Well, for those of us interested in the development of Linux as a viable alternative to other operating systems, closed source software that comes to be considered "necessary" for general computer use means more time and resources spent on developing software against the de facto closed standards. Imagine if all those people trying to make Flash work on Linux could do something else with code that they can actually see. I dunno about you, but when I code for something, I like to know what the heck I'm working on and how it will fit in, rather than flying blindly at some goal.
They are comparing an internet standard that is not yet finalized to what is supposedly a finished product. HTML5 hasn't even settled on a video codec, so how can there even be a real comparison here? Of course HTML5 can't take advantage of GPU acceleration yet, they don't even know what they'll be accelerating yet! The only thing this article does is point out that HTML5 hasn't had the chance to implement GPU acceleration and that maybe they should consider it as part of their criteria in their codec selection process.
My point was that NONE of the relevant information can be gathered simply from examining the model name, and yes, I realize that the vast majority of the information about the processor is irrelevant to most people buying them, but the most essential information could easily replace the senseless numbers they currently use to name their processors. Number of cores, Clock-speed (whether multiplied or not) and power usage seem to be the most important information, FSB I could take or leave and socket type doesn't matter since sometimes MB's aren't compatible with procs of the appropriate socket (I ran into this when I recently built a box with a Gigabyte MB).
This happened in Tennessee. It was the step-father's gun. Also, if the kid was familiar with gun use because of Wii, shouldn't the TV be dead instead of the kid? The guy claims he heard a prowler, so why did he cock the gun unless he had actually encountered an intruder? It seems to me that either this guy was high (paranoia could easily explain the cocked gun, and the supidity necessary to put said gun within reach of the kid), or lacks the minimum IQ that should be necessary for gun ownership. Either way, something is seriously wrong in that trailer park (check the video).
This really reminds me of the recent Ask Slashdot article lamenting the naming schemes being implemented for most pieces of hardware. i7= 4 or 6 cores. Makes sense since the first thing I think when I hear 7 is "must be 4 or 6!" And the '980' really goes a long way towards confirming that initial suspicion. I'm really glad they put the 'extreme' in there, cause I was worried about the numbers being too low. Seriously though, can't they come up with a name that is actually descriptive of the product rather than a bunch of reassurances about the awesome-o amazingness of their processor? It seems to me that most people ask someone who knows something about computers when they need to buy a new one or replacement parts for their old one, and I don't know about the rest of you, but I really hate names that give me no real information about what the heck I'm buying. Yes, I can google the information, but the whole practice seems immature (and sometimes a little insulting).
We can argue 'til we're blue in the face about what the best first language to learn is, but the simple fact of the matter is that it doesn't matter as much as we want it to. Even the second language we learn doesn't really matter that much. What matters is the transition from the first to the second language, assuming they're different enough to really consider the second language a different language (I would argue that going from C to C++ is not significant enough a change to be considered as a "second language"). If it goes smoothly, you've got a capable coder on your hands. If it takes more than a few tries to write "Hello World!" in the new language, chances are you have someone destined to be befuddled by any kind of more advanced programming methods. Granted, there are several factors that go into the significance of the transition, not the leas of which is time and depth spent coding in the first language, but those are issues are part of a much bigger pedagogical discussion than this. And no, I didn't RTFA.
I recently built my own computer for similar purposes. I needed a box that would download things all day and output via HDMI to my TV, but I placed an extra constraint on my system: Linux compatibility, or at least a reasonable degree of compatibility. So, I researched available parts, using price as the first method of siphoning all the dreck. I live in China, so, for example, the processor's price ranged from a few hundred yuan (about 50 bucks) to about four thousand yuan (closer to $500). I decided not to pay more than 400 yuan for my processor, and right there, I cut out about 90% of the processors I had to research. I decided from then that I wanted a 64-bit processor and I would only look at the top 3 FSB's out of those processors, and I chose Intel because my previous experiences with Linux and AMD procs was somewhat dubious. Everything else kind of fell into place after simply choosing the proc, save for the GPU, which I chose for it's Native HDMI port, high-ish (1GB) dedicated memory and driver support in Linux. So that part was even easier.
