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Symko actually did comment on the question of efficiency, as can be seen in this article:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070605-new- technology-converts-heat-to-electrical-energy-thro ugh-sound.html

It says: "This isn't some crazy perpetual-motion device--Homer Simpson can rest easy, as no laws of thermodynamics are being broken. The prototype demonstrated by Symko can only recover a small percentage of the total energy available from the "waste" heat. Symko says that the efficiency depends on the application and temperature differences: the higher the difference between the source heat and the temperature in the device, the greater the efficiency. He believes that the technology can reach 20 to 25 percent efficiencies and possibly bump solar panel efficiencies from 20 percent (for typical consumer products) to more than 50 percent."

Time Machine doesn't depend on ZFS, and works fine with HFS+.

From Ars Technica:

http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/8/15 /4995

"Time Machine does not use ZFS. There was a lot of initial confusion about this, partially because Leopard does include a port of DTrace, the "other" high-profile open source project to come out of Sun's OpenSolaris efforts. But the absence of ZFS was no surprise to me."

Well, not in THIS forum. But elsewhere.

5:1 that it's not the default root file system in Leopard.

The first bootable release of ZFS (not "BUILD," but "RELEASE") isn't even due until the Fall.

I'm not alone in this skepticism. See this Ars story, for example.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/06/ 06/sun-ceo-jonathan-schwartz-zfs-to-be-the-file-sy stem-in-leopard

From what I remember, there was a similar trademark suit in the UK a few years back. Apparently Jaguar the auto-maker was upset that Apple called Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar". Apple was forced to drop the "Jaguar" name from Mac OS X 10.2 in the UK for this reason. Because apparently alot of people confused a $50,000 car with a $150 computer operating system. They were also sued over the Tiger moniker a couple of years ago, that time by Tiger Direct.

I'm just waiting for a bunch of leopards in Africa to sue over OS X 10.5...

See http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/06 /06/busting-rumors-sonys-ps3-price-drop-and-square s-360-final-fantasy-plans

They explain that Square said the 360 was a "blank page", which isn't the same thing as a flat out "Not gonna happen".

Nathan

You: We can beat city HALL! Wahhhh!

Seriously, when did RIAA proove THEY are not in violation of law with those spurious law suites of theirs?
I suggest we at least try to defend ourselves from abusive legal practices! Who's to say the practices of RIAA is not more destructive than file sharing - which has shown to actually increase music sales and artist recognition to a former buying audience!

Maybe, instead of suing people for all they are worth, a simple ethics class in primary school would ensure that any music downloaded and enjoyed would be purchased. That's high quality economics - not the pseudo date rape tactics of RIAA and similar organizations!

References:
1) http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~felten/boorstin-thesi s.pdf
2) http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070212-8813 .html
3) http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/Felten_v_RIAA/
4) http://www.heritage.org/Research/InternetandTechno logy/bg1790.cfm


nuff said, cheers!

Not only does Apple have to figure out what makes a good iPhone application, it has to actually create the APIs to produce such a thing. Okay, so no scroll bars, but surely there will be some standard way of scrolling, some standard gesture recognition engine, and so on. Apple has to create all this, if only for its own internal sanity, before it can really get cranking on iPhone application development.

And like the Mac GUI before it, there will be fits and starts, dead-ends, and bad ideas to shake out in the first few years. Also, an IDE would be nice. Xcode, sure, but some sort of simulator or remote debugger system would help. And, whoops, let's keep revising all those APIs and that IDE to match the best practices as they evolve. Oh, and by the way, we need to ship something that works by June 29th.

Viewed in this context, the calls for third-party iPhone development, and Apple's reaction to them, start to make a bit more sense. It's the prototypical fanboy mistake to imagine that the mothership has infinite resources and skills, and any lack of satisfaction is malicious. The fact is, Apple could not provide a comprehensive third-party iPhone development environment on par with what Mac developers have come to expect by June 29th, even if it wanted to do such a thing--and there are many sound reasons not to. This stuff all needs time to cook.

In the meantime, Mac developers will have to be happy with some simple, widget-like WebKit-base development at WWDC this year. That'll also be a nice gesture of good faith from Apple.

Slow news day? More like OLD news day. My first thought was--what the fuck is this, early 2001? OS X has been out for SIX FUCKING YEARS--who cares that some douchebag just now spent 30 days with it?

The use of, benefits of, and shortcomings of Mac OS X have been thoroughly documented on a thousand* different sites. It's not like it's even a new version--10.4 has been out for TWO EFFING YEARS!!! Where has this retard been? (Reminds me of the NewsRadio episode when Bill discovered rap.)

