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22 Jul 06:16

3 Πράγματα που θέλω από το True Blood

javapapo

amen brother

  1. Κάποιος επιτέλους να ξεκάνει την Τάρα. Seriously.
  2. Παρακαλώ μη δώσετε ξανά storyline στο Λαφαγιέτ. Τον προτιμούσα δευτεράτζα. και …
  3. ΑΦΟΥ ΤΟ ΘΕΣ ΜΩΡΗ ΣΟΥΚΗ… καν’ το το ^%#^@%#^@# το τρίο να χαρούμε και ‘μεις λίγο :P
30 Jun 09:19

Photo

javapapo

xaxaxa



16 Jun 14:56

How to Pause & Resume an App or Process in Mac OS X

by Paul Horowitz

Need to quickly free up some processing power? You can do that easily by temporarily pausing and then later resuming any active process or application in Mac OS X. Technically, this is actually ‘stopping’ and ‘continuing’ a process, but a stop is not to be confused with the more aggressive killing or force quitting applications and thus the terminology of pausing or halting is often easier to differentiate the two.

This means you can take a process that is consuming 100% CPU and temporarily pause it while you do something else, then resume it when you are ready to let that process do it’s thing. This is achieved through a command line trick, and we’ll cover two different ways to do it by using the kill and killall commands with the -STOP and -CONT flags. Ideally you will have some comfort and knowledge with the command line before using this, but it’s certainly not necessary.

Stop a continue a process from command line

Before beginning, launch the Terminal app, found in /Applications/Utilities/, and also launch Activity Monitor, which is in the same folder.

How to Temporarily Suspend Stop a Process or App in Mac OS X

The basic syntax for suspending an application is as follows, where PID is the ID of the process you wish to pause:

kill -STOP PID

The PID is always a number, and every single process running on a Mac has an associated ID.

If you’re familiar with retrieving process ID’s, then you already know what to do using the above commands alone, but if not then that’s what we’ll cover next, and that’s why we launched “Activity Monitor”

Finding the PID & Halting the Associated Process

This is the more user friendly method, utilizing Activity Monitor:

  • From Activity Monitor, use the Search function in the upper right corner and type the application name you wish to suspend (e.g.: iTunes)
  • With the matching processes and/or app(s) visible, locate the process ID by looking under the “PID” column
  • Stop a process in Mac OS X

  • Add the matching PID to the aforementioned kill command, like so:
  • kill -STOP 3138

  • Note the CPU activity for that process ID is now at 0%, indicating the process has been paused (technically, stopped)

Don’t forget the PID, or better yet, don’t close the Terminal window quite yet, because that same PID is how you will resume the application to continue being able to use it again.

You will find the effect of stopping a process on CPU usage is dramatic, this screen shot demonstrates iTunes consuming 70% CPU while running it’s Visualizer, and the same iTunes process after it has been halted with the -STOP flag. The process has literally been stopped in its tracks:

Pause a process in Mac OS X to save CPU

Those with more command line knowledge may prefer to use ps rather than Activity Monitor, which is really quite easy:

ps aux |grep Name

Change “Name” to whatever the start of a process or application name is, locate the PID, and then put that into the kill command:

kill -STOP 92841

Whether you use Activity Monitor or ps to retrieve the PID is irrelevant, so long as you enter the correct process ID when using the kill command.

Note that trying to use an application that has been paused will almost always result in seeing the spinning beach ball of death, minus the CPU usage. Thus, if you want to use the app again, you must “resume” it.

How to Resume a “Stopped” Application or Process

Resuming a stopped or paused application is simple, just change the kill command slightly and use the same process ID that you retrieved from the previous steps:

kill -CONT PID

For example, to resume the iTunes app using the PID from earlier:

kill -CONT 3138

And now iTunes becomes usable again, minus the spinning wait cursor. Along with this comes a return to whatever level of CPU consumption existed earlier.

The screenshot below demonstrates this trick using both the kill and killall commands:

Pause and resume an app in Mac OS X

Using -STOP and -CONT with killall is essentially the same, but it has some limitations regarding names, and thus we covered the more direct method of using kill based on PID instead. Nonethless, let’s demonstrate this with killall too.

Stopping & Continuing Applications by App Name

If you know the application or exact process name, you can also use the ‘killall’ command with the -STOP flag to halt processes. This can be easier for apps that are simple to identify by a name, but it has limitations when it comes to working with processes with complex names, or for pausing a specific process that has duplicate processes with the same name (like a specific Chrome tab or window mixed in with many “Google Chrome Renderer” processes), and thus we covered the PID approach first because it’s much more direct.

The basic halt command with killall is as follows:

killall -STOP AppName

Not sure what the app name is? Use ps and grep:

ps aux |grep AppName

For example, you could grep for “Chrome” to find all processes with “Chrome” in the name:

ps aux|grep Chrome

Or you can just target the process with a specific app name like so:

killall -STOP -c "Google Chrome"

Resuming processes and apps with killall is a matter of changing the flag from -STOP to -CONT, everything else is the same:

killall -CONT AppName

For example, to resume the application with a long name:

killall -CONT -c "Google Chrome"

Again, the app/process will continue to function as usual, and CPU usage will return to where it was before being paused.

Apps or processes with no spaces in their name can be impacted directly by killall without any additional flags or indicators, like iTunes.

15 Jun 10:23

What Instagram Taught A Photographer About Life

by Nick Statt

Dirk Dallas, a graphic designer currently residing in southern California, downloaded the photo-sharing and -filtering app Instagram the day it came out on October 6, 2010. He then promptly deleted it.

“It didn't make sense because unless you follow people or have followers, what is it?” the 30-year-old university professor says of his early mindset. Flash forward two and a half years, after a friend told Dallas to give the app another try, and he has 106,000 followers under the handle @dirka.

And Instagram itself has changed, becoming part of Facebook through a billion-dollar acquisition.

For users like Dallas, Instagram is a verb, and a well-paying one. For Dallas, one recent gig involved Toyota, who paid him to participate in an Instagram-oriented photo shoot. He’s been approached numerous other times, and turned down some of the offers.

“I’ve had to walk a fine line of, ‘Wow I’m really selling out,’ or, ‘I’m pulling a fast one on my followers,’” he explains.

And Dallas is not alone. He represents a sliver of the app’s 100 million users who are not professional photographers, photojournalists, or celebrities, yet have amassed a massive following through their keen eye and commitment to the community. To put it in perspective, Instagram cofounder Mike Krieger has only 65,000 more followers than Dallas. (Celebrities attract considerably more: LeBron James has 2.5 million).