Your situation seems a lot simpler than mine though, since you only have two constraints: Oblivion (don't know what it is) and 1080 video to a TV. Basically, what you need is any computer matching the requirements for playing Oblivion (I would go a little beyond recommended specs for running it) and with a NATIVE HDMI port. If you spend time worrying about complex names for different series of nanometer sized pieces of wire hypersolderized together, you will drown in the hopelessness that is marketing and advertizing and general rhetorical BS. Find out what specs you need to do what you want, if you're using Linux then check for compatibility issues in the forums of the distro you use or plan on using, and what you need to buy should pretty much be spelled out for you in pretty simple choices. If you're using Windows, you have a lot less to worry about since you don't really have control over those sorts of things, just take whatever has an HDMI port and enough RAM and cycles per second to run your game.
Yeah, 'cause our opinions from our childhood never change. I still think girls are icky and vegetables are my parent's conspiracy to keep me down. Lemme know next time you come to a wild, baseless conclusion.
After all, it's not all that hard to get new themes for GTK or anything, but still, Purple and Orange?
Two things are clear:
1. Heavy drug use is now too commonplace at Canonical.
2. The drugs they are currently using last long enough for them to make a press release and a couple of websites demonstrating the effects of said drugs.
The only question that remains is what are they smoking and where can I get some?
Ok, I really have to admit that I totally don't understand what the significance of solar panel efficiency actually means, so I wonder if someone can enlighten me as to what exactly it means when a solar panel is X% efficient? Any kind of "for preschoolers" explanation would be greatly appreciated, such as what "100% solar power conversion efficiency" actually would mean and how that imaginative 100% number is actually reached would also be good. Anyone up to explaining that?
I remember playing Megaman X for PC and I was pretty impressed with how well adapted it was to the keyboard. It did away with the whole 16-digit code system of "saving," and in lieu there were actual saved games. Controls were pretty easily changeable (though I used the same setup I do for SNES emus that I normally use. That being said, I've played a couple of the latter PC ports of MMX series and they were ok, though not much different from the original. So I guess I would say that Capcom had the dualism down pat.
I found a couple of websites to download some Public Domain/Creative Commons books, only one of which really ended up appealing to me. I realize that sounds like a pretty trite struggle, but I assure that it was significant for me because Gutenberg Project is blocked in good ol' China, so I had to find an alternative source, namely Manybooks.net. After that, the struggle turned to finding a decent and preferably GENUINE eReader that actually uses eInk/ePaper or whatever you want to call it that was cheap enough for me. I don't believe that these devices should have bluetooth or wifi or all that fancy battery eating crap because I want to use the damned thing to read! If I want all that other crap, I use my phone or netbook which are both perfectly portable, have all those capabilities and have decent batterylife to boot, the netbook even has a built-in card reader, so I have no need for connecting my device to my computer when I can just plop the card in there. So, I ended up buying a Chinese brand, Teclast ( to us here), which just last month started selling its eReader named "K3" ( http://www.teclast.com/zhuanti/tl-k3/ ). Apologies for the link to the Chinese website, but it's all they have for the moment. At any rate, I got it for a number of reasons: it doesn't have wifi or bluetooth, it reads most file formats I could possibly want to use with it (mainly epub) and it was about half the price of any other eReader I could find here. Now, from what I've heard the US price will be about $220, which is not exactly cheap, but I can tell you that if you can make it to China, you can get it for about 1250RMB, which is roughly $170.
The long and the short of it is I want an eReader to read books. Other functions, to me, are somewhat useless on these devices, especially the ones that drain the battery faster.