Up next: 30 days spent breathing air and drinking water--a Hard OCP exclusive!

* the funny thing is, "thousand"--usually an exaggeration--is in this case a drastic understatement. Googling for 'os x review' yields 67,400,000 matches. Just in case anyone has been under a rock and wants to read some good reviews by smart people, here are a couple:
Review of 10.3 by Bruce Tognazzini, Apple employee #66
Detailed technical review of 10.4 from ars.tecnica with links to reviews of every version of OS X, ever
Typical review from a Mac site
Review of 10.4 from PC World

I was trying to figure out where I had seen something like this recently:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070527-new- stove-generator-refrigerator-combo-aimed-at-develo ping-nations.html

this thing also uses thermoacoustic technology.

As I understand it Vista preloads the apps in the background without significantly slowing the system down. The problem with automatically launching apps at startup is that this happens in the foreground and does effect system speed until all of the apps have loaded. It's also a matter of CPU utilization and user resources. I would need to check the details but I bet preloaded apps aren't using any GDI resources until the user actually launches it. Also, the app isn't running when it is preloaded, thus saving some CPU resources (vs. automatically launching the app at startup).

It looks like the Mac doesn't preload apps. I was thinking of the way the Mac caches data on the disk during normal I/O (see this for details).

Lossless would be more useful in the future—I might want to archive the recordings in a format I know I'll be able to play/transcode to something else later on (FLAC is ideal for this).

As for Apple's new offering, I wouldn't pay 3x for a difference that I personally would only maybe be able to detect in a back-to-back comparison that will never happen.

You're not just paying more for something you might not hear, you're also paying more for embedding personal data in the track. According to ArsTechnica Apple embeds customer information in the DRM-free tracks too. Customers didn't get that when they bought wax cylinders, records, or tapes, nor do customers get that when they buy CDs. Customers can easily resell all of the older media without divulging personal information (theirs or anyone else's). I doubt most people leveraging their first-sale right by selling their iTunes tracks want to distribute anyone's personal information along with it. But maybe Apple has this covered: as George Hotelling learned, it's harder to sell one's iTunes tracks than it needs to be.

And now it appears that the new iTunes version will not let you "convert the music you've bought -- even "DRM-free" songs sold at a 30 percent premium -- into MP3s that will play on your iPod" when you rip the CD with iTunes. I believe most MacOS X users manage their audio tracks exclusively with iTunes from ripping and uploading to a portable digital audio device, to searching and playback. I could do the same thing with Rhythmbox on a free software OS (minus the digital restrictions management and personal data embedding, of course) if I weren't so finicky about processing the ripped WAV file with other programs before I encode with FLAC.

I daresay if someone relies on defending against viruses by antivirus software, the security model is already utterly, completely broken

So how do you defend yourself against viruses? The only ways I can think of off the top of my head are:

• Don't download any software, ever. In fact, don't even connect to the internet at all. Assuming the OS itself didn't come with a virus, this is the only 100% foolproof way to avoid getting a virus.
• Don't download any software, ever. But allow yourself to be connect to the internet. There's a slight chance of getting a virus anyway, if someone guesses your password or otherwises hacks into your system.
• Only run open source software, read all the source code, and compile it yourself (but at some point, you'd need to download a binary, to bootstrap the process, so even this is not 100% foolproof).
• Only run open source software, don't read the source code yourself, but rather trust the "many eyes" that they're doing a good job of reading the code for you, and compile it yourself (same problems as above, with the additional problem of needing extra trust from those "many eyes").
• Only run open source software, and don't compile yourself. Trust that the binaries that you download from sourceforge.net, for example, are virus free.
• Practice skeptical computing, download various software, some of which are open source, some of which are closed source, and run an antivirus scanner.
• (etc... there are more, but again, none of them will 100% guarantee freedom from virus except the first).

Only the first tactic guarantees you a virus-free experience. With everything else, there's a slight chance of getting viruses, which increases as you go down the list. For many people, the minute increase in chance of catching a virus is worth it for the added experienced gained from using a computer. It's similar to how many people eat food which is "bad for them", but tastes good. The alternative, to stick to only "known good" food, is simply too painful for most people.

If memory server me right couple of years ago OSX was using a single kernel lock. Which means that no more than 1 thread running in kernel. See: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10-4.ars/ 4 I read a long article describing why OSX was much worse processing Ethernet traffic than windows. I don't know how it has changed since that time.

