Slashdot Mirror

Desktop Linux is getting to a point where it is viable for day to day work tasks, and gaming is becoming not just a wish, but actually something coming around (slowly but surely).

If it was coming around any slower, it would be going backwards.

Steam Hardware & Software Survey: April 2016

Windows All 95% Down 0.3%
Windows 10 64 Bit 38% Up 1.4%

OSX 3.6% Up 0.3%

Linux 0.9% No change
Ubuntu All 0.4%

The "Steam Machine?" Doesn't seem to catching on:

Alienware Steam Machine ASM100-2980BLK Desktop Console #3,546 in Computers & Accessories, #172 in Computers & Accessories > Desktops > Towers [7:10 PM ET May 21]

The Mac Mini is hot right now at Amazon ---- well, as hot as it gets for a desktop these days ---- and there appear to be some good values in entry-level Win 10 gaming systems.

Linux has about 2% of the desktop market, Windows 10, 15%. Desktop Operating System Market Share - April 2016 A desktop market in decline is not healthy for Linux, which has always been starved of OEM support. Microsoft plays well with Linux if you are managing a server.

But it is also doing spectacularly well on the desktop side selling things like MS Office as a service.

Weather Underground advertises these weather stations for making observations. Probably not the most cost-effective, especially for what I'd expect somebody who comes here to be able to cobble together, but if you want something turn-key, there you go.

> First off, anyone using the term "SJW" is completely full of shit.

Agreed. Stupid Justice Whiners always lie

I just use a $30 128GB tiny thumb drive.

You need to read The Monster.

...Twilight Princess was supposed to come out on the GameCube.

It did.

They did a simultaneous release on the GameCube and the Wii at the Wii's launch in 2006. I have both versions. Also, the GameCube already had a Zelda title. The Wii also has its exclusive title The Wii-U, however, has yet to publish a single original Zelda game; although it has HD remakes of the 2 GameCube titles with a few gameplay enhancements added (extra hard mode, amiibo features that work with the Zelda characters from the Smash Bros. line, new exclusive dungeons, etc). This makes it the first time that Nintendo has just about skipped releasing an original Zelda title on an entire console platform.

At this point, I'm figuring that the next Zelda will be a dual-release on the Wii-U and Nin-NX. It would most likely be a near 1:1 release where both versions of the game are relatively equal, but I'm somewhat hoping that they do something like they did with Pokemon where individually they are both complete games on their own but they can be combined in some way (password token, system link, etc) where events that occur on one platform can affect elements on the other and expand the story line further. Something similar to what they did with the Oracle games.

If you want some Rush Limbaugh to listen to on your portable music player, Amazon Music is selling the only good part of a Limbaugh show for $1.29.

You mean giving it away like this? Or perhaps like this? I can say with reasonably high confidence that it would be much harder to do this if it weren't for the modern version of a radio station.

It's ironic that the only comments on Amazon for one of her CDs is samples please. I also note that there's no offering for buying her work on MP3s. I mean no disrespect to your sister but, from appearances it isn't YouTube and Spotify that's the problem. It's the out dated business model under which she's attempting to operate. People do not buy CDs nor do they listen to FM radio to anything near the same degree with which they did 20, even 10 years ago. YouTube, Pandora, Spotify are their modern equivalent. Unlike FM radio though, their Internet cousins actually do pay the artists--in an arguably reasonable proportion to the revenue generated. In that respect the artist is actually better off. Try asking an FM radio station to cough up money as compensation for the music they play. Just like the radio of decades past drove CD/cassette sales, so now do their Internet cousins, but not so much CDs but rather MP3s--which she's apparently not selling.

You mean giving it away like this? Or perhaps like this? I can say with reasonably high confidence that it would be much harder to do this if it weren't for the modern version of a radio station.

It's ironic that the only comments on Amazon for one of her CDs is samples please. I also note that there's no offering for buying her work on MP3s. I mean no disrespect to your sister but, from appearances it isn't YouTube and Spotify that's the problem. It's the out dated business model under which she's attempting to operate. People do not buy CDs nor do they listen to FM radio to anything near the same degree with which they did 20, even 10 years ago. YouTube, Pandora, Spotify are their modern equivalent. Unlike FM radio though, their Internet cousins actually do pay the artists--in an arguably reasonable proportion to the revenue generated. In that respect the artist is actually better off. Try asking an FM radio station to cough up money as compensation for the music they play. Just like the radio of decades past drove CD/cassette sales, so now do their Internet cousins, but not so much CDs but rather MP3s--which she's apparently not selling.