But while it sounds like a dream come true—using a smartphone app to launch an Internet-based career on the side—Dallas has battled a common enemy in many heavy Instagram users’ paths: himself.

“I used to be kind of obsessed in a negative way," he admits. "Instagram kind of consumed me."

Before he had over 100,000 followers and before his Instagram presence became a revenue stream, he struggled with an issue at the very core of the photo-sharing app: the way it has latched onto its users and assimilated itself into our daily lives, for better and for worse.

"Instagram kind of consumed me."

With Facebook's backing, Instagram is here to stay, and the effects of its pressure to scan for, snap, and constantly think about shareable moments day in and day out is central to the way our digital existences bleed into our physical experiences.

"Instagram Is Not A Photography Company"

Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in a sit-down with Kevin Rose, of Google Ventures and Digg, at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, CA in May. Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in a sit-down with Kevin Rose, of Google Ventures and Digg, at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, CA in May.

When Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, a clean-cut towering Stanford grad, addressed a crowd at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco in May, he reiterated multiple times that the company he cofounded “is not a photography company.”

“Instagram is a communications company," Systrom said. "It’s about communicating a moment. It just so happens that that message happens to be an image."

His insistence of this point throughout the night’s Q&A conversation, moderated by Digg founder and Google Ventures partner Kevin Rose, bordered on the evangelical. Systrom showed an almost Steve Jobs-like marketing magic. He spoke as if the crowd needed convincing that Instagram was worth the $1 billion Facebook paid for it last April. They didn’t.

Instagram has no real competitors. Sure, there’s Hipstamatic and Flickr’s smartphone app and Twitter’s mobile photo-filter options, but none of these will ever come close to commanding Instagram's near-synonymous identity with photo sharing in the minds of its users.

Projecteo, an Instagram projector that, for $34.99, can show off 10 of your shots on 35 mm slide, secured $87,000 in Kickstarter funding last year. Projecteo, an Instagram projector that, for $34.99, can show off 10 of your shots on 35 mm slide, secured $87,000 in Kickstarter funding last year.

We'll soon have physical evidence. There's already an Instagram-linked slide projector, and an upcoming Polaroid-made instant-print camera.

As Systrom said himself that night, “Anyone can make a filter app.” What Instagram did was different. It dug into our souls, and it’s part of our daily digital ecosystem on a private and personal level comparable only to Facebook, not coincidentally.

Part of its success was in the way Instagram took the hurdles of photography out of photo sharing.

For one, you can’t make an image horizontal or vertical; all photos are square. (Apple appears to be following Instagram's lead—a split-second preview of the next version of the iPhone operating system showed a square-photo mode.)

Within less than a minute, your photo is telegraphed to the world. With Instagram, photography became more than just easy. It became natural.

“I shared something, my photo got a bit of action, and it was awesome,” Dallas explains of the first photo he took after he re-downloaded the app a few months after deleting it on its launch day. “I got instant feedback."

It turned out some of his friends and Twitter followers had stumbled onto his account while the app remained off his phone. While he'd temporarily abandoned Instagram, it hadn't forgotten him—and that gave him a small following to come back to.

The feedback is the key to Instagram’s success and growth. It’s the reason communities with thousands of people spring up around hashtags in mere hours. But it’s also the source of the now-too-familiar narcissistic tendencies—that need to show everyone what you’re about to eat for lunch, for instance, and the negativity that comes with that.

Instagram is now yet another pillar of society’s continuously strained and conflicted relationship with social networks. For the photo-sharing app, the dangers lurk deeper than with Twitter or Facebook or Tumblr because with Instagram, our very experiences are our digital currency.

The devaluation of daily life to a struggle for likes and exposure and reaffirmation can force us to reconsider and reflect upon the reasons we love Instagram so much—or why, love it or hate it, we can't quit it.

The Conflicted Relationship With Sharing

Dirk Dallas' heavy Instagram use has earned him 106,000 followers, but that was only after he took a self-imposed break. "Instagram kind of consumed me," he admits. Dirk Dallas' heavy Instagram use has earned him 106,000 followers, but that was only after he took a self-imposed break. "Instagram kind of consumed me," he admits.

After a few months of near-constant use, Dallas decided to take a break from Instagram.

“I actually stepped back for about four months,” he says. The app ended up taking away from Dallas's own experience of the very moments his followers were so keen to like.“Right off the bat, it made me very aware of my surroundings.... I was always trying to look for something epic to share.”

Dallas’s personal conflict exposes the potentially destructive relationship we can have with an app that also helps us connect in amazing ways.

"It seems that there are a few populations that are particularly impacted by these technologies," says Morgan G. Ames, a graduate of Stanford's PhD progam in communication who specializes in the ways new technologies impact our everyday lives. "One would be parents of younger children who can capture and share all aspects of the minutiae of their children's everyday lives.

"Some parents seem to feel a tremendous pressure to capture all of the 'important' moments of their child's lives, which can make their lives feel more exciting and important, but can also add a great deal of stress," she adds.

This kind of Insta-stress happens in other circumstances, too.

Take the food photo for instance. As early as August of last year, GQ’s Luke Zaleski wrote, “The best way to Instagram your food? Don't. It's time to go on an Insta-diet.” More recently, you have the Tumblr "Pictures Of Hipsters Taking Pictures Of Food."

This idea that people were so consumed with sharing their every moment—something people previously said about the Facebook status and the tweet—seems magnified with Instagram. Taking a photo of your perfectly composed food suggests that you think it's beautiful enough to share with the world—but not delicious enough to start eating immediately.

And food photos are only the tip of the iceberg. Think about every time you visit a famous landmark, ride your bike past a beautiful landscape, or notice how striking the light of the sunset looks against the clouds.

"Many photographs today are take-once and view-once (probably in the next few days), and have little value beyond that, at least currently," Ames says. "I can imagine archaeologists sifting through our digital remains sometime in the future and these photographs serving useful functions for them, but will we ever go back and look at our meals and shopping lists and pretty sunsets? It's hard to say."

When Systrom explains the ideas driving Instagram's popularity, he strikes a particularly interesting note when he says that life in the digital age is driven by staying in touch, that central desire of human nature that made us, in the pre-smartphone age, increasingly more separated from those we used to know as time goes on.

“Success to us in the future is where everyone in the world has the Instagram app in their lives,” he says.