Mac OS X traces its roots to the Mach micro kernel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_kernel and BSD flavors of Unix. (Yes, I know that OS X has diverged substantially from Mach now).

Like most operating systems, Mac OS X has bottlenecks by design that tend to limit concurrent thread execution within the kernel. There is an excellent article at http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10-4.ars/ 4

Only one thread can use a bottlenecked resource at a time. When multiple threads (application threads or kernel threads) need simultaneous access to a resource, all but one thread must wait. Threads that could theoretically run concurrently on multiple cores end up running sequentially because all but one thread are waiting to access the resource. Apple has made the locking (concurrency protection) within the kernel finer and finer grained with each release of Mac OS X. In Mac OS X 10.4, Tiger, the bottlenecks are very fine grained, and in practice the system is very efficient allowing concurrent execution on multiple cores.

That being said, Mac OS X is far from perfect or optimal. There is lots of room for improvement, and Apple seems to be following the path of continual evolution rather than revolution at this point. Remember that for the last six years or so, every Mac OS X update/release has run faster than previous versions.

> Even selling used CDs hasn't come under fire.

Several states are considering highly regulating (commercial) trading of used CD's. Florida already has such a law.

see http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070507-reco rd-shops-used-cds-ihre-papieren-bitte.html

Google seems to be deploying something similar

And can the PS3 upscale SD DVDs to 1080i/p?

It can now.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070524-sony s-newest-update-adds-720p-blu-ray-support-and-upsc aling-capabilities.html

This is such a hilarious troll, normally I wouldn't feed but the parent post is so ridiculous that it's gone beyond trolling into some random fantasy land.

Go to hell, communists.

The GPL is not Communist in nature, in fact when I distribute software under the GPL it's all about me and my choice to share work with others. In a Communist scenario all the sofware would belong to the state, the choice of sharing would not be mine. Secondly, nowhere in the GPL does it say you cannot charge for your work, Studio to Go is a good example of this.

You democrats are trying to destroy the United States' only hold over China: They need Microsoft software. When they can get crappy free solutions to do the same, the United States will just continue to become indebted to China and other countries. And it will be all your fault, you Hillary fanboys.

Right, because Free software is all a conspiracy to ruin the US. Of course most of the people who answered the survey in this MIT study, when asked what their motivation is, said: 'I'm a Hillary fanboy and want to ruin the US!' Or could it be that FLOSS developers enjoy coding and want to share stuff they like? Which do you think is more likely?

I like FLOSS but am not a Hillary fanboy. In fact am not really interested in your elections, suprise: there are people who live outside the US!

For the sake of national security, free software efforts must become against the law.

This is the funniest thing I've read for a long time. It would be interesting to see this happen, my hypothesis is that this would ruin software development in the US. Am pretty certain your country would suffer rather badly if it outlawed FLOSS but the rest of the world continued developing it. Think of all those savings your corporations would be missing out on! What about the US corporations who're distributing FLOSS, e.g. IBM, Sun, HP, Dell, RedHat et al?

Besides, free software destroys our free market, creating monopolies, by selling at excessively low prices. Would Microsoft get away with giving away free products to take competitors' market share away? No. Neither should these ****ing tree-hugging, Prius-driving free software zealots. The captcha is appropriately "planking."

Oh dear, that's funny. Free software does not destroy the free market, but encourages it. With FLOSS there's much less possibility for vendor lock-in (since everything is out in the open and I can't imagine the many volunteers working on FLOSS projects being happy with creating proprietary file formats etc.). Theoretically Microsoft would not get away with giving away software for free, yet that's exactly how they gained their monopoly: by turning a blind eye to piracy. Your point is invalid in another respect: Microsoft is a company whereas Free software is an ecosystem/licensing model. If all proprietary software disappeared tomorrow there would still be plenty of competition, this is one of the things people complain about with GNU/Linux: there's too much choice!

I'd almost like to see your post modded up as 'Funny', just because it's so stupid and full of hilarious vitriol. Also I feel it's important to debunk rubbish like this sometimes, just in case someone else read your post and thinks that you've got a point (a scary prospect).

Lego Star Wars to come back with all six movies in one game

Caught the Lego story on Digg today. Nice timing. I remember the first time Star Wars was re-released to theaters. My brother got caught running a red light on the way to the Uptown. I told him that the force was not with him. He didn't think it was very funny, especially when the cop found out he didn't have his license with him...

And we all shine on.

The better choice really depends on whatever is important to you. If you put a lot of value on por.. err... photos and video, then you might like the glossy display. If reading text is more important to you and your lighting conditions are unpredictable, then you might want the traditional matte-finish display.

