get steak and apples and cars and much, much more that he would never have time to produce on his own. Money, in a market economy, is produced through the productive investment of one’s mortal time.
In short: money is a symbol of life. When Carl is forced to give up his money, he is forced to give up his own life.
Therefore, socialism pre-supposes that Abe, Bob and Xavier have a claim on Carl’s life. Before getting to the pragmatic reasoning that Abe and Bob may not be able to decide the best way to use Carl’s life or that Xavier could abuse Carl’s life, if one is to allow socialism, one first has to admit that it is morally acceptable for Abe and Bob to take Carl’s life without Carl’s permission, ergo, that it is okay for Abe and Bob to steal from Carl, ergo, that it is okay for Abe and Bob to enslave Carl.
In summary: socialism pre-supposes that slavery is morally acceptable (or, perhaps, that there are no morals or they are subjective, equally fallacious arguments).
Sometimes, the Argument of Democracy is used. Surely, if the majority vote that it’s okay, then it is okay, right? This is Morality from Majority, which leads to the Tyranny of the Majority, where, in the worst case, 49% live in slavery by the authority of the other 51%.
Here’s an example of the ridiculous Argument of Democracy: suppose there are 10 people and 6 decide it is perfectly okay to steal from the other 4 — the reason why is unimportant; this Argument suggests not only that this is acceptable, but that the 4 slaves should agree with the decision as morally right, due to the ruling of the majority. Suppose it was worse: that the 6 decide they should kill the other 4. Is this moral because the majority has voted and decided it to be so?
Some (many) would say yes, in fact, it is okay for the 6 to kill the 4, since all 10 voted on it and the majority agreed to it. This argument is unacceptable in other fields, such as science: physicists do not vote on whether the Higg’s boson exists or not. Why is this immoral practice accepted in politics by so many?
In Praise of Capitalism Wednesday, September 17th, 2008
Posted by carltonstedman in capitalism, objectivism, poems, politics.add a comment
Vote for Obama or McCain?
A situation which many claim,
One on the left,
The other bereft,
They say, of elements of change.
Change–they yell, it’s the answer,
So the liberals do clamor.
But what’s so new,
With politics, it’s true,
Held to the New Deal with fervor?
We tried Lassiez-Faire, they say,
And it failed, so the Proles pay.
How can they lie?
What we had, we tried,
Not free, but “mixed” economy.
Where was the freedom to choose,
And the freedom to lose?
Which is so needed,
Unless we are impeded,
Forever, by Big Brother’s fool rules.
Socialism, they preach, is the cure?
A new idea, the Left is sure.
But this was tried,
And countless died,
Then, now, and could, in the future.
Capitalism, really, let’s try that,
Without government and it’s fat cats.
Wealth and liberty,
By rationality,
The moral solution, and that’s a fact.
Rally for the Republic Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
Posted by carltonstedman in politics.add a comment
Last night, to my surprise, Ron Paul headed up a “Rally for the Republic” (RftR), in Minneapolis, down the road from the Republican National Convention (RNC). Ron Paul was not allowed to speak at the RNC and hosted the RftR as a meeting of celebration for the ever-growing group of people first helping along RP’s failed presidential run and now the Campaign for Liberty (CFL), a group of nearly 100,000 patriots (so far, including myself) intent on bringing freedom back to this country, through education, activism and an active role in local, state-wide and federal politics.
I watched the whole RftR on CSPAN-2, live, as it was streaming live on the CFL website. I believe it’s up there now, too. There were some decent speeches and guests, but, of course, RP was the star of the show as the finale. He gave a great speech (some notes are up here), describing the state of the republic (hint: bleak), how it got this way and what needs to be given back, or the consequences.
One thing I was particularly impressed with was right before he dove into his speech, where he talked about how he and his family appreciated that they “recieved thoughts and prayers from Christians…and thoughts and prayers from Jews…and thoughts and prayers from Muslims…and thoughts and wishes from agnostics and atheists, too” in regard to his wife being sick. Pandering? Maybe, but pandering to atheists, too? When has a politician (especially a Christian one at that) done that? Awesome.
Oh yeah, something else awesome about the RftR? Unlike the DNC and RNC, which each received about $16.8 million of stolen taxpayer money, increasing national debt to throw an extravagant party, the RftR was funded 100% from private donations, including ticket prices set at $17.76, with zero debt.
Timeless words of Francisco D’Anconia Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
Posted by carltonstedman in objectivism, philosophy, politics.add a comment
See the link: link. One of the many great character speeches from Atlas Shrugged. Happened to see a link to it and had to post — great stuff.
The main theme is the morality of Capitalism (I’d argue, the only moral economic system). Of course, the practicallity should be more than enough, but many begrudgingly accept Capitalism (or denounce it entirely), thinking it is immoral and feeling guilty, only to fall back to their distardly ways.
Having just finished Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, a fantastic read that my Objectivist/switcher buddy at work gave me a copy of (he bought like 10 copies a number of years ago, gives them to people, thinking it’s in his best interest to spread the word of rational economics), of course I think of the practical reasons to oppose government intervention and regulation. I have also taken part in a recent Gentoo OTW thread, trying to explain just why so many folks are wrong in backing centrist/statist policies and why they are the cause, not result of or solution to, inflation; the forums are largely filled with Keynesian tripe, denouncing Austrian economics (read: true capitalism) as “old” and needing the “new” ideas of government intervention for a “change” and “hope” of America (sound familiar, Obama supporters?).