Anonymity is the refuge of those of us who are otherwise powerless. Once it is gone, the Man can target anyone.

Look up Carbide Tipped Pens.

He has a story called "The Circle" in there, which he redid for Three Body Problem later.
It's about the emperor of China and his lead sage and building a computer made out of people.
Same thing happens at one point in the TBP... while the original story suffers from the same "Why is everyone acting stupid?" issues.
If you don't mind that story, you'll get through the books too.

He DOES have interesting ideas... but the reasoning behind how and why it all takes place is often strained.

Everyone should watch The Great War series though it's awesome what they're doing. They're following the war week by week as we go through the 100th anniversary of it. It's really worth subscribing to.

I had never heard of it myself. But as someone who considers this to be light recreational reading material, it sounds like it's something right up my alley. I grew up watching the History channel before it turned into the "Hitler and aliens" channel, listening to Kenny Rogers talk about the Civil War before school and watching black and white footage of WWI and WWII with British narration after school, and seems like this will bring me back to those days.

If this is just for home use, you don't need a commercial grade NAS, so presumably something like this would be fine: http://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Pe...

For that style of NAS, depending upon storage capacity, you're looking at anything from $125-200. Yes, the price rises significantly if you want a version that implements software RAID, but if you're just making backups...

Not everyone wants to be treated like cattle who are owned by the state and can be forcibly injected with whatever the state demands, on whatever schedule the state chooses, and for whatever reason the state chooses. Such a gross surrender of individual rights to top-down almighty government by eleites can naturally only lead to one place: a government that decides when its people are no longer valuable and should be humanely eliminated. Hitler did not start that vile chain of thinking; it originated with early twentieth century American progressives and their British friends, the Fabians. Here is famous Nobel Prize winning left-wing hero George Bernard Shaw explaining the need for people to justify their existence to the state and advocating for that whole gas chamber idea (using a "humane" lethal gas, of course).

I am personally not an anti-vaxer, and I think such people are frequently idiotic luddites.... but freedom and liberty say that as individuals, they have the right to not be injected. The rest of us have the right to stay away from them where possible, and a responsibility to act responsibly ourselves to avoid contaminating ourselves and our families after we've been exposed to them. As for your assertion that parents have no rights, please to tell why the government has more rights to children than the parents who made them have. You assert that the parents are only custodians....but by what rule is the government made the more-superior and responsible custodian of individual children??? (The Supreme Court has ruled many times that government has NO responsibility to the individual - police are to protect the community but cannot be held to account for protection of any individual. The military has the responsibility to protect the nation, but not individual Americans. Even Social Security is not an obligation to pay money to any particular individual according to the justices.)

The degree to which people like you want everybody to subject themselves to government that, as a baseline assumes totalitarianism as a given, is just amazing. Even the very conversation often includes terms like "herd immunity", which is understandable in a technical sense, but is nevertheless an eye-opener when wielded by people advocating for a powerful government that demands the right to treat its people almost exactly like owned cattle.

Oh, and people on the left love to paint issues like this as "right wing", and "anti-science" but that's the purest form of bull excrement; the anti-vaccine stuff was initially started and is still being fueled by Bobby Kennedy Jr and then made popular by Jim Carrey who was fixated on his porn babe Jenny McCarthy who was ranting because her son had autism (these are left-wingers and their opposition is anti-science). The limited number of right wingers opposed are NOT opposed because of science but rather because they are opposed to the political assertion that government has the right to order people to be injected with stuff (something FAR more invasive than spying on e-mails or cell phones).