In a surprise move, Microsoft announced today that more innovation actually means less compatibility. More on this at 11. In other news, the South Pole will now be referred to as the North Pole and East will become West. No word from Santa yet on how this will affect next year's operations.
Yeah, logic is not a tool that is any way applicable to laws. The first thing they teach you (or should teach you) in law school is that if you want to be taken seriously in this field, you should never say anything that anyone can actually understand or come close to making sense of, otherwise, you will find yourself out of a job as there's nothing to argue about.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't that make any kind of internet based application a form of virtual reality? Are we not participating in such a phenomenon already? I mean, I sign on to Skype or AIM or IRC or whatever and I'm participating in a world that is, for most intents and purposes, a programmed world that is reasonably separated from what is traditionally considered reality? I don't have to be the person I am in reality when I sign on to the internet, I am capable of participating in a community that is just as capable of fictionalizing themselves as I am. So, I welcome you to the VR world we have programmed that is named Slashdot (/.), and I hope you enjoy your stay.
No, the real monster in the closet here is that the savings are still tied to buying a 2 year contract. So the phone is unlocked, but you're still stuck with crummy cell phone contracts in order to avoid dumping a bunch of money into the phone, which is what the contract will cause you to do in the long run. This is just sleight of hand taken to a new level.
Seriously, I never understood the whole "you have to spend money to save money" mentality that so many people have. When you spend money that you don't need to spend, that's a loss in my book, even if the discount is 99%. But hey, kudos to the guy for pointing out that you don't need to be tied to the service if you're going to buy the phone anyways, you may as well get the unlocked version and do some crazy custom modding, which will cost you more time, and arguably more money.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, for those of us interested in the development of Linux as a viable alternative to other operating systems, closed source software that comes to be considered "necessary" for general computer use means more time and resources spent on developing software against the de facto closed standards. Imagine if all those people trying to make Flash work on Linux could do something else with code that they can actually see. I dunno about you, but when I code for something, I like to know what the heck I'm working on and how it will fit in, rather than flying blindly at some goal.
They are comparing an internet standard that is not yet finalized to what is supposedly a finished product. HTML5 hasn't even settled on a video codec, so how can there even be a real comparison here? Of course HTML5 can't take advantage of GPU acceleration yet, they don't even know what they'll be accelerating yet! The only thing this article does is point out that HTML5 hasn't had the chance to implement GPU acceleration and that maybe they should consider it as part of their criteria in their codec selection process.
That my overt gassiness is in the best interests of future generations. That'll teach my girlfriend to complain about it!
My point was that NONE of the relevant information can be gathered simply from examining the model name, and yes, I realize that the vast majority of the information about the processor is irrelevant to most people buying them, but the most essential information could easily replace the senseless numbers they currently use to name their processors. Number of cores, Clock-speed (whether multiplied or not) and power usage seem to be the most important information, FSB I could take or leave and socket type doesn't matter since sometimes MB's aren't compatible with procs of the appropriate socket (I ran into this when I recently built a box with a Gigabyte MB).
This happened in Tennessee. It was the step-father's gun. Also, if the kid was familiar with gun use because of Wii, shouldn't the TV be dead instead of the kid? The guy claims he heard a prowler, so why did he cock the gun unless he had actually encountered an intruder? It seems to me that either this guy was high (paranoia could easily explain the cocked gun, and the supidity necessary to put said gun within reach of the kid), or lacks the minimum IQ that should be necessary for gun ownership. Either way, something is seriously wrong in that trailer park (check the video).
This really reminds me of the recent Ask Slashdot article lamenting the naming schemes being implemented for most pieces of hardware. i7= 4 or 6 cores. Makes sense since the first thing I think when I hear 7 is "must be 4 or 6!" And the '980' really goes a long way towards confirming that initial suspicion. I'm really glad they put the 'extreme' in there, cause I was worried about the numbers being too low. Seriously though, can't they come up with a name that is actually descriptive of the product rather than a bunch of reassurances about the awesome-o amazingness of their processor? It seems to me that most people ask someone who knows something about computers when they need to buy a new one or replacement parts for their old one, and I don't know about the rest of you, but I really hate names that give me no real information about what the heck I'm buying. Yes, I can google the information, but the whole practice seems immature (and sometimes a little insulting).