Intel® Pentium® dual-core proc T2080(1MB Cache/1.73GHz/533MHz FSB
...
15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA Display with TrueLife(TM)(glossy)
2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHZ, 2 DIMM
...
Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950

Note that Newegg.com has 2GB 667MHz kits starting at $80 ($5 shipping).

Not $0, $30. I could be completely wrong. I guess no one really knows the true cost of Windows on PCs. I was just trying to point out that the revenue of the adware/trial software that comes preinstalled on a Windows machine could either completely, or partially offset the cost of the Windows license itself. I looked around and I did find a $104 ($89 + tax) number for a refund of Windows XP home to a British customer here. I also found this article which speculates that the cost of XP home is $30.

I also found this story in which a person got a 42 Euro refund for Vista Home Basic. This seems to make the refunds vary wildly, but since you can get XP Home OEM for $89 plus tax here at NewEgg, I kind of doubt that Dell pays what you or I would pay if we were building a computer. My guess is that the guy that got the $89 refund did so because Dell isn't allowed to disclose the price they pay for Windows and the Dell CSR went of a public OEM price from a local vendor. In most of the refund cases I have read about, especially the ones that go to small claims court, seem to usually end with Dell stating that they cannot disclose the price they pay and refunding the cost at a local vendor. Anyway, this seems to point to my price of $30-$40 for XP Home or Vista Basic.

Next, from this article, you get the $60 price of the adware/trial software that comes pre-bundled on Dell machines. Once again, we don't know the exact number, but that link seems to point towards a price in the $60 ballpark.

So to sum up:

* Dell pays Microsoft more that $0, but it is most likely much, much less than you or I would pay if we were building our own computer due to the volume of sales Dell has. I estimate this at around $30-$40.
* Dell makes money from putting trial software on their PCs. This has been estimated at around $60.
* Estimates seem to indicate that base versions of Windows (the kind most home users get) seem to have a negative net cost for Dell (by that I mean to say they make money).
* Ubuntu (hopefully) will not include adware or trial software, so therefore, it costs the same or possibly more than Windows does.

I love Linux. I am typing this from a computer with Edgy installed. I have installed Ubuntu on most of the servers at the company I work for. I love Ubuntu and I hope it continues and is successful. I also still do not see a market for these machines. I fear that Dell will not have many sales, and will discontinue them. I most likely would not buy one because I still need Windows for a few things. Why pay the same or more for a computer with just Ubuntu, when I could get a computer with Ubuntu and Windows myself? Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

HP believes pretexting is "proper." HP believes that pretexting, something that if I were to do to HP would certainly NOT be considered "proper" is perfectly acceptable.

Keep in mind that it wasn't long ago that a bill legalizing pretexting was pushed by the RIAA.

Please stop buying HP stuff. Please stop buying stuff from companies that have a political axe to grind against their consumers. Please stop buying stuff from companies that consider consumers a silent, renewable, god given, right to exploit resource that simply keeps buying their dreck regardless of their political behavior.

Start voting (because you haven't been at the polls). Boycott HP.

There was a story on Ars Technica a while back (I don't have the link, sorry) where Michael Dell was doing a question and answer session, and someone asked him how much extra they would have to pay to get a PC without "Craplets". The figure he gave was $50 - $60.

Here is a link to that story. The relevant part:

What's more interesting is Dell's response to an offer from someone in the group who said that they would pay $60 to receive a PC without all of this bundled software. Dell's response was "sold!," implying that this would indeed be enough to cover the loss of revenues. Dell didn't respond to other offers, including one for $10.

You can (continue to?) pirate the content.

What part of, "Fair use is not piracy" do you not understand?

The OP is pointing out, quite correctly, that we have a legal right to fair use, which may include the right to make backup copies. I neither know nor care what you or anyone else feels about the necessity of backup copies. Your experience, needs, desires and wants are totally irrelevant to the legal fact of fair use rights.

DRM is a failed attempt to prevent me from exercising my fair use rights. Again, whether or not you think I'm a moron for wanting to do so is irrelevant. It is not piracy to do so. It is a matter of legal fact that I have those rights. Even the RIAA once admitted that, in front of the Supreme Court no less.

I can't give you a link, but I believe the biggest fuss was over the early Vista drivers for the nVidia 8xxx series. Oops, google is your friend: "NVIDIA responds to complaints about state of Vista drivers" http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070206-8784 .html

Yes, Blu-ray is ahead for now. But the current number of high-def movie buyers is just a drop compared to standard-def DVD. The number of available high-def titles is also very low. When a significant portion of standard DVD buyers switch to high-def, then the "standings" in this stupid race might matter.