"Progressive" educators and politicians are doing a brilliant job of propagandizing an entire generation of younger Americans into believing in the vile "Progressive" political movement that, the last time it arose became so hated it had to go into hiding for decades. These educators and politicians are being very careful to not let the young see just how evil this ideology is and where it leads, which partly explains why the quality of history teaching is plummeting in the schools. Hint for the young: History proves that "progressivism" always inevitably leads to death camps if not abandoned in time. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

Not everyone wants to be treated like cattle who are owned by the state and can be forcibly injected with whatever the state demands, on whatever schedule the state chooses, and for whatever reason the state chooses. Such a gross surrender of individual rights to top-down almighty government by eleites can naturally only lead to one place: a government that decides when its people are no longer valuable and should be humanely eliminated. Hitler did not start that vile chain of thinking; it originated with early twentieth century American progressives and their British friends, the Fabians. Here is famous Nobel Prize winning left-wing hero George Bernard Shaw explaining the need for people to justify their existence to the state and advocating for that whole gas chamber idea (using a "humane" lethal gas, of course).

I am personally not an anti-vaxer, and I think such people are frequently idiotic luddites.... but freedom and liberty say that as individuals, they have the right to not be injected. The rest of us have the right to stay away from them where possible, and a responsibility to act responsibly ourselves to avoid contaminating ourselves and our families after we've been exposed to them. As for your assertion that parents have no rights, please to tell why the government has more rights to children than the parents who made them have. You assert that the parents are only custodians....but by what rule is the government made the more-superior and responsible custodian of individual children??? (The Supreme Court has ruled many times that government has NO responsibility to the individual - police are to protect the community but cannot be held to account for protection of any individual. The military has the responsibility to protect the nation, but not individual Americans. Even Social Security is not an obligation to pay money to any particular individual according to the justices.)

The degree to which people like you want everybody to subject themselves to government that, as a baseline assumes totalitarianism as a given, is just amazing. Even the very conversation often includes terms like "herd immunity", which is understandable in a technical sense, but is nevertheless an eye-opener when wielded by people advocating for a powerful government that demands the right to treat its people almost exactly like owned cattle.

Oh, and people on the left love to paint issues like this as "right wing", and "anti-science" but that's the purest form of bull excrement; the anti-vaccine stuff was initially started and is still being fueled by Bobby Kennedy Jr and then made popular by Jim Carrey who was fixated on his porn babe Jenny McCarthy who was ranting because her son had autism (these are left-wingers and their opposition is anti-science). The limited number of right wingers opposed are NOT opposed because of science but rather because they are opposed to the political assertion that government has the right to order people to be injected with stuff (something FAR more invasive than spying on e-mails or cell phones).

"Progressive" educators and politicians are doing a brilliant job of propagandizing an entire generation of younger Americans into believing in the vile "Progressive" political movement that, the last time it arose became so hated it had to go into hiding for decades. These educators and politicians are being very careful to not let the young see just how evil this ideology is and where it leads, which partly explains why the quality of history teaching is plummeting in the schools. Hint for the young: History proves that "progressivism" always inevitably leads to death camps if not abandoned in time. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

Whenever I search for something on Amazon, it stalks me all around the web. I searched for the word "tarp" once (someone asked me how much they usually cost) and for several weeks afterwards, every web site on the planet was showing me ads for tarps- from Amazon and from other shady tarp-sellers. It's just creepy. What if you're at work and your laptop keeps displaying ads for stuff like this? I don't really like firing up IE just to find crap on Amazon. That's just too high of a price to pay.

Web browsers have come the modern equivalent of the telescreens in Orwell's 1984- but Orwell never realized how popular telescreens would be. ("Big Brother gave me this new telescreen and it's huge, 2 mm thinner, comes with a front side camera, and I get an exercise instructor to monitor my fitness!")

https://aws.amazon.com/documen...
http://www.a9.com/
https://aws.amazon.com/ses/ & https://aws.amazon.com/workmai...

Ok IAM isn't quite a social network, but the others seem directly comparable. All top notch products with large markets.

https://aws.amazon.com/documen...
http://www.a9.com/
https://aws.amazon.com/ses/ & https://aws.amazon.com/workmai...

Ok IAM isn't quite a social network, but the others seem directly comparable. All top notch products with large markets.

https://aws.amazon.com/documen...
http://www.a9.com/
https://aws.amazon.com/ses/ & https://aws.amazon.com/workmai...

Ok IAM isn't quite a social network, but the others seem directly comparable. All top notch products with large markets.

Bump up "Yet again, hyperbole trumps facts. " up - I read the article. Nothing new. Read Nick Lanes books to understand that the so called journalists missed some classes.

http://www.amazon.com/Nick-Lan...

