If you had access to a 3D printer and could create only one thing out of plastic, from scratch, what would you make? An implantable human ear replacement? A filter for pumping clean water in thirsty third-world nations? What about forming something fun and whimsical like, say, an acoustic guitar? Or, would you take the tunnel of least resistance, and the road of the lowest common human morality, and choose to print a plastic gun for killing people?
For economic reasons, I decided I was not going to ship my once state of the art gaming computer to Portugal when I moved. ”The Beast,” as she was known, would have almost doubled my shipping costs by the time all the relevant insurances had been applied. It was simply not worth it.
She was sold to friend with whom I hear she is very happy.
This meant that when I got here I shared a computer with Mr P. As anyone knows, sharing a computer is a delicate affair at the best of times and although we did not come to blows or even utter a cross word it soon became apparent that we needed another computer.
Portable computing has come a long way since the Compaq computer my mother used to lug around with her back and forth from work — I distinctly remember trying to lift it as a child and struggling. I believe that my mother told me at the time that it weighed nearly thirty pounds. Still it was impressive to me — that you could take a whole computer with you wherever you wanted from room to room and just plug it in and use it! As time has gone on smaller and smaller computers have come about — the smart phones of today are more clever than some of the biggest computers of twenty and thirty years ago.
Jamie Grace wrote this article.
The journalist Pete Warren noted in an article for The Guardian (UK) earlier this month that Google have duly noted, anticipated and are working toward solving the major problem that exists in attempting to link mobile Internet technology, social networking and online advertising. Google have developed their Orkut social networking application specifically for mobile phones – and so hope to dominate the most powerful form of advertising yet commercially developed – and in future, perhaps the most invasive as well as the most lucrative.
Germany did the right thing on Friday by refusing to let the government infect your computer:
As computers become more like us and as we purposefully program our computers to reflexively behave as if they are us — instead of us — are we risking the loss of autonomous thought?
I’m thrilled to announce the availability of my latest book — Picture Yourself Learning Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard — published by Thomson/Cengage Learning.
There is no greater fun than playing around with Text-to-Speech on the AT&T Labs website.
Yesterday we discussed the Top Ten Reasons I Love my MacBook Pro and today, to be fair, we look at the darker side of the MacBook Pro in the definitive Top Ten List of Hates:
I have had my MacBook Pro for a month now and so far I believe it is the best machine I have ever owned. I have owned a lot of machines! The key to loving the MacBook Pro was to make it my main box — my ThinkPad T43p is still here — but over there as my secondary machine now. Now I do everything with my MacBook Pro.
Yesterday I pulled through my collection of IBM ThinkPads to see which ones worked and which ones needed an update to start working again.
I found my old ThinkPad T40p with its massive — at that time — 40gig HDD that I used two years ago and ran into the ground with heavy usage.
One of the most overlooked vital pieces of setting up a good computer experience is getting the right sound system to compliment your multimedia experience. I am a laptop user and many think getting good sound out of such a small embedded subsystem is not possible, but the Logitech Z-2300 2.1 THX-Certified Sound System proves delicate and thundering sound can be had in an instant for around $90.
I used to be a big TabletPC fan. A year ago I purchased a Toshiba M205 TabletPC and I found it to be a fine machine. It was reliable. It had a great keyboard. It had a rotten screen for viewing. The screen resolution was incredible but it was like trying to see that resolution through a schmear of Vaseline.
I am reading the great Andy Rathbone’s Windows XP for Dummies book and on the “About the Author” page Andy reveals his first computer was a “26-pound portable CP/M Kaypro 2x” that he bought in 1985.
