- idiot! why would I buy anything I can download for free
- doh! they'll return it when they realise that Windows SW does not work
- how can you sell something when it is given away freely?
They can sell it for as much as they want as long as they preserve the license - they are only selling the CD manufacturing and packaging as a service.
Ans I think this has all been a little unsupportive.
Frankly I support any and all efforts to make Linux more widespread, and a great many people will feel happier with a pressed CD instead of a cheapo burnt one. Yes we can download it, but we are NOT the target audience here.
And, to be honest, I'm just happy enough that it is now considered possible to sell it in best buy - that would of been unthinkable a few years ago.
If this caters for a new audience, or gets even a few thousand more people using it - then fair play to them.
good. sounds like a sensible engineering decision.
on the basis that..
the design is well known, understood and has had rigorous testing in the field
they will no doubt fix any understood errors firstlimits the RnD to the multicore section
as long as the chip performs well for the silicon overhead then they should feel free to cram as many in as they want.
I just thought of a few more
- a tinnitus emulator
- playing a barking dog at a cat to freak it
- play a common mobile phone noise at a crowd, see who reaches for their pocket
- or more disturbing, play the sound of a woman screaming
- play a dog barking at a horse race to fix the finals
really I think we are scratching the surface here, this is one deeply unethical product.
who can think of some more?
imagine playing Cliff Richard to you victim incessantly. unable to sleep. unable to get away from it. all you need is somebody to point this thing at his head.
imagine doing it at just enough of a low level so he is not aware of it.
imagine jururs being threatened at long range. imagine blackmail from a distance.
what if an unverifiable, untraceable voice announces in your ear "rob the bank or I shoot your wife", what would you do?
Seems that for a company that makes its living from the net deciding to piss off web masters, website and (in the end) users is one slightly strange business tactic. In this field people have long memories and this stink will hand around.
What if all the websites decided to post up a warning like "Hello Visitor, we detect that you are using AVG - were you aware that this program is known to cause problems like this, and this and that you can find freeware with almost all the same functionality here, here and here".
Of course AVG could simply attempt to block that kind of traffic, but they are treading on thin ice here. If the net community as a whole decided it would be better off without such crummy tactics I'd bet there are numerous ways they could hurt AVG for this.
First off, my compliments - that post on this site must of taken guts and flame proof underpants.
Secondly a job is dictated by two things - qualifications and experience. You have no experience having just graduated and your qualifications are not specifically in the vocation that you want. So I fear you might need to spend some time getting relevant experience. It can be done, I did it the other way around - moved into embedded firmware from construction then later on got my qualifications in software. But my first few jobs were lowing paying bottom of the barrel for a year to get experience to open the door to better jobs.
There is no reason why anybody should not be able to download and print copyright free works from 150 years ago, I do - and I am very grateful indeed for the opportunity. Quite apart from that this is a matter of principle - to fight the insidious attempts by labels and corporations to extend copyright and hence earn money even after the original artist is sadly no longer with us.
Now, if only my piano skills were more up to some of the music. Sigh.
whats up with the video? seemed more like a slide show to me.
Anyhow. I like the concept - I have long been advocating this kind of thing.
But why stop with a eReader? Make a standard tile module with a touch sensitive tactile screen and the skys the limit. four make a monitor, 64 make a tv, 128 make a wall screen. two make a laptop. one makes an eReader. 40 make a beowolf cluster for number crunching.
make options like a keyboard only to lower cost. or a processing one with extra ram and more grunt and no screen. maybe a half size one for a pda.
use a common API, common interface and I guarantee that lots of smart people will think of many amazing uses for them.
is a lack of foresight making people think small, or are people listening too much to busiess concerns?
my first thought was a black jumper, black glove, bright, UV dots at key joints and fingers with four of those webcams and some clever software, and hey presto - instant real time telemetry system.
hook it up to a remote arm and you have one nifty method of control. (seen the movie FX2?)
"I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion! I want every man, woman and child to understand how close we are to chaos! I want everyone to remember why they need us!"