There is something interesting, but the hyerbole makes the story mostly false.

Study? Sure, you need to.

"Since it listens to everything said in the room"
Kind of but not really.
Echo uses a simple local voice recognition system that listens for the key word Alexa. It does not digitize everything you say and send it to Amazon. The bandwidth would be too high as would the cost of processing all the speech for the key word.
BTW here is the source for the echo https://www.amazon.com/gp/help...

I considered getting one but I just don't like Amazon and I'm neck deep in Google services (which I like) and the Echo does't work with them. I will be looking closely at the Google version and just might get it of not to expensive.

They did add Google calendar functionality to the Echo last month. Usage instructions here.

Good point! Book about Microsoft Word: 1056 pages.

That makes me wonder: If there were a better user interface, would the software be easier to explain?

'Ere you go.

Looks like you need one of these Mediasonic 4 Bay 3.5" SATA HDD Enclosure (USB 3.,eSATA).

This isn't a bad idea. I just took an Applied Aerodynamics course where the instructor gave us some software he created...he kept touting it's user-friendliness and whatnot...

To solve different systems, you have to change the values in the code, and recompile. This is not a user interface. To top it off, he didn't know how to begin a Visual Studio project without precompiled headers, and several class sessions were spent troubleshooting this for various students.

I took the code, rewrote it in Java, am building a frontend, and will try to make an Android interface for it. Should be fun.

But our course wasn't about coding or editing source code; it was about changing some values, hitting "Go" and interpreting the results returned in text files. Because of this terrible setup, I was required to have a laptop during the exam and I don't even own a laptop! If there were a proper interface, it would have saved 3 or 4 class period, and we could have spent more time on aerodynamics.

Long story short, I completely agree with parent; talk to the engineering instructors, especially the higher-level courses. I also recall seeing, in several textbooks, end of chapter problems that ask to write a program to solve a system; most of these were in Thermodyamics. Maybe ask students if they've seen anything like that and code some of those up.

That's a fucking rip-off.

SanDisk Ultra II 960GB SATA III 2.5-Inch 7mm Height Solid State Drive (SSD) with Read Up To 550MB/s

$229

I'll chime in as another "$240?!?" voice here, because whittling that number down a bit can certainly be done. First off, you can purchase your own cable box outright. My cable company charges $20/month for a standard box, and $36/month for a DVR box. these boxes will pay for themselves in less than a year, and by law, your cable company must make a Cablecard available for you. If you're a DIY type like me, you can pick up one of these and use it with either Windows 7 (it's the only OS that supports all the DRM necessary for some of the ultra-premium channels) or Mythbuntu (free and formally supports that card) in a PC build. More expensive for sure, but even it will pay for itself in less than two years, especially if you have one Mythbuntu backend and use Raspberry Pis as frontends. Assuming three cable boxes and a DVR that are replaced with this setup and you buy new parts for the back end, you'll spend about $800 and two Saturday afternoons configuring it all, while my cable company would charge me $912 for the same service. The two caveats I'll fully admit is that the cable company's Video on Demand probably won't work, which may or may not be important to you - and I've got no idea how Pay-Per-View works (UFC fights, etc.), and also that the cable company may charge a fee to rent the CableCard (mine costs $2/month) while only providing support for the CableCard - you're responsible for the functionality of your own box.

Another thing I've done to save money is to get rid of their telephone service. Ooma costs me about $5 a month, plus $40 for the number port. They have their own handsets, or you can use units that will work with the base directly. They've been around for a while, and I couldn't be happier.

Finally, buy your own modem. That's $5-$10/month right there.

This has been Voyager529's guide on saving a bunch of money on your cable bill.

Kim Stanley Robinson's recent novel Aurora is skeptical of the idea that generational starships would work. KSR is best known for his Mars trilogy of two decades ago, which was a vision of terraforming that was criticized for being too optimistic. In the years since, he has delved into the science of ecosystems and come to believe that "life is a planetary thing", an ecology can only be maintained over the long term at a planetary scale, and at the small scale of a generation starship, it would quickly break down.