Keeping in touch through Instagram is a fantastic solution to bridging the thousands of miles that separate us from friends and family members, but it’s also a very superficial and one-sided take on the social network. To go deeper, Ames suggest, you have to be willing to accept the fact that Instagram has cheapened the photographic image, and therefore by extension, lessened the value we get out of moments we're so eager to share.

"It seems that photographs are now more commonly being used as a stand-in for medium-term and even short-term memories as well," she says. "Even though the resulting photographs are cheapened, the pressure to take the photographs in the first place hasn't necessarily lessened."

“Success to us in the future is where everyone in the world has the Instagram app in their lives."

Viewed through a social-network lens, if Twitter is an inside look into someone’s mind from a textual standpoint, and Facebook a view into that person’s world from a social one, then Instagram is the next frontier: the closest thing to participating in someone else’s physical experience, visually.

That’s where the pitfalls for all of us reside. Ames sums up the ambiguity of Instagram's value when pitted against the compulsions it fosters on a personal note.

"I rarely go back and look through these photographs I've taken—time and attention, as always, are the bottlenecks—and I sometimes joke, even as I take photos, that it'd be better if I just put the camera away and experience the world more directly," she says.

"Of course, I don't."

Image Control

When Dallas rejoined Instagram in late 2011, he felt refreshed. It was this new take on the app that let him approach it in a manner that reassured him he had the control, and 100,000 plus more followers without needing another break set that in stone.

"I would say 99% of my feed is iPhone," Dallas says. "I would say 99% of my feed is iPhone," Dallas says.

Since then, Dallas’s life as an Instagram celebrity of sorts has pushed him far beyond what he imagined possible when, at his friend’s insistence more than two years ago, he put the app back on his iPhone home screen.

More recently, he was approached by Orchestra, the company behind iOS email app Mailbox, while it was in beta. It wanted to feature his and other Instagrammers' photos as a reward for users who hit “inbox zero”—a state of cutting through email clutter. (That's how ReadWrite first heard of Dallas's work.)

When Toyota approached him recently for a special vehicle shoot, they didn’t want the photos he could take with his Canon 5D Mark III. “They wanted me to bring my iPhone,” he says with a laugh.

“I’m still looking for awesome shots to share that are interesting and maybe inspiring, but I’m trying to not let it just be about Instagram,” he says. It’s a feeling not so unfamiliar to many of us in our daily lives who find ourselves in conflict with the obtrusive nature of a smartphone and the crisp click of a shutter-mimicking tone the moment a scene strikes us.

For Dallas, it helped to tell himself, “‘Hey, I’m at this cool spot, I need to be here right now, live in the moment.’" For him, the pitfalls of the app are avoidable through this self-meditation. “So now I feel like I’m bringing Instagram with me as opposed to I’m just going somewhere to Instagram.”

Just last month, Dallas visited some visually stunning spots in Arizona and New Mexico with friends, and brought along his Canon DSLR because he was less worried about Instagram authenticity and the idea of an immediate post.

After his trip came to a close, he shared a select few shots, specifically some astounding long exposure light images, with his followers, stressing to everyone that the shots were taken with his “big-boy camera” for pure pleasure.

“I wanted to experience those in my eye, to make those memories,” he says, “and Instagram came along.”

Photo of Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger by Nick Statt for ReadWrite; all other photos [except food photos] by Dirk Dallas

10 Jun 18:50

To F-16 Demo Team στο Μάλεμε

by ptisidiastima

Απολαύστε την πιό πρόσφατη και από τις λίγες προγραμματισμένες για φέτος εμφανίσεις της ομάδας επιδείξεων μεμονωμένου αεροσκάφους F-16 “ΖΕΥΣ” της ΠΑ.


01 Jun 19:35

MySQL Co-Founder Wants You To Pay Up For Open Source

by Matt Asay

Monty Widenius, co-founder of MySQL and founder of MariaDB, just came to a surprise revelation: most people use open source for free. What's so surprising, however, is not this fact, but the idea that Widenius wouldn't have learned this 13 years ago when he first released MySQL under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and his company's revenues dropped 80%. The lesson here, however, isn't that there's no money in open-source software, but rather that some strategies for monetizing open source are effective, while others are not.

Monty Got A Raw Deal

For anyone that has been around open source for the past 10 years, hearing Widenius complain about open source free riders is irony at its finest. Widenius, after all, was a technical mastermind at MySQL, and was generally more concerned with MySQL's development community than making money, fighting efforts to monetize the otherwise free database.

Not that this is a bad thing. At any open-source company, developers are the lifeblood of the project and particular care must be taken to cater to their interests and needs. Widenius filled that role admirably.

But Widenius also made it harder to cover the real costs of open-source development, and continues to do so. Recently Widenius attacked Oracle for "suffocating" MySQL through proprietary enterprise extensions, among other things. This may be true, in part, but it's also true that Oracle has 400-plus engineers working on MySQL, and somehow their work needs to be paid for.

In an interview with ZDNet, Widenius (mis)remembers the halcyon of people happily paying for open-source software, and suggests that "Now the problem is that you have companies that are heavily using open source but refuse to pay anything back because they don't have to." This has, of course, always been the case, and yet it hasn't stopped open source from booming, both as a community development and corporate revenue perspective.

Monty's Solution: "Business Source"

Still, Widenius pines for a business model that will help feed development while generating a profit. His strategy, called "business source," effectively amounts to dumping open source entirely, but only for a few years:

[Business source] is a commercial licence that is time-based and which will become open source after a given time, usually three years. But you can get access to all the source. You can use it in any way but the source has a comment that says you can use it freely except in these circumstances when you have to pay.

In other words, it's not open source. It doesn't fit the parameters of the canonical Open Source Definition. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but let's call a spade a spade. Business source is simply proprietary software released under a Microsoft-esque shared source license that magically becomes fully open source after a period of time.

Surely this must rankle the free software-loving Widenius, but he comes to terms with it by espousing the exact same rationale used by those that advocate Open Core or similar strategies for open source:

You're forcing a small part of your user base to pay for the restrictions, which can be if you're making money from [the software], if you have more than 100 employees, or you're a big company or something like that. So you're forcing one portion of your users to pay.

Exactly. But this is the same as the various strategies MySQL tried, which Widenius fought.