Remember when standard-def DVD players were $500 and hardly any titles were available? The difference: DVD had no real competing formats and it had the support of all studios, computer makers, and home electronics makers. Ah, those were the good ol' days.

Note that before the promotion, the HD-A2 could be bought for $350 (free shipping) at Amazon.com. It seems that they raised their pre-rebate price back up to MSRP ($400) for this promotional period. I think it's safe to assume the price will be back at $350 (without rebate) after June 16. That's still significantly cheaper than a standalone Blu-ray player. To me, that's still too much to waste (for either format) when this stupid format war has barely even started.

Couldn't they just used the words "Microsoft has said it has no plans to sue after alleging patent infringements by open-source vendors."

How about you guys just license these specific patents to OIN, http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051110-5553 .html , Oh I remember its that whole sharing thing Bill never understood. I personally lay the blame with his grandmother. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2000/pulpit_200 01123_000672.html

See also Triumph of the Nerds:
Vern Raburn President, The Paul Allen Group I ended up spending Memorial Day Weekend with him out at his grandmother's house on Hood Canal. She turned everything in to a game. It was a very very very competitive environment, and if you spent the weekend there, you were part of the competition, and it didn't matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock. And you know and there was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing.

* Well, I'd rather wait until that guy at Ars Technica does one of his in-depth analyses on the POWER6 architecture.

You mean Jon Stokes? He's got this writeup posted earlier today, though it isn't exactly indepth. Apropos, I'm halfway through a new book of his right now: "Inside the machine". Pretty good for a non-EE/CS duffer like me...

Quanta have said that they will release something based on the OLPC.

Normally, I wouldn't comment, but it seemed to me you were heaping a bit of undue scorn on the AC poster. The 80-core prototype processor was covered previously on Slashdot.

ArsTechnica has good coverage, and you can find more at C|Net. Incidentally, the AC was right -- simply googling for "Intel 80 core processor" yields plenty of results. (Googling for "Intel 80 core processor Slashdot" will find the Slashdot article to which I provided the link.) Instead of ripping on the guy for being passive-aggressive, maybe you should stop and research before posting a comment insinuating that the AC poster is just spreading FUD. This story was covered well enough recently that a hyperlink citation shouldn't have been strictly necessary.

CableCard is even more of a PITA than that.

See f.ex. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060131-6081 .html

CC is designed to only work in the twisted DRM all the way to the output device mindset that we see in Windows Vista. You can't plunk a CableCard into an existing computer. The PC has to be certified by CableLabs, which means that you have to buy a pre-packaged HTPC or a 'CableCard ready' PC. And no futzing around with the OS, hardware or drivers inside that machine, or you risk decertifying the box. So certified, pre-built Vista PCs only.

A PC with CableCard will have more in common with the locked-down cable box you have today than a regular PC.

The only good thing about this is that the next couple of years should provide fertile ground for recruiting copyfighters. Imagine the cries and howls we'll hear when audiophiles discover that analog audio outputs are quality downgraded, and digital outputs that don't support DRM (i.e. everything except audio over HDMI-HDCP) are either disabled or quality downgraded. The same with people that paid a lot for HDMI monitors and TVs that don't support HDCP.

How long is the pipeline? Is it insanely long a la NetBurst?

* Well, I'd rather wait until that guy at Ars Technica does one of his in-depth analyses on the POWER6 architecture.

Not that it's the usual 27-page article, but still...

I've heard similar ideas, but just because I've heard them doesn't make them true; most such stories sound like another version of old men waving their canes and telling those damn kids to get off their lawn. This article from Ars reports on an Irish report essentially agreeing with what you say, but Ars also cites a Toronto report contradicting the idea that young people are losing their ability to spell based on IM.

This article from Technology Review argues that the increasing pervasiveness of writing in students' lives is actually improving their language skills rather than the opposite. Given these contrasting viewpoints, I'm not sure what is the "right" answer, but I bring a healthy amount of skepticism to any claim like the one you're repeating. Most people I know spell fairly well if they care or if what they're doing is important and don't if the inverse is true. I'm part of the "txting" generation, but as my website probably indicates, I'm probably a reasonably proficient writer. (Anecdotes, blah blah, yes, I'm aware, but they help make the point I was raising above).

At least in France, many of the problems were solved by local loop unbundling. I imagine the same would work here.