Thus Aurora has the inhabitants of the ship freaking out at the increasing amount of salt dumped into their plant production as time goes by, the loss of certain vital nutrients, and so forth. And while you might think that the crew only has to survive the couple of centuries of the journey until they arrive at their destination, the novel has a twist that shows how settling another inhabitable planet might not necessarily possible. Whether this book is an example of a sadly pessimistic or merely realistic trend in science-fiction is up to you.

per wikipedia

Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire Hardcover – September 28, 1999
by Richard Frank (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/0...

https://www.amazon.com/Long-Jo... I read his book by accident. Amazing book and a scientific theory that he worked years on

It really pisses me off when there is a breaking news story talking about something which launches today yet there is no link to the actual service! https://videodirect.amazon.com... <note>If I missed the link in the article disregard rant, thanks</note>

Amazon is the 900 pound gorilla in cloud server and storage services. Sites that use Amazon Web Services include Netflix, Expedia, Adobe, Pinterest, Smugmug, Reddit, Tumblr, and until recently Dropbox.

However, their service interface is really geared for enterprises which can devote a team of IT professionals to managing it. That's why companies like Dropbox were able to successfully re-sell Amazon's cloud storage to the home and SMB user with a shiny user-friendly interface on top. A lot of us have been wondering when Amazon would wake up and clean up their interface to make it easier for the average Joe to store their files directly, instead of using a middleman like Dropbox. I've already moved my photo backup to Amazon (free unlimited photo storage with a Prime account). It used to be with Google Photo, but theirs was only free up to 2048x2048 resolution, which was ok when I started using it back around 2007 but is kinda low resolution for a photo nowadays. My video storage is still with Google Photo (free unlimited storage for videos up to 2 GB), but I'd probably transfer those to Amazon as well if they made it free with Prime.

Is Amazon going to form its own Email services?

It's called WorkMail.

That's the amazing thing...

They placed ONE BET and it was done in response to a challenge by a reporter at TECH REPUBLIC, who published their pick in advance - ONE PICK.

This is the article that Tech Republic published 2 days before the race:

http://www.techrepublic.com/ar...

No, what's really amazing is that this is your first post as a Slashdot user and that all your posts are only discussing this particular topic. Another AMAZING thing is that you're calling a blogger on Tech Republic an actual reporter. Yeah, that's a good one.

Now never mind that you can edit your blog on Tech Republic anytime you want without changing the publishing date, or that this Yahoo quote is completely made up:

According to Yahoo, "Unanimous spent the last two years building a swarm intelligence platform called UNU that enables groups to get together as online swarms -- combing their thoughts, opinions, and intuitions in real-time to answer questions, make predictions, reach decisions, and even play games as a unified collective intelligence."

Who is this "Unanimous" anyway? Is that a play on words with "Anonymous"? Seriously?

And who is this particular "Yahoo" anyway, a blogger friend of yours on Yahoo? Your friend obviously forgot to publish his blog on Yahoo because it's not indexed anywhere. Also, thank you very much for confounding the terms "swarm intelligence" or "AI" with "wisdom of crowds".

That's what the world needs right now, more misinformation layered unto more misinformation. Congratulations on your click-baiting skills.

Maybe open books are the way to go. Here's a book for $13/semester (3 semester course; $50). Buy the used ones off Amazon, and you can be down to single digits.

It kind of goes with the post above about the book scanners; open books and internet and whatnot is great, but not everyone has access to a screen for reading for hours on end, and sometimes screens just suck for reading.

One thing I've noticed in some of my research on textbooks is that it seems a lot of the cost goes into publishing with shiny, thick, colorful pages. My Shigley's from the '80's very closely matches in content with my Shigley's from 2014. Verbatim, including images/figures. The major change? Physical size, some updates on a few newer methods/materials, and color and gloss and a fancy cover!!1!!1 Oh, and new copyright.

Maybe open books are the way to go. Here's a book for $13/semester (3 semester course; $50). Buy the used ones off Amazon, and you can be down to single digits.

It kind of goes with the post above about the book scanners; open books and internet and whatnot is great, but not everyone has access to a screen for reading for hours on end, and sometimes screens just suck for reading.