It's Not About The License

Jim Jagielski, president and co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation, suggests that "if your open source project isn't successful with FOSS licensing, it's not the license's fault." Rather, it's a matter of trying to charge for the wrong things:

what's "destroying" open source isn't people not paying for it, but wrong ideas on WHAT they should be paying for

— Jim Jagielski (@jimjag) May 30, 2013

To wit, Facebook, Google, Amazon and others make billions of dollars selling services around open-source infrastructure, while Red Hat mints over a billion dollars annually selling a certified, binary distribution of community-developed Linux. There is plenty of money in and around open-source software. The open-source license doesn't prevent this. It enables this.

Widenius is a smart person. He'll figure it out. It's only surprising that his experience at MySQL didn't already teach him this lesson.

Image courtesy of James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media.

01 Jun 14:26

Φτιάχνοντας τον ήχο εκκίνησης των windows … σε mac

by suicico

windows_95_logo

Τα windows 95 όπως και και κάθε windows είχαν τον δικό τους ήχο εκκίνησης.

Σε αυτή την έκδοση λοιπόν η microsoft ανάθεσε την εργασία της δημιουργίας αυτού του ήχου στον κύριο Brian Eno.

Ο οποίος κοντολογίς δέχτηκε την πρόκληση και έφτιαξε τον ήχου που γνωρίζουμε σήμερα.

Αυτό που δεν σου λέει καμιά microsoft είναι ο Eno έφτιαξε τον ήχο αυτό σε Mac !

Όπως ο ίδιος έχει πει, ποτέ του δεν συμπάθησε τα windows.

Μπορείτε να διαβάσετε περισσότερα για την ιστορία αυτή εδώ.

 

01 Jun 14:25

Samsung Downsizes Galaxy S4 Line With New Mini

by ReadWrite Editors

The rumored Galaxy S4 mini that leaked earlier this month was officially confirmed by Samsung on Thursday. The only significant changes in the new device are a slightly less powerful chip compared to its big brother's quad-core processor (a 1.7GHz dual-core), and shrinking the screen from 5-inches to 4.3 inches (while retaining the Super AMOLED display technology). 

No information has been released regarding pricing or availability, but Samsung did share a spec breakdown. 

 

Images courtesy of Samsung. 

30 May 05:55

"Φονικές" οι παιδικές χαρές στην Ελλάδα - 777 τραυματισμοί σε ένα χρόνο!

by ΧΑΪΔΑΡΙ ΣΗΜΕΡΑ
javapapo

για όσους είναι γονείς

Την άθλια, τραγική και άκρως επικίνδυνη κατάσταση στην οποία βρίσκονται οι οι παιδικές χαρές σε όλη την Ελλάδα, έρχεται να επιβεβαιώσει το Κέντρο Ερευνας και Πρόληψης Παιδικού Ατυχήματος.
Το Κέντρο σε έκθεσή του αναφέρει ότι στην πλειονότητά τους τα παιδικά πάρκα λειτουργούν με σπασμένα και σκουριασμένα όργανα, ενώ δεν πληρούν τους βασικούς κανόνες ασφαλείας, καθώς αρκετοί παιδότοποι δεν έχουν φωτισμό, φύλαξη και συντήρηση, με αποτέλεσμα να συνιστούν σοβαρό κίνδυνο για τη σωματική υγεία των μικρών παιδιών.
Σε ολόκληρη τη χώρα έχουν καταγραφεί περίπου 10.000 παιδικές χαρές, με τις περισσότερες να βρίσκονται σε πολύ άσχημη κατάσταση, αναφέρει το Εθνος σε δημοσίευμα του, στο οποίο παράλληλα αναφέρεται η περίπτωση του Δήμου Αθηναίων ο οποίος έχει 130 παιδικές χαρές εκ των οποίων οι μισές δεν είναι πιστοποιημένες.
Η εικόνα των διαλυμένων παιδότοπων, αναμένεται να συνεχιστεί και στο άμεσο μέλλον καθώς, όπως αναφέρει το δημοσίευμα, δόθηκε διετής παράταση στους δήμους προκειμένου να αναμορφωθούν οι παιδικές χαρές σύμφωνα με τις ευρωπαϊκές προδιαγραφές.
Είναι ενδεικτικό ότι το Κέντρο Ερευνας και Πρόληψης Παιδικού Ατυχήματος κατέγραψε μέσα σε ένα χρόνο 777 περιστατικά τραυματισμών παιδιών σε παιδικές χαρές της Αττικής. Οι περισσότερες ελλείψεις παρατηρούνται σε παιδικές χαρές της περιφέρειας, ωστόσο και στην Αττική το ποσοστό των κακοτεχνιών είναι μεγάλο
30 May 05:55

Η Ομάδα Ζευς στο Μάλεμε

by ptisidiastima

maleme team, zeus 6Με την καλημέρα μας και ηθικό ακμαιότατο!

maleme team, zeus 2 maleme team, zeus 1 maleme team, zeus 3 maleme team, zeus 4(μέσω militaryphotos.net)


26 May 11:45

F-16 Demo Team Zeus 2013

by ptisidiastima

Με την καλημέρα και τις ευχές μας για μια καλή Κυριακή.


25 May 17:43

Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. Amazon vs. Skydrive: Which One Is Fastest?

by David Sobotta

As cloud computing services become ever more popular, you might begin to wonder how much you can really trust them to perform when you need them? I decided to find out - by testing the top file-transfer/file-storage/file-backup services.

In many ways, getting a file from one computer to multiple computers is the most challenging task for the cloud. And because I like to use multiple computers running multiple operating systems, including Linux, Windows and the Mac, that function is particularly important to me.

Cloud Services Can Lag

I am pretty agnostic when it comes to cloud providers - as long as they are free or close to it. However, as I was moving files around while preparing my most recent book A Week at the Beach The 2013 Emerald Isle Travel Guide I was a little surprised at the lags I sometimes experienced using the big-name cloud-based file-transfer services.

More than once when I wanted to use a file from one computer to another, I was disappointed by my cloud services. There were a few times that I got so tired of waiting for a file to show up on my other computer’s cloud drive that I resorted to sneakernet using a USB thumb drive.

After my book was published, I decided to go back and run some simple tests to see just how long the four best-known file-transfer/backup services actually take to put the files where you want them.

To compare Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud, and Microsoft’s SkyDrive I started by exporting a 500K JPEG test image from Lightroom on my Windows 8 computer directly to each of the four services.

Fighting The Randomization Factor

After running the tests a few times, I noticed what can only be described as random operating system differences. Sometimes the file would pop up first on my Mac and other times it showed up first on my Windows 7 laptop.

In order to eliminate the operating system differences, I restarted the tests and this time stopped the timer when the file showed up on either my Mac running Mountain Lion or my Windows 7 laptop. I also reran my tests with a variety of sizes and types of files. In all I ran twenty-five sets of tests.