We had local loop unbundling here in the U.S., but then the FCC took it away. Now if you want DSL, it's back to the local phone company -- except for the places where they still have outstanding contracts with independent ISPs (like Speakeasy, etc.), there's no choice.

The FCC's rationale for reneging on the LLU decision was that consumers now had "choice" without it -- between the cable company, and the phone company. The nature of the decision had something to do with classing DSL as a 'data service' as opposed to a 'communications service' or something similarly pedantic, but the upshot was that it didn't require wholesale line leases to competitors, or let them charge more for it, or something.

I can't find a source on it right now, but I distinctly remember reading about it (maybe about a year ago, maybe a bit more).

Finally found some reference to it:
FCC Could Rule on DSL Line Sharing
FCC Halts DSL-Sharing by Telcos
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20040303-3487 .html

(Reason I wasn't finding anything is that "LLU" or "Local Loop Unbundling" only seems to be used in the press in the U.K. and Europe; in the 'States they seem to call it 'Line Sharing,' probably to maintain their mandatory 6th-grade reading level.)

It seems the obvious place to go for consumer sales. But the sensible analysis at ars technica on Barcelona architecture is that AMD are gunning for the server ecosystem, with massively-parallel processing of data loads and high-bandwidth system connections. If they can tease a highly-efficient notebook system out of that, I'll be impressed.

While amusing, your post is fairly inaccurate. "Hot ice" is a perfectly accurate description of the substance. Or at least, so says Wikipedia. And, if you're not down with the Wiki, arstechnica indicates that Nature also considers "hot ice" a legitimate term.

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer as gleaned from the link above if people don't want to bother clicking: yes; the Z-machine at Sandia is able (at least) to form Ice VII.

I have only followed EU & German law, but the situation is far from resolved:

http://www.euro-copyrights.org/index/14/49

However, there is no right to hack, where a user wants to benefit from the limitations to copyright. It is thus not allowed to circumvent the measure, even if the circumvention is done solely for e.g. private copying or citing the protected content.


http://fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/

The Software Patent Directive was rejected by the European Parliament on the 6th of July 2005, ... However, the struggle is not over

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070426-cont roversial-copyright-directive-passes-european-parl iament.html
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/ipred2/

The European Copyright Directive (com(2001)29ec) greatly increased the scope of copyright law. As well as prohibiting unauthorised copying of information, copyright law now restricts how the public can use technology to access or view copyrighted information. ... Writing software to share files with others over a network could be copyright infringement; it's a grey area.

Writing (and then publishing) code that implements p2p transfer is a grey area? I liked my right to ignore EULA-restrictions that could not be upheld in german court (and the fact that this was so obvious that to my knowledge it was never even tried).

Laws are changing and Germany has a few people in government positions that have learned the terror scare mongering tactic far too well, have interests in certain business-related questions themselves and occasionally (after some kid thought killing a bunch of others would be a good idea) generate publicity by proposing to ban this-and-that (Mr. Thompson would be proud).

The acting minister of interior has shown no restrictions to change the constitution (read: remove rights) under the flag of protecting the people;
it will happen again sooner or later. And it will happen to free software (first they come for the encryption & deassmbler guys).

What's my point? I think 3 million players is an insignificant drop in the future HD video player market. If the price of HD DVD players drops below whatever the "magic price point" is before Blu-ray does, and the studios start offering most of their movies in high-def format (they hardly release any Blu-ray/HD DVD titles now), then HD DVD can easily overtake Blu-ray.

I'm not saying it will happen, I'm just saying it's way too early and the current sales numbers are way too insignificantly small to predict a winner. Did you know that Borat sold more DVDs in one week than all Blu-ray and HD DVD titles combined since the launch of the two formats?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070423-why- early-high-def-disc-adoption-rates-dont-really-mat ter.html

"Not many PCs around with the processing power of the PS3 or even the xbox360. Both have very high end graphic cards on dedicated buses. The only thing PCs excel in hardware against the current two nextgen consoles is memory and storage, but even then the memory on the consoles is incredibly fast."

I really don't want to go into a specific analysis of the difference in processing power when comparing the CPU's. So I'll give you a few details that lead me to arrive at my opinion that they aren't as fast.

