Why I think Netbooks don't suck.

Jeff Atwood did a blog article on Netbooks in response to a article by some other guy who says they are lame. For some reason, the comments are disabled so I'm commenting here:

The other guy basically says that Netbooks are a worst of both worlds cross between laptops and cell phones. Well, I have to agree with Jeff on this one that this is dead wrong.

I'll grant that Netbooks aren't that spectacular a computer but that's not what there supposed to be. As I see it, Netbooks are as close to a cell phone as you can get without giving up the reasons people even bother with real computers:

- A keyboard that you can actual type on with more than two thumbs.
- A real OS

I don't care that it's not that powerful or that the keyboard is somewhat undersized or that it doesn't actually fit in my pocket. What I care about is that it's easy enough to pack that I carry it even if I'm not sure I will need it. I care that I can run any windows program I'm likely to use. I care that I can plug it into my wired network at home. I care that it runs for hours on a single charge. I care that I have full control over the file system.

Down near the bottom, Jeff even goes so far as to question if Netbooks might take over the whole computer market. Well, I'm sure they won't. I'll grant that for most people's portable computing, Netbooks are it (small, cheap and powerful, pick two) but making things portable forces to many compromises that get in the way of other stuff. (A while back, about '03, I was shopping for a laptop and priced what I really wanted and compared it to the same things as a desk top. The difference in price could buy a low end laptop.) I see three end user markets; Netbooks for pack-it-with-you computers, desktops for no-compromises power processing and lots of screen space, and a small slot for desktop replacement type laptops for IT techs and what-not.

MPG for an electric car?

It looks like the EPA, GM and a few others are trying to figure out how to compare gas burning apples to plug in the wall oranges. Everyone knows what you are talking about when you quote MPG numbers but what about for a car that has gas tank or one that can be charged off the power grid?

It seems that the EPA is trying to come up with a standard for how to equate the two. Well just to throw my two cents in: equate them based on what really matters. No one really cares how much gas a car burns (except for concerns of range) what people really care about is either how much money it takes to go some distance or how much CO₂ you dump out doing it. The first number would be a bit tricky as both fuel and electric prices very a bit by region so some kind of national average would need to be used. The second one is no better because CO₂/kWh is a function of what is generating the reserve power on your grid? I happen to know that most hydro-power plants are run at either full power (or as close to it as something else lets them). The same almost surly goes for most of the renewable power sources as they tend to be use it or loose it systems. From that, all or most of the power production, will be from the dirtiest source around so it ends up being not at all trivial to compute.

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Just out of curiosity, if a large chunk of the US fleet goes to plug in cars, how much power are we talking about? According to the linked article, 80% of cars go less than 40 mi/day and the only number cited for power consumption is 0.25 kWh/mi so if you assume the long tail puts the average at THE 80% mark, that gives you 10 kWh/day/car. If there is one electric car per 6 people in the US, that gives 50 GWhr/day or 1.5 TWhr/month of extra demand. For comparisons that is (based on mt reading of this report) about 0.1% of the total US electricity demand.

The best kind of vigilante justice

Every once in a while a story pops up about someone who takes the law into there own hands, almost always indicating a failing on some level: like the story of the town thug who got shot dead in the middle of a crowd of several hundred people and not one person saw the shooter.

Well here is a story that is just about the best possible case of vigilante justice I can think of: thief robs man, man tackles thief, man cuffs thief with wire ties, thief left for police in middle of main street. Now aside from the going after someone wielding a knife, and (maybe) the public humiliation factor, I can't see anything anyone can object to.

Open source; not just for software anymore.

This comapany in the UK (I think) is making an "Open source" hydrogen car.

I think this is a really cool idea and I'm interested in how it will pan out. I have thought it would be interesting to do something like this but I had always thought along the lines of a DARPA grand challenge like project or something fictional like a the spaceship Michael.

Thank goodness Linux != Probable cause

It's nice to see people making rational decisions in the legal system. For instance: running Linux is not Probable cause for a search warrant

Reading between the lines.

I just ran across this news article. The up shot of it is that a 13 year old kid in Minnesota who is suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma, attempted to refuse traditional treatment for it (possibly for religious reasons) apparently with the approval of his mother. Somehow it ended up with a court ruling that he could not refuse treatment because his doctors said he will die without it. After that,he and his mother fled for Mexico.

Now the fleeing the country bit might be illegal depending on the custody situations but who cares. The biggest piece of the story in my opinion is that a court decided that it has the authority to overrule someone on what happens to there own body! (and this is barely even mentioned until halfway down the page)

Now I'll grant that there might be more to it, for instance; dad says, do the treatment, mom says do what the kid wants and the court goes with dad. Even if that is true, from the way it's written it seem that the court ruled based on what it thought was best for the kid, not based on who it thought should decide. And from the way it's written, it seems the author this that is just fine.

This seems a bit "off" to me.

I'm haven't dug into this at all but something is not right here:

FBI Defends Disruptive Raids on Texas Data Centers

The up shot of it is that the FBI raided a few data co-location centers based on a fraud claim by AT&T and Verizon (basically unpaid bills for accounts that my have been set up with falsified information) and walked out with hundreds of servers who's only crime might well be that they were in the same co-location building a servers used for a crime... maybe.

If this was a Hollywood drama/comedy I can just imagine the ending:

FBI spokesman, a year or so down the line: We'er sorry about putting those businesses into bankruptcy by taking there servers because we couldn't tell tell they weren't owned by the bad guys we were after and didn't bother listening to the site manger when he told us exactly that.

I don't think it will be that bad but I'm sure someone should feel ashamed of how they ran this little operation.

Regarding the gunman (or maybe gun-boy) in Waiblingen, Germany:

Searching his bedroom, the police found violent computer games — in which, experts say, players digitally clothe and arm themselves for combat — plus brutal videos and play weapons that fire small yellow pellets, said Siegfried Mahler of the Stuttgart prosecutors' office.

Surce: International Herald Tribune (I found it first in the March 13, New York Times)

My question is: why are they so cagey about saying what they found? Sounds to me like they found the kid plays WoW (or something like it) and Air Soft. If that was the case, why don't they come out and just say so? The only reason I can think of is it wouldn't sound as dangerous.


I guess I should throw in a token "Don't blame the game" Reddit link (By the way, I'm not saying I lean either way on that one.)