I have a nasty thought that "on hold" is ISO speak for "waiting for the fuss to die down".
But I really hope that there has been enough of a back lash from the knowledgeable and enough of a crammed education on why this matters that this is now too high a profile for it to be swept under the rug.
Of course the downside of this whole fiasco is that there are now many, many more OOXML implementations out there and planned so this is hardly a complete bust for MS.
Still here's hoping that common sense prevails, and a bug grateful thank you for all those people who fought it.
I sick of hearing that X technology is more efficient then Y and there are merits to Z technology - I want a vehicle with X, Y and Z technology. Combine them all and make something decent.
Yes a light car will be mashed by a truck or SUV - but I think you'll find in the vast majority of cases it will make sod all difference and in any case SUVs are a dying breed. Ken Livingstone coined the phrase "chelsea tractors" for Londoners who collected their offspring from school in vast 4x4 vehicles.
Private cars will never be a substitute for a decent, affordable mass transit system. My preferred future has public transpot the norm with shared cars available on demand for subscribers (think the ZipCar model) for when a train is inconvenient.
I have even arranged it that the two desks are arranged so that if I am studying/reading my back is to the other desk where my computer is just to stop me being distracted by it.
As another useful tidbit of information when I was revising for my last degree I used to listen to a radio detuned to static, this gentle hiss in the ears was amazingly good at cutting out all distraction and somehow I always managed to concentrate more when doing this.
I find it harder and harder to work/study now - not that I cannot find the time, its just that there are too many other distractions when I do so.
..a train between two holiday resorts during a time when people have no money to spend on holidays is all kinds of pointless.
Not at all, if it proves the technology. Ensures people are happy to use it - and paves the may for a cheap, fast, and effective mass transit to try and tempt people away from cars.
I bet the big automotive/oil firms are watching this like a hawk.
After all, who wants to drive between the cities when you can do it in a fraction of the time, cost, and in air conditioned comfort whilst reading papers, sipping tea, and chomping biscuits.
Many times in the UK I have wished we could reverse Beechings Axe.
Even more with the massive fuel price increase we have had here in the UK. The long term solution is to change demographics (get people living closer to work) and to ensure a cheap and viable mass transit alternative.
At the same time, the company expects that the price differential of Linux will make the offering attractive for consumers at the low-cost end of the market.
"Microsoft's operating system typically costs around £50 per unit," said David Drummond, UK managing director at Acer. "On a £1,000 PC that is peanuts, but on a £200 computer it is a major issue."
that is until MS reduces the price of windows (OPLC) send in the big guns (Ballmer, Gates) or tries a underhand tactic like target the large corporate buyers. with a sack full of cash and a lot to use expect them to utilise every dirty drink in the book.
though, on balance, I think the winds are turning on this issue, and frankly - its about bloody time.
disclaimer? me & linux - eight years and counting.
Lets imagine you can upload your mind into a machine.
It will not be you. It will be a copy. You will still be the one that dies afterwards.
It would be you if a progressive upgrade path could be found from biochemical to mechanical/electrical system.
The copy however will believe that he is is you as he will have no memory of his existence after the "transfer" unlike poor flesh you in the xerox machine.
Who has legal rights until/after fleshy death?
Even then the copy will be subject to mechanical breakdowns, loss of sensation, and other issues interacting with the real world.
Would they want to interact with normal world? Would they prefer a virtual world?
As a society I feel that we are nowhere near ready for such questions, and in any case I strongly suspect individual sanity would not survive transfer.
For a good fictional account of this (there are many) I still hold the Gateway books by Frederick Pohl - and the death of Robinette Broadhead and the society of electronic people stored after death.
In the book, to interact with us really slow and boring humans he creates an electronic avatar and animates it whilst having a fun time in virtual fantasy world, checking on it every while to see if anything interesting has been said and instructing it on what to say next.
I was sitting here the other week thinking to my self that I was glad that the scientific community was doing all it could to advance our lifespans, save the bananas and the bees, fix the climate and make the Earth a better place.