1. Some notes about their processors:
The PS3 cell processor while it has 7 SPE cores there is only 1 PPE core, and no out of order execution. Which means that for a good chunk of game programming the cell is going to go very under utilized. Here is an article highlighting some of the issues with the cell as a console processor: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070221-8896 .html

The Xenon processor from the xbox 360 while more at home in a gaming console then the cell still is not perfect for gaming. Due to the issues of having a deeply piped lines processor like the xenon and having to drop much of the branch prediction and having a smaller cache to keep die size down, the Xenon is poorly designed to deal with branchy code such as game control, AI, and physics code. Here is an article discussing the Xenon: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360 -2.ars/6

So while the processors for these consoles may be more specifically designed for gaming. Due to cost savings on the die size they have had to drop much of the logic and caching that would have made them well rounded gaming processors like you get with a PC. The reality is that with the speed of development of processors by the time the consoles actually hit the market their processors were only marginally better for gaming then a PC processor, and required FAR more specialized programming in order to take advantage of that performance gap. The cell processor will likely never see its full potential used in a video game.

2. Some notes on their GPU's:
The Xenos GPU which is in the xbox 360 suffers a similar story to the Xenon, in that it is designed for the console but with cost in mind. The new line of ATI graphics cards that are directx 10 compatible surely borrow a lot of the design innovations of the Xenos in how the graphics pipeline is arranged for efficiency. However the new graphics chips are clocked higher have more ram at their disposal and your even able to double down on graphics cards if you still don't have enough power. Simply put it would make no since for ATI not to release a GPU that is as good or better for PCs when they make far more money off the PC graphics card market, and they are in stiff competition with nVidia. Here is an article discussing the design choices of the Xenos GPU: http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/4/11

In conclusion while consoles are closing the gap between PC and Console graphics, the PC market does offer graphics performance that is better then consoles and for a few reasons. The price spent on PC components is much higher then that of consoles so there are far less price restrictions on the size of the die for the CPU/GPU yielding much better general purpose processing. Consoles have a 5 year life span which enables PCs to surpass any advantage consoles may grab a very short time into their life span, and very easily because the same companies that the design the GPU for consoles also design GPU's for PCs. So until there is a huge surge in console gaming that decreases the required life cycle of consoles, and the price consumers are willing to spend on consoles goes up, console graphics just won't be able to best computer gaming for any meaningful length of time.

"Not many PCs around with the processing power of the PS3 or even the xbox360. Both have very high end graphic cards on dedicated buses. The only thing PCs excel in hardware against the current two nextgen consoles is memory and storage, but even then the memory on the consoles is incredibly fast."

I really don't want to go into a specific analysis of the difference in processing power when comparing the CPU's. So I'll give you a few details that lead me to arrive at my opinion that they aren't as fast.

1. Some notes about their processors:
The PS3 cell processor while it has 7 SPE cores there is only 1 PPE core, and no out of order execution. Which means that for a good chunk of game programming the cell is going to go very under utilized. Here is an article highlighting some of the issues with the cell as a console processor: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070221-8896 .html

The Xenon processor from the xbox 360 while more at home in a gaming console then the cell still is not perfect for gaming. Due to the issues of having a deeply piped lines processor like the xenon and having to drop much of the branch prediction and having a smaller cache to keep die size down, the Xenon is poorly designed to deal with branchy code such as game control, AI, and physics code. Here is an article discussing the Xenon: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360 -2.ars/6

So while the processors for these consoles may be more specifically designed for gaming. Due to cost savings on the die size they have had to drop much of the logic and caching that would have made them well rounded gaming processors like you get with a PC. The reality is that with the speed of development of processors by the time the consoles actually hit the market their processors were only marginally better for gaming then a PC processor, and required FAR more specialized programming in order to take advantage of that performance gap. The cell processor will likely never see its full potential used in a video game.

2. Some notes on their GPU's:
The Xenos GPU which is in the xbox 360 suffers a similar story to the Xenon, in that it is designed for the console but with cost in mind. The new line of ATI graphics cards that are directx 10 compatible surely borrow a lot of the design innovations of the Xenos in how the graphics pipeline is arranged for efficiency. However the new graphics chips are clocked higher have more ram at their disposal and your even able to double down on graphics cards if you still don't have enough power. Simply put it would make no since for ATI not to release a GPU that is as good or better for PCs when they make far more money off the PC graphics card market, and they are in stiff competition with nVidia. Here is an article discussing the design choices of the Xenos GPU: http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/4/11

In conclusion while consoles are closing the gap between PC and Console graphics, the PC market does offer graphics performance that is better then consoles and for a few reasons. The price spent on PC components is much higher then that of consoles so there are far less price restrictions on the size of the die for the CPU/GPU yielding much better general purpose processing. Consoles have a 5 year life span which enables PCs to surpass any advantage consoles may grab a very short time into their life span, and very easily because the same companies that the design the GPU for consoles also design GPU's for PCs. So until there is a huge surge in console gaming that decreases the required life cycle of consoles, and the price consumers are willing to spend on consoles goes up, console graphics just won't be able to best computer gaming for any meaningful length of time.