The differences were significant, if not overwhelmingly huge. The fastest synchs took less than 3 seconds, while a few others took several minutes. The biggest chunk of tests clocked in between 10 seconds and one minute. A few synchs never completed. But which service recorded the best times with the fewest problems?

Dropbox FTW!

Dropbox ended up being fastest 56% of the time. Even more importantly, it was slowest only 4% of the time.

Skydrive brought up the rear. It was fastest on 12% of the tests, but but slowest on a whopping 80% of the tests. It also had two files that never showed up on the Mac and one that never showed on the Windows 7 laptop.

The Amazon Cloud slightly outpaced Google Drive - which had one file that never showed up on the Mac and another that took a very long time to complete.

If my tests convinced me of anything, it is that Skydrive is a work in progress and has a long way to go. I even had trouble setting up the tests on Skydrive.

My tests also revealed a number of odd results. When testing files saved from Word, strange extra files sometimes showed up on all the cloud drives except Dropbox. The file names always began with the characters “~$”. Sometimes the mystery files disappeared and sometimes they hung around.

Cloud Drive Recommendations

So here are some quick recommendations:

  • First, do not treat your cloud drive as one huge dumping ground. Create folders and try to force a little organization on yourself.
  • If you save a file to the cloud in order to work on it from another computer, quit the application or close the file on the first computer after you have saved the file to the cloud drive.
  • Make sure you have a local copy of important files in your documents folder - not just the replicated cloud folder on your computer. Interesting things sometimes happen when cloud files get updated or deleted from another computer. When you come back to the computer where you first created a file, you could be in for a nasty surprise.
  • If you cannot get a cloud folder on your computer to update, trying quitting the cloud application or rebooting your system.

Dropbox and Amazon appear to be the most reliable solutions with only occasional delays. Google isn't far behind, and I can't imagine that Microsoft won't work hard to improve Skydrive - the company's subscription model depends on it.

Even so, I have no plans to throw away my USB thumb drives.

19 May 08:00

Καθυστέρηση για το HA-420 HondaJet

by ptisidiastima

Η Honda Aircraft ανακοίνωσε την καθυστέρηση τουλάχιστον κατά ένα χρόνο του ελαφρού επιχειρηματικού αεροσκάφους υψηλής τεχνολογίας HA-420 HondaJet, που δεν προβλέπεται πλέον να παραδοθεί  σε πελάτες προ του τέλους του 2014.

Η καθυστέρηση οφείλεται σε προβλήματα πιστοποίησης, γύρω από τους κινητήρες GE HF120 των 2000 λιβρών ώσης, που δεν αναμένεται να επιλυθούν πριν το τέλος του 2013.  Το HA-420 έχει μια ιδιόμορφη σχεδίαση με τους κινητήρες πάνω από την πτέρυγα, διάταξη που μαζί  με άλλες σχεδιαστικές προβλέψεις, σύμφωνα με την Honda, βελτιστοποιούν την παραγωγή άντωσης και ελαχιστοποιούν την οπισθέλκουσα.  Η διαμόρφωση όμως ενέχει προβλήματα, όπως η αποτυχία το 2011 σε δοκιμή με αποκόλληση πάγου από το χείλος προσβολής, που  είχε τότε οδηγήσει σε καθυστέρηση ενός έτους.

Το πενταθέσιο Honda HA-420 είναι άμεσα ανταγωνιστικό του Embraer Phenom 100, έναντι του οποίου όμως έχει πλεονεκτήματα επιδόσεων, συμπεριλαμβανομένης και υψηλότερης κατά 30 κόμβους ταχύτητας.


18 May 08:07

Η 383 Μοίρα σε δράση

by ptisidiastima

Από την δραστηριότητα της μονάδας (… και με στενές επαφές) σε Ελλάδα, Βουλγαρία και Ρουμανία, ευχαριστώντας τον αρχικό uploader αλλά και τον Δημήτρη για την επισήμανση!

Και όπως είπαμε χρόνια πολλά για τα 10χρονα!


16 May 06:06

Ιστορία του Su-27

by ptisidiastima

Αν και σε κάποια σημεία παρωχημένο, το ντοκιμαντέρ περιέχει εντούτοις πολλά ενδιαφέροντα ιστορικά στοιχεία:


15 May 07:47

Upfronts 2013: NBC

by couchpotato

Συνεχίζονται: Parenthood, Community (midseason), Chicago Fire, Revolution, Law & Order:SVU, Parks and Recreation, Grimm, Saturday Night Live

Κόβονται: 1600 Penn, Deception, Go On, Guys With Kids, The New Normal, Up All Night, Whitney, Smash, Animal Practice, Do No Harm, Mockingbird Lane, καθώς και τα 30 Rock και The Office που ολοκλήρωσαν την πορεία τους

Νέες σειρές: Ironside, Believe, Crisis. Crossbones, About a Boy, The Family Guide, Welcome to the Family, Sean Saves the World, Michael J Fox Show, Dracula, The Blacklist

  • H ανέλπιστη ανανέωση του Community πυροδότησε φημολογίες για επιστροφή του Νταν Χάρμον.
  • Χαίρομαι που αποφάσισαν να αφήσουν να πεθάνει το πολύπαθο Up All Night .
  • Άγνωστο τι θα απογίνει το Hannibal.

Για τις καινούριες σειρές θα μιλήσουμε πιο αναλυτικά τις επόμενες μέρες, αφού διαβάσουμε λίγο και δούμε και κανένα τρέιλερ. Απλά να πω ότι φέτος διάβασα επιτέλους το Dracula του Bram Stoker, και είμαι έτοιμη για τα πάντα.

13 May 06:19

Book review: Hadoop – Beginner’s Guide (Packt)

by fragkakis

I recently read “Hadoop – Beginner’s guide” by Garry Turkington, Packt Publishing. This is a review of the book.

As the title says, this book is intented to provide the basic knowledge required to get started in Hadoop. If you are already using Hadoop and want a more in-depth analysis, you’d rather have look at other books, such as a definitive guide or a cookbook. In addition to being an introduction to Hadoop, this book also visits the current ecosystem of Hadoop. This includes Amazon Elastic Map Reduce, Hive, Sqoop, Flume. The book is addressed to Java programmers, but a few examples are written in Ruby, so it’s a plus if you know Ruby too.