We can argue 'til we're blue in the face about what the best first language to learn is, but the simple fact of the matter is that it doesn't matter as much as we want it to. Even the second language we learn doesn't really matter that much. What matters is the transition from the first to the second language, assuming they're different enough to really consider the second language a different language (I would argue that going from C to C++ is not significant enough a change to be considered as a "second language"). If it goes smoothly, you've got a capable coder on your hands. If it takes more than a few tries to write "Hello World!" in the new language, chances are you have someone destined to be befuddled by any kind of more advanced programming methods. Granted, there are several factors that go into the significance of the transition, not the leas of which is time and depth spent coding in the first language, but those are issues are part of a much bigger pedagogical discussion than this. And no, I didn't RTFA.
I recently built my own computer for similar purposes. I needed a box that would download things all day and output via HDMI to my TV, but I placed an extra constraint on my system: Linux compatibility, or at least a reasonable degree of compatibility. So, I researched available parts, using price as the first method of siphoning all the dreck. I live in China, so, for example, the processor's price ranged from a few hundred yuan (about 50 bucks) to about four thousand yuan (closer to $500). I decided not to pay more than 400 yuan for my processor, and right there, I cut out about 90% of the processors I had to research. I decided from then that I wanted a 64-bit processor and I would only look at the top 3 FSB's out of those processors, and I chose Intel because my previous experiences with Linux and AMD procs was somewhat dubious. Everything else kind of fell into place after simply choosing the proc, save for the GPU, which I chose for it's Native HDMI port, high-ish (1GB) dedicated memory and driver support in Linux. So that part was even easier.
Your situation seems a lot simpler than mine though, since you only have two constraints: Oblivion (don't know what it is) and 1080 video to a TV. Basically, what you need is any computer matching the requirements for playing Oblivion (I would go a little beyond recommended specs for running it) and with a NATIVE HDMI port. If you spend time worrying about complex names for different series of nanometer sized pieces of wire hypersolderized together, you will drown in the hopelessness that is marketing and advertizing and general rhetorical BS. Find out what specs you need to do what you want, if you're using Linux then check for compatibility issues in the forums of the distro you use or plan on using, and what you need to buy should pretty much be spelled out for you in pretty simple choices. If you're using Windows, you have a lot less to worry about since you don't really have control over those sorts of things, just take whatever has an HDMI port and enough RAM and cycles per second to run your game.
Maybe I'm not up on my vocab as of late, but since when does the phrase "Theoretical Breakthrough" make any kind of sense?
Yeah, 'cause our opinions from our childhood never change. I still think girls are icky and vegetables are my parent's conspiracy to keep me down. Lemme know next time you come to a wild, baseless conclusion.
After all, it's not all that hard to get new themes for GTK or anything, but still, Purple and Orange?
Two things are clear:
1. Heavy drug use is now too commonplace at Canonical.
2. The drugs they are currently using last long enough for them to make a press release and a couple of websites demonstrating the effects of said drugs.
The only question that remains is what are they smoking and where can I get some?
Land of the free* prosecution. *As in speech, not beer.
Ok, I really have to admit that I totally don't understand what the significance of solar panel efficiency actually means, so I wonder if someone can enlighten me as to what exactly it means when a solar panel is X% efficient? Any kind of "for preschoolers" explanation would be greatly appreciated, such as what "100% solar power conversion efficiency" actually would mean and how that imaginative 100% number is actually reached would also be good. Anyone up to explaining that?