Of course, government intervention has really been the status quo over these last few millenia. And where has all this centralization brought us, but to a mixed economy encumbered by statist policies, lumbering along and making more stumbles behind than leaps ahead, giving up markets to more competitive outlets, non-coincidently with less regulation, such as manufacturing moving to China?
It is a readily-observable fact, spelled out time and again in Hazlitt’s classic text, that increased government regulation invariably leads to long-term cross-market increased unemployment, decreased wealth and decreased quality of living for all sectors. The farce is continued on because of the short-term boon to one specialist group by the enslavement of all others (a.k.a. subsidization), which is immediatiely visible by the common layperson, while the long-term detrimental effects are much more subtle, although eventually more far-reaching and with a net loss.
Surely, McCain will take further steps towards this wretched failing statist economy, but Obama is very sincere, and surely would do as he and his socialist think-tank supporters cry for, moving us quickly to a centrist economy, bringing America to economic ruin as soon as possible.
When will people wise-up and scream for an end to these fatal policies?
Quick Tips to Speed up that Winblows Box You’re Forced to Use at Work Thursday, March 13th, 2008
Posted by carltonstedman in ideas, pc.add a comment
So, my work laptop (a Lenovo Thinkpad T60, that, hardware-wise, I love) has, of course, Windows XP on it (most businesses aren’t gonna switch to Vista for years, we sure aren’t). It’s not a cheap piece of hardware: it’s a dual-core Centrino with half a gig of RAM, which should be more than enough for simple business stuff. But, it’s not, and Windows chugs along.
A look at my task/memory usage shows, not suprisingly, that Firefox is eating up quite a bit of RAM (90 MB or so with my 20+ tabs open). Firefox can get big with all those tabs and extensions, but it sure isn’t that bloated on my Gentoo box! Also, not surprising, Windows Explorer eats up a ridiculous amount of RAM: over 30, even 40 MB! That’s just ridiculous. And you want to use it’s file manager? Still takes forever to load.
So, I figured, there just *has* to be a better way. The answer? Use linux. Can’t do that? Well, there’s still some things (which I’ve now implemented) which will help keep your memory footprint smaller, even in Windows XP. Here’s some tips:
* Use an alternative Windows shell, such as bbLean (a blackbox clone for Windows). These are a hell of a lot faster, cleaner and lightweight. Some also add some really neat features (there’s a ton). I like bbLean because it’s blackbox, which is light, clean and like the fluxbox I run at home. Also, it seems pretty stable. This runs instead of Windows Explorer (which you can safely kill once in the sanctity of bbLean). So far, seems bbLean uses < 10 MB at start up, and takes about 2-3 MB most of the time. Sweet!
* Don’t use Windows Explorer for file management! Now that you’ve got rid of it for a shell, if you need to browse your files, it’ll open that up, and boom, 40 MB right away. So, use an alternative. I like A43 file manager. It’s feature-rich and lightweight, using no more than 18 MB (typically less while idle), which is a far cry from that 40 MB of Explorer.
* Avoid Firefox. I love Firefox, okay? I love all the extensions. But at work? I don’t need them. So, Opera is the answer. Same tabs loaded in each, Firefox uses 90 MB, Opera uses 60 MB or less. Plus, when you minimize Opera or it’s not focused, that jumps down to < 30 MB, while Firefox still seems to hang around 90 MB. Definitely the way to go.
* Do not use Adobe Acrobat Reader! This app is notoriously slow and painful. Instead, use Foxit Reader, which is very lightweight, starts up so much faster and doesn’t seem to have any compatibilty issues.
* Do not use Adobe Distiller to print to PDF. Again, the much more lightweight (and free) PDFCreator is the way to go. It acts just like a printer and you can do things like combine print jobs to make one PDF and more. Very nice.
* Install AnalogX Maxmem. This is a little app I’ve been using for years, which I think I heard about on Tech TV way back in the day. It sits in your taskbar, shows a graph of your RAM usage and automatically cleans out your RAM whenever it reaches a certain amount of filledness or when you click on it. Good to use and run with the aggressive option after you’ve been up and running for a bit to get rid of all that cruft Windows just seems to build up.
* If you can, avoid using MS Outlook. Outlook is just incredibly slow, has a huge memory footprint and is very crash-prone (in my experience, at least with Outlook 2003). If you are lucky enough that your company does not use MS Exchange, just use Mail in Opera. That is not my case; we use MS Exchange. Most companies that use MS Exchange have a web-based interface too. This is what I use, via a tab in Opera. From here I can view and send emails, accept meeting requests, manage my calendar and more. It’s not as powerful as Outlook, but it’s good enough for most of the stuff I have to do. Every now and then, I do need to get Outlook going so I can check other peoples’ schedules (for scheduling meetings) and archive my emails (we’ve only got a measly 100 MB).
That’s all, have a ball.