Let’s see an overview of the chapters:

Chapter 1: The first chapter gives an overview of what is Big Data and why humanity came up with it. After a discussion about scaling up vs scaling out and their advantages and disadvantages, the chapter finishes with a short history of Hadoop and Elastic Map Reduce (EMR).

Chapter 2: This chapter is a get up and running walkthrough, where the reader is guided to execute the bundled Word Count program (the Hello World of Map Reduce) on a local Hadoop cluster. Then, the same code is executed on Elastic Map Reduce.

Chapter 3: After the introductory chapters, the author explains Map Reduce (MR) and its relation to Hadoop and HDFS. The reader is then walked through writing the Word Count program by herself and again, execute it both locally and EMR.

Chapter 4: Here the reader sees slightly more advanced stuff, such as chaining MR jobs and using a distributed cache to use look-up data throughout the Hadoop cluster. Also there’s an introduction to the Streaming API, which allows easy development of MR jobs using scripting languages (examples are in Ruby).

Chapter 5: This chapter advances further with multiple input jobs, the implementation of an iterative algorithm on Map Reduce and Avro, a data persistence framework with bindings for many programming languages.

Chapter 6: The sixth chapter revolves around failure handling on a local or EMR Hadoop cluster, understanding from the log files what went wrong and how to overcome it.

Chapter 7: This chapter describes the setup of a Hadoop cluster from hardware to deciding the number of nodes, storage type, security, and HDFS.

Chapter 8: In chapter the reader is presented Hive, an abstraction layer above Hadoop. The author gives an overview of Hive-QL, the SQL-like query language and explains how the queries are dynamically translated to MR jobs, that run transparently underneath.

Chapter 9: This chapter explains how Hadoop often needs to work with the relational world, drawing data from and storing data to relational DBs. The reader can also read about Sqoop, which facilitates these operations.

Chapter 10: In chapter 10 the reader learns about Flume, a system that aggregates and moves large volumes of log data. This chapter gives set-up instructions, describes different scenarios and discusses the cases where it is an alternative to Sqoop.

Chapter 11: The final chapter of the book essentially gives directions to MR-related technologies that the reader might be interested in.
I think that key selling point of “Hadoop – Beginner’s Guide” is that it touches several peripheral technologies to Hadoop. A typical reader that wants to dive into Hadoop is most probably also interested in Elastic Map Reduce, Hive, Sqoop and Flume. So, this book is a bargain in that it combines two or more introductory books. I also appreciated the fact that the author takes care to run most examples both locally and on EMR, pointing out differences, where there are any. Finally, I found the examples sufficiently explanatory, guiding the reader through set-up instructions and programming without leaving blurry points.

The biggest disadvantage of the book is the errata, with most examples containing at least one. For someone that wants to delve into a new complicated technology such as Map Reduce, every bit of concentration that goes into finding out why the code doesn’t run is a shame. I would also like to point out a problem with the listings of tab-separated files (more than 10), where the tabs are simply not printed, making the relative examples unnecessarily difficult to understand.

The conclusion I drew is that this is a well-written beginner book on Hadoop, with the errata being it’s main problem. I would buy it if I needed a good Hadoop book tomorrow, but I would wait for the second edition otherwise. For those that bought or intend to buy the book’s current edition, you can get the latest version of the examples code and see the reported errata at the book’s official page.


12 May 07:06

IT Crowd will return for one last episode

by george

IT Crowd will return for one last episode

They start filming the 40 minute episode in three weeks! I still remember the opening line of the first episode: “Hello, IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again?”.

Posted on I/O. There is also a greek version available here.

10 May 07:07

Το Viber έρχεται και στο Mac μας

by suicico
javapapo

nice

viber

To Viber ήταν από τις πρώτες (εάν όχι η πρώτη) εφαρμογές που ανάλαβαν να ξαλαφρώσουν λιγάκι τον λογαριασμό μας, όσο αφορά τις κλήσεις αλλά και τα sms στο τηλέφωνο μας .

Με τον καιρό είδαμε και άλλες εφαρμογές, αλλά πλέον το Viber κάνει μια πολύ δυνατή κίνηση .

Μπορείτε να κατεβάσετε το viber και για τον υπολογιστή σας, είτε είναι Mac είτε Windows .

Κάτι τέτοιο όπως καταλαβαίνετε πολλαπλασιάζει τους χρήστες που μπορείς να μιλήσεις δωρεάν, και έτσι πιστεύω ότι παίρνει τα πρωτιά σε αυτό το τομέα εφαρμογών (και κατά πάσα πιθανότητα σύντομα θα ακούσουμε ότι μια μεγάλη εταιρία αγόρασε το viber)

Όπως και να έχει, μπορείτε να απολαύσετε δωρεάν κλήσεις και sms από τον υπολογιστή σας κατεβάζοντας την εφαρμογή από εδώ.

05 May 14:35

Watch an Airplane Turn Fog Into Beautifully Spinning Cloud Spirals

by Casey Chan

We've seen planes create a fiery vortex in the sky before, but here's a more peaceful version of it happening in real time. It's majestically beautiful. The wingtip vortices formed when an Airbus A340 landed at Zurich Airport on a foggy night. Though it looks gorgeous, vortices can be pretty dangerous.

Wingtip vortices occur because of the difference in pressure between the upper and lower surfaces of a wing. The air in the upper and lower start swirling to create a vortex of sorts. Those vortices eventually disappear but can also cause downflow behind the wing and form wake turbulence (turbulence behind the aircraft). The great internet encyclopedia says:

Wake turbulence is especially hazardous in the region behind an aircraft in the takeoff or landing phases of flight. During take-off and landing, aircraft operate at high angle of attack. This flight attitude maximizes the formation of strong vortices. In the vicinity of an airport there can be multiple aircraft, all operating at low speed and low height, and this provides extra risk of wake turbulence with reduced height from which to recover from any upset.

Looks that kill, I guess. [Andy Ruesch via Laughing Squid]

05 May 12:59

Can you put a price on human life?

by Panos Konstantinidis
Σαν σήμερα, τρία χρόνια πριν, τρεις (εν δυνάμει τέσσερις) άνθρωποι έχασαν τη ζωή τους μέσα σε μία τράπεζα. Ήταν ένοχοι, εργάζονταν ενώ κάποιοι άλλοι απεργούσαν. Κάποιοι μαλάκες είχαν έτοιμη την ετυμηγορία: θάνατος. Τους κάψαν ζωντανούς. Αυτοί οι άνθρωποι δε δολοφονήθηκαν από χέρι «μπάτσου», από το κράτος, από την εξουσία, από την αστυνομία ή από το «σύστημα»· όχι, δολοφονήθηκαν από «επαναστάτες» (του κώλου, προσθέτω εγώ), από «αγωνιστές», από «αντιεξουσιαστές».