Now I find that they are making dancing robots. Dancing fucking robots. Bloody hell, what a simply splendid use of their budget that is.
Please tell me that this will, in some small fashion, benefit mankind as a whole or I might have to be rather depressed.
It would of been fascinating to see them try and skin, roast and eat the helicopter after they brought it down. That would be the mother of all cooking fires.
I think that as long as it's true to the spirit of the comic book, and as long as - in broad strokes - it follows the plot and the characterisations...I don't think you can ask for every individual detail to be replicated.
hear hear.
Watchmen is a classic. It is my favorite classic. I still get it down and read it every now and then and it still makes me shiver.
My instinctive reaction to the film is "Noooooo!", but on reflection I then think of the "V for Vendetta" movie and I remember that it is possible to make a damn good film out of a graphic novel without following it exactly. I know "Sin City" is more or less a scene for scene clone of the book, likewise "300" - but it does not have to be like that. Vendetta showed us that.
At least he did not create a script that automatically rounded every payment up to the nearest... oh wait...
Even if he gets a fine, he can always apply to pay off the debt in small payments - say a few cents every time...
Reminds me of a debt my father picked up from a school my sister attended for less then a week. They charged him for a whole year. Not to be deterred he promptly paid them half the amount they invoiced him for. Months later and six angry letters later he paid them half of the sum they asked for. Months later.. ah well, I am sure you can see the pattern here. Fast forward 14 years and they finally wrote of the rest of his debt (I think 1GPB) as a good will gesture (and I am reliably informed he is legend in the schools finance department). I have no idea how much the administration cost to school at the end of it, but it all seemed good natured enough.
Slashdot Mirror
as predicted the break down of posts so far is
- idiot! why would I buy anything I can download for free
- doh! they'll return it when they realise that Windows SW does not work
- how can you sell something when it is given away freely?
They can sell it for as much as they want as long as they preserve the license - they are only selling the CD manufacturing and packaging as a service.
Ans I think this has all been a little unsupportive.
Frankly I support any and all efforts to make Linux more widespread, and a great many people will feel happier with a pressed CD instead of a cheapo burnt one. Yes we can download it, but we are NOT the target audience here.
And, to be honest, I'm just happy enough that it is now considered possible to sell it in best buy - that would of been unthinkable a few years ago.
If this caters for a new audience, or gets even a few thousand more people using it - then fair play to them.
good. sounds like a sensible engineering decision.
on the basis that..
the design is well known, understood and has had rigorous testing in the field
they will no doubt fix any understood errors firstlimits the RnD to the multicore section
as long as the chip performs well for the silicon overhead then they should feel free to cram as many in as they want.
seems perfectly sensible to me.
I just thought of a few more - a tinnitus emulator - playing a barking dog at a cat to freak it - play a common mobile phone noise at a crowd, see who reaches for their pocket - or more disturbing, play the sound of a woman screaming - play a dog barking at a horse race to fix the finals really I think we are scratching the surface here, this is one deeply unethical product. who can think of some more?
remote torture anybody?
imagine playing Cliff Richard to you victim incessantly. unable to sleep. unable to get away from it. all you need is somebody to point this thing at his head.
imagine doing it at just enough of a low level so he is not aware of it.
imagine jururs being threatened at long range. imagine blackmail from a distance.
what if an unverifiable, untraceable voice announces in your ear "rob the bank or I shoot your wife", what would you do?
this is damn scary, where is my magneto helmet?
Seems that for a company that makes its living from the net deciding to piss off web masters, website and (in the end) users is one slightly strange business tactic. In this field people have long memories and this stink will hand around.
What if all the websites decided to post up a warning like "Hello Visitor, we detect that you are using AVG - were you aware that this program is known to cause problems like this, and this and that you can find freeware with almost all the same functionality here, here and here".
Of course AVG could simply attempt to block that kind of traffic, but they are treading on thin ice here. If the net community as a whole decided it would be better off without such crummy tactics I'd bet there are numerous ways they could hurt AVG for this.
hmmm, thats a nasty precedent.