I remember playing Megaman X for PC and I was pretty impressed with how well adapted it was to the keyboard. It did away with the whole 16-digit code system of "saving," and in lieu there were actual saved games. Controls were pretty easily changeable (though I used the same setup I do for SNES emus that I normally use. That being said, I've played a couple of the latter PC ports of MMX series and they were ok, though not much different from the original. So I guess I would say that Capcom had the dualism down pat.
I found a couple of websites to download some Public Domain/Creative Commons books, only one of which really ended up appealing to me. I realize that sounds like a pretty trite struggle, but I assure that it was significant for me because Gutenberg Project is blocked in good ol' China, so I had to find an alternative source, namely Manybooks.net. After that, the struggle turned to finding a decent and preferably GENUINE eReader that actually uses eInk/ePaper or whatever you want to call it that was cheap enough for me. I don't believe that these devices should have bluetooth or wifi or all that fancy battery eating crap because I want to use the damned thing to read! If I want all that other crap, I use my phone or netbook which are both perfectly portable, have all those capabilities and have decent batterylife to boot, the netbook even has a built-in card reader, so I have no need for connecting my device to my computer when I can just plop the card in there. So, I ended up buying a Chinese brand, Teclast ( to us here), which just last month started selling its eReader named "K3" ( http://www.teclast.com/zhuanti/tl-k3/ ). Apologies for the link to the Chinese website, but it's all they have for the moment. At any rate, I got it for a number of reasons: it doesn't have wifi or bluetooth, it reads most file formats I could possibly want to use with it (mainly epub) and it was about half the price of any other eReader I could find here. Now, from what I've heard the US price will be about $220, which is not exactly cheap, but I can tell you that if you can make it to China, you can get it for about 1250RMB, which is roughly $170. The long and the short of it is I want an eReader to read books. Other functions, to me, are somewhat useless on these devices, especially the ones that drain the battery faster.
...what they're trying to say is they're increasing their police force? Or are these robots not standard-issue Englishmen?
Are you referring to the US, to China or to both? Or the infamous third man that nobody sees until the last reel?
... everyone knows who did it. It was the CaoNiMa, or the grass-mud horses as you may know them. I really hate those mother f@#$%&s.
In a surprise move, Microsoft announced today that more innovation actually means less compatibility. More on this at 11. In other news, the South Pole will now be referred to as the North Pole and East will become West. No word from Santa yet on how this will affect next year's operations.
That would depend on whether or not I'm currently employed as a stripper. Speculate at your own will.
Yeah, logic is not a tool that is any way applicable to laws. The first thing they teach you (or should teach you) in law school is that if you want to be taken seriously in this field, you should never say anything that anyone can actually understand or come close to making sense of, otherwise, you will find yourself out of a job as there's nothing to argue about.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't that make any kind of internet based application a form of virtual reality? Are we not participating in such a phenomenon already? I mean, I sign on to Skype or AIM or IRC or whatever and I'm participating in a world that is, for most intents and purposes, a programmed world that is reasonably separated from what is traditionally considered reality? I don't have to be the person I am in reality when I sign on to the internet, I am capable of participating in a community that is just as capable of fictionalizing themselves as I am. So, I welcome you to the VR world we have programmed that is named Slashdot (/.), and I hope you enjoy your stay.
No, the real monster in the closet here is that the savings are still tied to buying a 2 year contract. So the phone is unlocked, but you're still stuck with crummy cell phone contracts in order to avoid dumping a bunch of money into the phone, which is what the contract will cause you to do in the long run. This is just sleight of hand taken to a new level.
Seriously, I never understood the whole "you have to spend money to save money" mentality that so many people have. When you spend money that you don't need to spend, that's a loss in my book, even if the discount is 99%. But hey, kudos to the guy for pointing out that you don't need to be tied to the service if you're going to buy the phone anyways, you may as well get the unlocked version and do some crazy custom modding, which will cost you more time, and arguably more money.
... if they will sell the pieces of flaming wreckage on eBay as one item or several. My money's on several.