One thing I've noticed in some of my research on textbooks is that it seems a lot of the cost goes into publishing with shiny, thick, colorful pages. My Shigley's from the '80's very closely matches in content with my Shigley's from 2014. Verbatim, including images/figures. The major change? Physical size, some updates on a few newer methods/materials, and color and gloss and a fancy cover!!1!!1 Oh, and new copyright.

Books are expensive for the poor in the US also.

The maximum food stamp allotment for a single, non-disabled, non-elderly person in the US is $155 per month according to:

http://www.nlsa.us/resources/benefits/pb9_fs_calc_nonelderly.html

So here's a nice Calculus textbook sold on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321954351/

The price? $256 new, or $120 used in "good" condition. Or you can rent it for the semester for the low price of $40.

Those poor folks should just get themselves an education. Right folks? Eh?

Is it possible to do full untrained voice recognition on a platform as limited as a smartphone?

Yes, it is. This has had general speech recog since 2013 or earlier. Odds are the software that got that done is way better today than in 2013.

There couldn't be a reason people would want to tie you irretrievably to their could-based / online speech recognition services, could there? Bueller? Bueller?

In journalism, anytime a person is mentioned it's standard practice to make reference to who he/she is in relation to the story, but slashdot often dispenses with those conventions.

That was true back in the days when newspapers had copy editors on staff who were paid regular salaries and had steady jobs. http://www.amazon.com/Headline...

And we printed them with lead plates.

dinosaur porn (banned on Amazon!)

What about the Hugo-nominated Space Raptor Butt Invasion?

https://www.amazon.com/Space-R...

Or This American Butt Hosted By Ira Ass (apparently Ira is a stegosaurus)

https://www.amazon.com/This-Am...

They seemed to have slipped past the censors. Maybe it's just cis-heteronormative dinosaur porn that's been banned?

dinosaur porn (banned on Amazon!)

What about the Hugo-nominated Space Raptor Butt Invasion?

https://www.amazon.com/Space-R...

Or This American Butt Hosted By Ira Ass (apparently Ira is a stegosaurus)

https://www.amazon.com/This-Am...

They seemed to have slipped past the censors. Maybe it's just cis-heteronormative dinosaur porn that's been banned?

$38 (32-bit) or $49 (64-bit): http://www.amazon.com/Windows-...

Also plan on 2 days to install the 200+ Windows Updates.

They are starting at $20 on Amazon.

To be fair, many of the people dying from these medical errors are really sick, and would have soon died from something else anyway. Also, killing off old people helps keep Social Security and Medicare from going bankrupt. I am not saying killing them is a good thing, just that it is not all bad.

Some hospitals have dramatically cut medical errors using a very simple tool: Checklists.

I mean there's cheap and there's throw them out because you don't like the color cheap.

I just bought a 128 GB SANDisk USB3 stick from Amazon for $31.

How cheap does a 32GB drive need to be to be cheap?

I already think they're cheap enough that I wish Microsoft would quit refusing to install and boot from USB drives as a kind of copy protection.

Well, you could buy 10 2GB flash drives for less than that and give 9 of them to your friends with Linux ready to be installed ( http://www.amazon.com/10pcs-Sw...).

Put differently, how many people are going to spend $31 to try out this thing called Linux?

Read a book.

And if only the urban tech centers -- NYC, San Francisco, and Chicago -- were spared, it would be a month, maybe a month and a half before the civil unrest between the haves and the have-nots in these places boiled over into such violent anarchy people would be wishing they had been taken in the nuke strikes.

So much for all lattes and free wi-fi...

That's it? That's the ground you're standing on? A stupid book? A stupid book about the Irish population during the middle ages? And it explain the complete complexity of the world?

Atheism is on the rise in most western country and claiming that it'll lead in the fall of civilization is so absurd that I see no point in continuing this discussion any longer.

Read a book.

And if only the urban tech centers -- NYC, San Francisco, and Chicago -- were spared, it would be a month, maybe a month and a half before the civil unrest between the haves and the have-nots in these places boiled over into such violent anarchy people would be wishing they had been taken in the nuke strikes.

So much for all lattes and free wi-fi...

Shouldn't even respond to a trolling AC, but just had to point out how stupid you were in case you were serious - an Apple Watch Stainless Steel Band can be had for $30 if money is a primary concern...

That's what happens when you ship millions of units and open something like bands to third parties, tons of cheap options. But you already knew that, right?