First off, my compliments - that post on this site must of taken guts and flame proof underpants.
Secondly a job is dictated by two things - qualifications and experience. You have no experience having just graduated and your qualifications are not specifically in the vocation that you want. So I fear you might need to spend some time getting relevant experience. It can be done, I did it the other way around - moved into embedded firmware from construction then later on got my qualifications in software. But my first few jobs were lowing paying bottom of the barrel for a year to get experience to open the door to better jobs.
Fantastic.
I, for one, would like to thank and congratulate.
There is no reason why anybody should not be able to download and print copyright free works from 150 years ago, I do - and I am very grateful indeed for the opportunity. Quite apart from that this is a matter of principle - to fight the insidious attempts by labels and corporations to extend copyright and hence earn money even after the original artist is sadly no longer with us.
Now, if only my piano skills were more up to some of the music. Sigh.
Really?
..this is what you get in a society when everybody believes that they deserve everything and yet everybody is unwilling to do any hard work.
I would of phrased that another way.
whats up with the video? seemed more like a slide show to me.
Anyhow. I like the concept - I have long been advocating this kind of thing.
But why stop with a eReader? Make a standard tile module with a touch sensitive tactile screen and the skys the limit. four make a monitor, 64 make a tv, 128 make a wall screen. two make a laptop. one makes an eReader. 40 make a beowolf cluster for number crunching.
make options like a keyboard only to lower cost. or a processing one with extra ram and more grunt and no screen. maybe a half size one for a pda.
use a common API, common interface and I guarantee that lots of smart people will think of many amazing uses for them.
is a lack of foresight making people think small, or are people listening too much to busiess concerns?
don't be silly it was privacy or fighting terrorism.
..and thus the steady erosion marches on...
after all, who wants privacy if you cannot be safe to enjoy it?
interesting.
my first thought was a black jumper, black glove, bright, UV dots at key joints and fingers with four of those webcams and some clever software, and hey presto - instant real time telemetry system.
hook it up to a remote arm and you have one nifty method of control. (seen the movie FX2?)
hehehehehe,
I'm so glad I live in the UK! Oh wait....
"I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion! I want every man, woman and child to understand how close we are to chaos! I want everyone to remember why they need us!"
I have a nasty thought that "on hold" is ISO speak for "waiting for the fuss to die down".
But I really hope that there has been enough of a back lash from the knowledgeable and enough of a crammed education on why this matters that this is now too high a profile for it to be swept under the rug.
Of course the downside of this whole fiasco is that there are now many, many more OOXML implementations out there and planned so this is hardly a complete bust for MS.
Still here's hoping that common sense prevails, and a bug grateful thank you for all those people who fought it.
I sick of hearing that X technology is more efficient then Y and there are merits to Z technology - I want a vehicle with X, Y and Z technology. Combine them all and make something decent.
Yes a light car will be mashed by a truck or SUV - but I think you'll find in the vast majority of cases it will make sod all difference and in any case SUVs are a dying breed. Ken Livingstone coined the phrase "chelsea tractors" for Londoners who collected their offspring from school in vast 4x4 vehicles.
Private cars will never be a substitute for a decent, affordable mass transit system. My preferred future has public transpot the norm with shared cars available on demand for subscribers (think the ZipCar model) for when a train is inconvenient.
http://www.zipcar.com/
And yes, I know I am in fantasy land here.
I think there is some truth to this.
My office is my shed/refuge from everything.
I have even arranged it that the two desks are arranged so that if I am studying/reading my back is to the other desk where my computer is just to stop me being distracted by it.
As another useful tidbit of information when I was revising for my last degree I used to listen to a radio detuned to static, this gentle hiss in the ears was amazingly good at cutting out all distraction and somehow I always managed to concentrate more when doing this.
I find it harder and harder to work/study now - not that I cannot find the time, its just that there are too many other distractions when I do so.
..a train between two holiday resorts during a time when people have no money to spend on holidays is all kinds of pointless.Not at all, if it proves the technology. Ensures people are happy to use it - and paves the may for a cheap, fast, and effective mass transit to try and tempt people away from cars.