Most systems do end up making a profit after manufacturing costs go down and parts become more advailable. Its in the first run where they draw a loss on the cost of the machines. Its called the Razor and Blades model because it was developed by Gillette or something. Basiclly they start selling at a loss and as the R&D as well as the cost of the parts and manufacturing go down they start making a profit off of the system and can even make price cuts. I have no doubt that the PS2 is profitable for Sony and it may have even been profitable in the first year. But the first run probably was not going to see profit, as they would have still had to pay back R&D after the first run. Nintendo stood to make a profit off of theirs with the Wii. Also by in recent years its been ever since the Playstation that they have done that, but I believe with the playstation the cost of developing had even come to make a profit even before the first run was out.

I'm not a market expert but its pretty much how its been done my microsoft and a lesser extent Sony in the last few years. I'm not sure but I think even the gamecube was originally in the same boat.

look up loss leader on wikipedia
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s108486.htm
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060915-7752 .html

I'd rather say it's intended to stop format shifting, so that media companies can sell the same content to the same customer several times. One copy for the DVD-player, one for your iPod, one for your car, one for your cell phone, etc, etc, in absurdum.

The media industry even admits this.

That article is misleading. It has nothing to do with AJAX,
and nothing to do with the Web.

It's basically JavaFX Script, a language for defining GUI's.
https://openjfx.dev.java.net/JavaFX_Programming_La nguage.html

These are better articles:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070509-firs t-impressions-suns-javafx-platform-for-rich-applic ation-development.html
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/05/ sun_javafx.cfm

-- Mike

I thought that goal looked familiar. Youtube was aiming for the same thing. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060816-7521 .html

More information can be found at:
1. Specifications: http://www.cablemodem.com/specifications/specifica tions30.html
2. Press release: http://www.cablelabs.com/news/pr/2006/06_pr_docsis 30_080706.html
3. Ars Technica article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060808-7450 .html

You're missing the point.

Let's assume for the moment that spatial file browsing is a bad idea. Which I completely and utterly disagree with, but let's assume that.

Apple released version 10 of a product that had FEWER features than version 9. Microsoft was able to completely re-write the Office UI from scratch without removing a single feature. Why wasn't Apple able to completely re-write Finder from scratch without losing any features? Why is it acceptable for Apple to make a release with fewer features than the last version, when it's not acceptable for Microsoft, or Adobe, or any other software company?

I don't think it is acceptable. Maybe spatial browsing is a moronic brain-dead way of doing things and only total cretins should use it. Fine. But that doesn't excuse Apple from removing it. Microsoft still supports about a dozen brain-dead ways of doing things, like .ini files. What a double standard Apple has created for itself!

That all said, browser-based and search-based file browsing is fine for users with a lot more memory than I have. (For instance, people coming from a CLI interface where you have nothing but memory to locate things.) But for people like me, when I put a file in some location, I expect it to be in that location; my only memory for files is spatial. Human beings have developed a great sense of spatial memory in the last few million years, because that's the way the real world works: if I put down my stapler on my desk, it won't magically appear later on top of my TV. Not taking advantage of this tremendous mental resource every person, hell, every INFANT, has is stupid if you ask me. You're replacing a system that works on a subconscious level with a system that requires conscious memorization of the location and/or name of your files.

I understand that a lot of people (at least people exposed to the crummy Windows 95 "spatial" implementation and people from a DOS/Linux background) prefer a browser-based filesystem. But for all the effort it took Apple to make their pointless and moronic "psuedo-spatial" mode (which appears when you turn off the Finder toolbar), they could have put in a real spatial mode, kept the browser mode, and made everybody happy. The Apple of ten years ago, when they actually cared about UI design, would have done this. The modern Apple hasn't and won't, which is why my next computer will most likely run Windows. After all, if I can't get a feature I love with either Macintosh or Windows, I might as well run Windows which has more software.

For a feature like this, which isn't mutually exclusive with the "new" way of doing things, it's unacceptable to leave your loyal users in the dust while embracing those used to other products. There's no reason OS X can't have both a spatial mode and a browser/column mode at the same time, running in different types of windows. In fact, that exact solution has been outlined in great detail.

And honestly I'm pretty sick of people defending Apple's removal of features by saying "well those features weren't perfect." Nothing's perfect, but for version 10 of a product to have fewer features than version 9 is unacceptable, whether you're Apple or anybody else.

End rant.