@theovalich
Absolutely right. I have personally seen and used ES Intel CPUs (Nehalem-based DP Xeons) 6 months before the CPU was actually released. There are a LOT of ES Intel CPUs (large companies like motherboard manufacturers have hundreds or thousands), they look exactly like this ("Intel Confidential"), and a surprising range of companies get them.

There are two things you need to know about ES Intel CPUs:
- NEVER sell one if you have one (or even release benchmarks). Intel tracks these things pretty well, and your employer knows that they risk not getting ES CPUs if they let them leak out.
- NEVER buy one if you're offered one. ES CPUs are usually buggy as hell, with performance issues and glitches.

The bottom line is, you don't want this, and the seller is going to get screwed.

@leg

Almost certainly not a fake. I have personally seen and used Intel CPUs (specifically Nehalem-based Xeons) 6+ months before they were released. Pretty much any OEM of any consequence gets their hands on ES (engineering sample) Intel CPUs way early, and they look just like the photo.

Note that "any OEM" includes motherboard manufacturers, many system integrators (not just HP and Dell), software vendors like Microsoft/RedHat/VMWare, and a lot of other people.

Basically, there are a lot of these things floating around, so there's no reason to believe that this is a fake.

Yeah, and gasoline is 1/3 the price here. Electricity is cheaper in the US. We pay less for computers, game consoles, and most other gadgets.

What's your point?

Yeah, the legacy carriers like UA and US are much safer.

Oh wait.

I'm not defending what WN did, and living in Colorado I do like to see Frontier win (although less so since the Republic buyout) and I know that they work hard on maintenance.

But to pretend that safety issues aren't endemic throughout the airline industry would be naive and dangerous. WN may have been the airline that got caught (well, and now UA and US), but the fact is that cheaper fares and higher utilization puts more pressure on mechanics, pilots, and management to cut costs.

The strange thing is, despite all of the corners that we're cutting, airlines are still safer than they have ever been. We saw far more crashes per year, per aircraft, and per passenger mile *before* deregulation and cost-cutting than we do now.

The correct number of airline-caused fatalities per year is 0. In 2002-2008, we achieved that in the US. In 2009, we didn't. I agree with the FAA's fine on Southwest (it should have been larger), but the fact is that Southwest has flown hundreds of millions of passenger miles with very few serious accidents (most notably, the MDW accident).

What annoys me about the iMac is how Apple gets the ergonomics so wrong while creating such a pretty display.

Having your display at the proper height is critical, and unfortunately it's difficult to do with the iMac since there's only one height option. Dell, HP, and other mid-range displays are all height-adjustable; my Dell 3007WFP-HC (which unfortunately I no longer haver) moved at least 6 inches up and down.

If that's not bad enough, there's the glare. Not all of us have well-controlled diffuse indirect lighting; I personally have a window next to my monitor, and I can tell you that a glossy display is a non-starter during late afternoon.

Add to that the fact that the ports are all on the back, which makes them impossible to see from the front. Want to plug in a USB flash drive? You're going to be feeling around under the iMac or getting up and looking over it to find the port.

The new mouse? Instead of gestures for going back and forward, how about a thumb button like my Logitech G5 has? How about two actual buttons instead of one and a touch-sensitive surface?

It's great that the new iMac has an IPS display (my S-IPS 3007WFP-HC blew away the cheap TN display that I'm currently using), it's great that it's low power and quiet, and it's great that it is compact. But it seems that every Apple release is two steps forward and one step back. Apple's new keyboards (no number pad) and mice (gestures for forward/back) look cooler, but they are less usable. Apple's new iMac has a better screen but is more susceptible to glare than the iMac from 3 years ago.

First, you're falling into the same trap that everyone commenting on the wireless industry seems to be falling into lately: you believe what AT&T says.

The reality is that a well-deployed, well managed HSPA network does not have the issues that AT&T's network has. The fact is that AT&T has too many HSPA subscribers on too few sites with too little spectrum and too little backhaul.

T-Mobile has more UMTS/HSPA spectrum than AT&T in large markets, largely because they waited for AWS rather than trying to deploy in the same spectrum as their GSM/GPRS/EDGE service. T-Mobile has a full 30MHz of AWS spectrum in markets like New York, Chicago, and LA. This is in addition to the PCS spectrum they have for GSM/GPRS/EDGE.

T-Mobile has about as many metro base stations as AT&T, but with half as many subscribers. This has saved them from resorting to tricks like AMR-HR (on GSM) that AT&T uses to save spectrum. This also eases demand on the backhaul.

T-Mobile already has 32M subscribers. It's foolish to believe that they could absorb another 40M subscribers overnight, but it's also foolish to believe that they couldn't grow substantially as-is.

The idea that T-Mobile would be offering "infinitely" more service with an unlimited plan is also absurd. The reality is that text messaging and voice are not significant bandwidth hogs, and data is already unlimited. Someone with a 4-year-old RAZR is not suddenly going to start using tons of data just because you introduced a $50 unlimited plan.

The $50 is aggressive, it's smart, and it's exactly what we need. Wireless is a fantastically profitable venture; despite what AT&T will tell you, the money that they are spending on infrastructure is peanuts compared to the profit made on items like voice service, text messaging, and data.

Word has autosave on by default. So does OpenOffice.org. Google Docs autosaves. So does GMail.

Windows Vista and 7 automatically snapshot every file on your disk, every day (although it only stores changes, not a whole new copy). It's called 'Previous Versions', and it's on by default.

I'm not sure what you're complaining about. XP is 8 years old now. Why are you still using a crummy old OS?

And why are you brining up the mobile space as this shining example of innovation? The mobile space has improved dramatically in the last 2 years (since the iPhone launched), but that's because it was in such bad shape two years ago. Mobile devices are not even remotely close to being as productive as PCs. Try writing a research paper on an iPhone sometime.

I think Art Lebedev would take exception with this being called a "GPS", because it's intended to use Russia's navigation system, GLONASS.

Realistically, GLONASS doesn't work fully anywhere but Russia, so it would more likely be dual-mode GLONASS/GPS (if it were even produced), but you still shouldn't call it a GPS.

@humble226

Don't forget about the ability to handle multiple networks with overlapping IP address spaces.

Hopefully we can put an end to that silliness with IPv6.

Yeah, although realistically most modern PV systems are grid-tied anyway. What matters is whether you produce enough energy to offset the energy that you use from the grid.

That said, I doubt that the small PV panels on the flowers can produce enough energy to offset the consumption. It probably depends on how much the flowers get used, though, and for what purpose. There's more than enough energy produced by the panels to run several cellphones and a WiFi router, but even a couple of laptops (~30W each) used for ~8 hours each would probably be too much for the system to break even.