Monthly Archive for December, 2003

Page 2 of 2

Women asthetically hardened, not emotionally.

Published on 2003/12/23 in Link. 0 Comments

From Ars Technica, Men “stop thinking rationally” in the presence of “beautiful” women, hotornot.com:

Discounting the future… we all do it. If you setup an analytical tension between the immediate fulfillment of wishes/wants/desires and the future benefits one may gain by not fulfilling them, one can see that humans (and indeed most animals) routinely chose the present over the future. Such analytical approaches then seek to evaluate whether or not the choice in favor of the present is rational or irrational. Using pictures from hotornot.com, researchers tested men and women’s reactions to accepting prize money in the following scheme: they could accept a check for US$15-35 tomorrow, or they could wait and get paid US$50-75 “at a variable point in the future.” The kicker is that the students were shown pictures of attractive members of the opposite sex before being made to make a decision.

Men consistently chose irrationally when shown a “hot” women beforehand. Women did not. I probably shouldn’t link this. Warning: not particularly PC, my opinions don’t closely parallel it. But I immediately noted this study goes a little ways as proof for the infamous “Ladder Theory”‘s supposition that Men have a hard time with ‘hot” female “friends”. Women don’t, with male friends that is.

Also, Serial Dating bad for womens health. Good for men.

Toshiba M200 Tablet PC

Published on 2003/12/23 in Life. 0 Comments

Will be recieving my Tablet within the next week. Lots to look forward to with the 1400×1050 resolution, bluetooth and things.

It appears Wacom has just released a new driver which (assumption) fixes the pressure sensitivity bug that has been plaguing people interested in drawing for ages. Wonderful.

Wacom Driver Page

Impressions on the M200:
Says the resolution is nice but not as sharp or crisp as other laptops he’s seen.
Jstigall’s review is a little bland but functional
TabletPCCorner has loads of information but is in french. They also concentrated a lot on 1024×768 non-native resolution. It’s obviously going to be mediocre, what’s the point of ever switching to it? There is always Font DPI to adjust, then you can enjoy the high res for images, not have quality issues, and still read the fonts with weak eyes.

It turns out the wireless (a/b/g, b/g) and bluetooth are upgradable I did some miniPCI research and some internal pictures are in this thread

The educational discount was only $40 because “it’s new” says Toshiba. Compare that to HP’s TC1100 discount of $200. Ouch. If it wern’t for the hi-res screen I would be over there. And you have to call them to get it.

I wonder if I can get a hold on M$’s (:) Lonestar recogniser panel somewhere. Why can’t that be “distributed”, forget alpha longhorn.

Haven’t heard any hard, fast anecdotes about battery life. Hoping that it will be around 4 hours (in real life). I ordered two batteries. The way marketing always spins the battery life numbers is not funny!

I’m trying to determine whether it has a built in mic. It must be apparent to anyone who has used OS X.3′s iChat AV’s video or audio conferencing that this is the future. Wow. Million times better than a phone (interativity-wise), free, and simple to arrange.

I’ve ordered a 3.5″ and 5 1/2″ (both in one) USB2/Firewire IDE enclosure for all my data swapping needs. My DVD-R/RW drive will serve in it when I need to watch/rip movies or burn CDs, My old 80gb HD from my desktop will be my portable storage for music and such.

AgentOrange on the TPCBuzz forums suggested backing up the vanilla configuration from the drive before even starting up the tablet for the first time. Tempting. You could then either try it on another tablet or use it to sell it exactly as shipped. Unfortunately I don’t have a $7, 2.5″ hard drive to 3.5″ adapter and don’t know where i’d get one before firing up my tabby.