I bet the big automotive/oil firms are watching this like a hawk.
After all, who wants to drive between the cities when you can do it in a fraction of the time, cost, and in air conditioned comfort whilst reading papers, sipping tea, and chomping biscuits.
Many times in the UK I have wished we could reverse Beechings Axe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_Axe
Even more with the massive fuel price increase we have had here in the UK. The long term solution is to change demographics (get people living closer to work) and to ensure a cheap and viable mass transit alternative.
err no. I meant trick.
... don't type when you are thirsty or you *will* fall prey to a Freudian Slip.
they thing here, I mean the lesson you have to learn, is
strange that you were the only one to notice - or maybe they were too polite to comment?
"Microsoft's operating system typically costs around £50 per unit," said David Drummond, UK managing director at Acer. "On a £1,000 PC that is peanuts, but on a £200 computer it is a major issue."
that is until MS reduces the price of windows (OPLC) send in the big guns (Ballmer, Gates) or tries a underhand tactic like target the large corporate buyers. with a sack full of cash and a lot to use expect them to utilise every dirty drink in the book.
though, on balance, I think the winds are turning on this issue, and frankly - its about bloody time.
disclaimer? me & linux - eight years and counting.
Lets imagine you can upload your mind into a machine.
It will not be you. It will be a copy. You will still be the one that dies afterwards.
It would be you if a progressive upgrade path could be found from biochemical to mechanical/electrical system.
The copy however will believe that he is is you as he will have no memory of his existence after the "transfer" unlike poor flesh you in the xerox machine.
Who has legal rights until/after fleshy death?
Even then the copy will be subject to mechanical breakdowns, loss of sensation, and other issues interacting with the real world.
Would they want to interact with normal world? Would they prefer a virtual world?
As a society I feel that we are nowhere near ready for such questions, and in any case I strongly suspect individual sanity would not survive transfer.
For a good fictional account of this (there are many) I still hold the Gateway books by Frederick Pohl - and the death of Robinette Broadhead and the society of electronic people stored after death.
In the book, to interact with us really slow and boring humans he creates an electronic avatar and animates it whilst having a fun time in virtual fantasy world, checking on it every while to see if anything interesting has been said and instructing it on what to say next.
Of course if they straightened it totally it would be worse, because the top leans the other way slightly as the builders attempted to compensate.
Fuck me.
I was sitting here the other week thinking to my self that I was glad that the scientific community was doing all it could to advance our lifespans, save the bananas and the bees, fix the climate and make the Earth a better place.
Now I find that they are making dancing robots. Dancing fucking robots. Bloody hell, what a simply splendid use of their budget that is.
Please tell me that this will, in some small fashion, benefit mankind as a whole or I might have to be rather depressed.
Hrrrmph.
It would of been fascinating to see them try and skin, roast and eat the helicopter after they brought it down. That would be the mother of all cooking fires.
hear hear.
Watchmen is a classic. It is my favorite classic. I still get it down and read it every now and then and it still makes me shiver.
My instinctive reaction to the film is "Noooooo!", but on reflection I then think of the "V for Vendetta" movie and I remember that it is possible to make a damn good film out of a graphic novel without following it exactly. I know "Sin City" is more or less a scene for scene clone of the book, likewise "300" - but it does not have to be like that. Vendetta showed us that.
At least he did not create a script that automatically rounded every payment up to the nearest... oh wait...
Even if he gets a fine, he can always apply to pay off the debt in small payments - say a few cents every time...
Reminds me of a debt my father picked up from a school my sister attended for less then a week. They charged him for a whole year. Not to be deterred he promptly paid them half the amount they invoiced him for. Months later and six angry letters later he paid them half of the sum they asked for. Months later.. ah well, I am sure you can see the pattern here. Fast forward 14 years and they finally wrote of the rest of his debt (I think 1GPB) as a good will gesture (and I am reliably informed he is legend in the schools finance department). I have no idea how much the administration cost to school at the end of it, but it all seemed good natured enough.