Σήμερα δε θα διαδηλώσει κανείς υπέρ των εκλιπόντων. Δε θα βγει κανείς στους δρόμους, δε θα σηκωθεί κανένα πανό, η αριστερά δε θα κάνει δηλώσεις. Δε θα τους γίνει μνεία. Είναι ήδη λησμονημένοι.

6 μήνες πριν τη δολοφονία των Ζούλια, Παπαθανασοπούλου και Τσάκαλη στη μαρφιν, ένας ανεγκέφαλος σκότωσε έναν 16χρονο. Κάηκε όλη η Αθήνα και συνεχίζει να καίγεται κάθε χρόνο εκείνη την ημέρα. Οι αριστεροί κάνουν συλλαλητήρια, οι αναρχοδενξερωκιεγώτι συναυλίες, οι μαθητές βγαίνουν στους δρόμους και οι κουκουλοφόροι συνεχίζουν να τα σπάνε. Τουλάχιστον ο αστυνομικός συλλήφθηκε, δικάστηκε και καταδικάστηκε. Όμως οι ανεγκέφαλοι με τις κουκούλες κυκλοφορούν ακόμα ελεύθεροι και... ούτε γάτα ούτε ζημιά (αλλά είπαμε, αυτοί είναι αγωνιστές). Βλέπεις ο ένας ήταν το σύστημα και σκότωσε ένα αθώο παιδί ενώ οι κουκουλοφόροι ήταν οι μεσσίες μας και τα βάλανε με το σύστημα. Η ανθρώπινη ζωή έχει διαφορετική αξία αναλόγως με το τι πρεσβεύεις. Η βλακεία έχει φτάσει στον υπέρτατο βαθμό.
04 May 23:29

Traktor DJ now available for iPhone

by Kevin Krause
Native Instruments mixes down Traktor's professional DJ tools for the iPhone, and it's priced at just $4.99.
04 May 23:29

Miniature Melbourne [Tilt-Shift Time-Lapse Video]

by Geeks are Sexy

A fantastic tilt-shift time-lapse video of Melbourne, Australia, by Australian photographer Nathan Kaso.

A short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Melbourne, Australia. This piece is 10 months in the making and features a range of different events and festivals held in the city throughout the year.

[Nathan Kaso]

04 May 22:50

Engadget's tablet buyer's guide: spring 2013 edition

by Jon Fingas

DNP Engadget's tablet buyer's guide spring 2013 edition

Much like bears, tablet designers are coming out of hibernation: there have been a handful of noteworthy models reaching the wild after a few months of silence. Most of these are the Windows 8- and RT-based tablets that didn't quite make the cut for the holidays, and we're launching our 2013 spring tablet buyer's guide with a dedicated Windows section to accommodate a distinct and rapidly filling category. Just be careful before you commit to a purchase, wherever your allegiances lie: Mobile World Congress brought us tablets that haven't quite shipped yet, like the FonePad and Galaxy Note 8.0. (We've included a heads-up in those situations where waiting a few weeks, or months, may be wisest.) As chaotic as spring can be, our guide might just provide some kind of stability if you're shopping for your next slate.

Filed under: Tablets, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, ASUS, Amazon, Verizon, AT&T, Lenovo

Comments

04 May 22:42

Online ticketing company Eventbrite raises $60m, puts off its IPO until further notice

by Robin Wauters
80707192 1 520x245 Online ticketing company Eventbrite raises $60m, puts off its IPO until further notice

Online ticketing company Eventbrite has secured $60 million in growth funding from T. Rowe Price Group and Tiger Global Management, the Wall Street Journal reports, in a move that will surprise some as the firm was rather publicly heading towards an IPO.

The news was confirmed by co-founders Kevin and Julia Hartz – who will be on stage at The Next Web conference this week, and who we’ve just interviewed – to our syndication partner VentureVillage earlier today.

In its quest to tackle online ticketing juggernaut Ticketmaster (which actually merged with Live Nation to become Live Nation Entertainment in 2010), Eventbrite recently had some decent numbers to share.

The firm announced at the end of March 2013 that it has helped event organizers around the world issue in excess of 100 million tickets and registrations, which translates to more than $1.5 billion in gross ticket sales since its founding in 2006. One third of those sales were processed in the last nine months, Eventbrite also said at the time.

Eventbrite has raised over $135 million to date.

Amusingly, co-founder and CEO Kevin Hartz told me last year, in person, that the next capital raise for Eventbrite would not be another funding round but instead an initial public offering.

Clearly, there’s been a chance of heart since then.

In a comment to the Wall Street Journal, he says the fresh $60 million funding round gives the company “flexibility in setting the timeline for a later IPO, on our schedule”.

According to the WSJ, the financing round values Eventbrite somewhere between $600 million and $700 million.

Image credit: Thinkstock

04 May 22:26

Apple adds 256 GB, 512 GB flash storage options to iMac

by Steven Sande

There's something new under the sun for those interested in buying an iMac. MacRumors is reporting that Apple now has two new flash storage options available for the iMac, both of which can be purchased when buying a configure-to-order device from the online Apple Store.

iMac buyers interested in replacing the standard 1 TB SATA hard disk drive have had the 1 TB Fusion Drive option available since the introduction of the new thinner models last fall. Now that slow mechanical drive can be replaced with either a 256 GB (US$300 extra) or 512 GB ($600) flash storage option.

With the 27-inch iMac, it's always been possible to purchase an all-flash storage solution -- a 768 GB drive at a $900 price tag -- as well as 1 TB and 3 TB hard drive and Fusion Drive configurations. Apple's current move appears to be aimed at those people who might not need tons of storage in their iMacs, but who want the speed of flash storage instead.

Apple adds 256 GB, 512 GB flash storage options to iMac originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 May 2013 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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04 May 22:26

Qantas lands Passbook-enabled iPhone app

by Matt Tinsley

Australia's Qantas airline has released a brand-new iPhone app (free) with many great features, including Passbook support.

The Qantas Airways app lets customers find and book Qantas flights, book hotels worldwide, view flight bookings, access up-to-the-minute flight status and create personalized alerts for specific flights and prices.

With Passbook support, fliers can check-in for most domestic flights and add their boarding pass to Passbook, meaning there's no need to carry a paper ticket when traveling.

Furthermore, Qantas frequent flyers can use the app to view their points balance and what their next flight is. Handy!

The Qantas Airways app is available now from the iOS App Store.

[Via AppAdvice]

Qantas lands Passbook-enabled iPhone app originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 May 2013 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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04 May 13:45

American Airlines: iPads prevent pilot back injuries

by Steven Sande

American Airlines iPads prevent pilot back injuries

Many airlines have embraced the iPad as a way to replace the 40-pound flight bags containing charts and manuals, but until now there's been little talk about how those tablet deployments are going. At the Tablet Strategy conference in New York yesterday, American Airlines VP of Airline Operations Technology Patrick O'Keefe discussed how the airline is aggressively moving ahead with adoption of tablets and the benefits that are already becoming apparent.

All of American's 8,600 pilots will have iPads by the end of May, each device containing over 3,000 pages of material that used to be printed out and manually updated. Now the charts and manuals are digitally updated, saving flight crews a lot of busy work. But the biggest win for American is in terms of crew safety, as O'Keefe noted that "We've reduced the single biggest source of pilot injuries, carrying those packs." In addition, "we are now able to save $1 million in fuel costs and stop printing all the page revisions."

American has worked closely with Apple to lobby the Federal Aviation Administration to allow more use in flight. As a result, "American is the only carrier in the world with permission to use iPads at all phases of flight, including letting our pilots use them below 10,000 feet," said O'Keefe.

That's not to say that American Airlines is an iPad-only company; all 16,000 flight attendants have Samsung Galaxy Note "phablets" that are used for managing food service and seating, or providing gate information for connecting flights.

American Airlines: iPads prevent pilot back injuries originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 May 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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04 May 12:43

It's Cool That Staples Now Sells 3D Printers — But You Don't Need One

by Mark Hachman

Would Dunder-Mifflin, the fictional paper company of The Office, buy a 3D printer? Undoubtedly. 

Here's how it would play out: After an airline magazine declared 3D printers the next new thing, boss Michael Scott would buy one, install it in the office, and christen it by printing out a coffee cup. Ten hours later, after the cup was completed, Scott would hold the cup aloft as he outlined his vision of the future. Employees would watch silently as the hot coffee slowly distended the cup into a plastic teardrop, eventually rupturing and spilling scalding coffee all over Scott's lap.

Staples, Dunder-Mifflin's real-life competitor, undoubtedly has a different scenario in mind. But right now, that's about all most offices can hope to do with the $1,299 3D Systems' Cube 3D printer that Staples now offers

What Could A 3D Printer Do For An Office?

In all seriousness, 3D printers - which layer many tiny sheets of melted plastic on top of one another to build up the shape of a 3D object - have any number of possible applications. If you can work with a material strong enough, you can recreate virtually anything you'd like, from a plastic geegaw to, yes, even a gun. Car aficionado Jay Leno even uses them to create replacement auto parts.  

Manufacturing could use a 3D printer to "sketch out" parts. 3D gaming companies could print out 3D versions of their monsters for promotional use. Artisans can create objects that you can only imagine. If your business deals with the tangible, you might argue that you should have a 3D printer in your office.

(See also Just How Hard Is It To Get And Use A 3D Printer?)

But there's an argument to be made that 3D printing, in its present form, just isn't ready for general office use. And even if it was, the Cube 3D printer doesn't seem like the right device to break the 3D printing barrier.

With a few exceptions, today's 3D printing remains a hobbyist's tool, nothing more. I asked Staples to put me in touch with someone who could convince me of the need of a 3D printer as a general office tool. Instead, the company's public relations guy referred me to this sentence in the Staples press release: "For companies creating new products, 3D printing can make it easier to design and test new concepts, and decrease the time to market". 

Like what? Well, a restaurant could use a 3D printer to create new kitchen tools. Could you actually eat with those? Probably not.

Cube 3D: Locked Down And Complex

Even if you could come up with practical uses for a 3D printer, the Cube 3D printer might not be your best bet. While fairly easy to set up and use, a PCMag.com review of the Cube 3D found that of objects the site's reviewers tried to print - a Tardis, an owl, a teacup and others - success varied considerably: "About five were beautifully rendered; most of the rest were of decent quality though with some flaws, and about four were basically ruined," the site said. And that doesn't count a half-dozen aborted starts. 

Yes, you can print in either ABS or compostable PLA plastic, but just five inches to a side. And while some sample objects looked great, others looked covered in cobwebs

Neither the PCMag review nor an extensive CNET review revealed the printing times: on the order of two hours. CNET does, however, point out that the Cube requires online activation, can detect "third-party" print materials and requires leveling the print tray, applying glue to it, then soaking the print platform in water to remove the printed object. And that's if everything goes right.

Then there's the cost. $1,300 for a hobbyist's toy isn't cheap. And that's not counting the $50 per plastic cartridge holding 320 grams of material (0.7 pounds). Printing is expensive, whether it's 2D or 3D.

Perhaps feeling the competitive pressures that forced Office Max and Office Depot to merge: Staples seems to be looking for ways to entice customers into its stores. And being the first major retailer to stock 3D printers could help addressthat problem. For looky-loos and hobbyists, getting a first-hand look at 3D printing is a fascinating diversion - heck, you can even print out a doll and put your face on it. For general productivity, though, it's literally a waste of time of time and money.

(See also Why 3D Printing Will be The Next Big Copyright Fight.)

Lead image via Cubify

03 May 18:26

Apple's $17 billion bond deal is the largest in history

by Megan Lavey-Heaton
javapapo

sometimes it is cheaper to...borrow than to use your 'own' resources :D...the magic of taxes and expat - cash reserves!

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple made the largest corporate-bond deal in history on Tuesday, when it raised US$17 billion in bonds -- the first time the company has offered bonds in 20 years.

In response, The New York Times asks, why would cash-rich Apple do this in the first place? Analysts tell the NYT that the debt actually can boost returns to shareholders, something Apple has already taken steps to do when it announced its dividend and share-repurchase program last week and in March 2012. In the process, Apple was using historically low rates to its advantage. The company can step around the taxes it would need to pay by repatriating some of its overseas cash stockpile, buying the company more time to lobby Congress to its advantage.

We reported shortly before the deal took place that Apple was filing the required SEC paperwork. The company plans to return $100 billion to stockholders by the end of 2015. Its next dividend payout is May 16.

Apple's $17 billion bond deal is the largest in history originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 May 2013 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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