They wanted an incubator for academically minded people and they called it VeloCity? Seriously? You'd have thought they'd have come up with a decent name rather than trying to combine a word for speed with a word for a large conurbation (which I doubt it is) in some jauntily capitalised construction.
The basic idea is quite good, even if it does just sound like a slightly more segregated version of "Halls of Residence" from the summary.
So, while software patents probably do need abolishing (or at the very least being converted to a proper patent that can then be implemented or described in software, rather than an algorithmic patent) I think we in the UK have a leadership that think otherwise and a populace who don't know much better and don't care unless it is in some reality TV show.
Say you visited the Wikipedia page on the Tunguska event a couple of weeks.
Or say you own a site that does skins for a computer game and it is on the subdomain "skins." and then you have a database that contains the domain in the address when you access it on both your local machine and the remote machine. Previously you get to go "sk", down, enter to get to the site. Now you get to go "ski", no, that's the database, more database matches, more database matches, nope, needs more letters, "skins.", ah, there it is, fifth down the list once I've had to type in three times more character than normal and browse a list.
I do occasionally use the new functionality to search for results, but searching is hugely inconsistent. Previously I could type "fo" and hit the three or four forums I visit most as the top results. Now I get Slashdot even with "for", which wasn't what I was looking for. Even entering "forums." mixes the results compared to previously. If I started using search (e.g. "hiveworld" for my own forums) it might work at the moment, but then if I visit my main site more than the forums then the forums will vanish for that search, and it'll be way longer and less consistent than "fo... there it is, first entry on auto-complete".
Only Oldbar doesn't fix it, it just fixes the rendering so that it isn't huge with a big long list of overly tall items over your main page.
There's actually a [url=http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=613781]reasonable long thread[/url] on Mozillazine.org of people (including myself) saying "yes, I guess it can occasionally be useful to search but it is hugely inconsistent for those of us who know what we're doing".
Or they could do it with (amongst others and just as big names I know): Google, Redhat, Novell, Canonical and dozens of other companies who are FOSS and provide paying customers with support.
It isn't just proprietary, closed-source companies who offer support.
Two different things: in one case he gets hardware with the promise that the software will run, with the latter, he buys software and disregarded the minimum system requirements.
Okay, so it was the other way around. To be a bit more accurate it is like buying a PC labelled "Crysis capable" and then trying to sue when you find "capable" means "it can run it, but without full detail, without maximum resolution, without bloom lighting effects etc". You're still capable of running it, just not with all of the flash (only in this case you didn't shell out a larger amount for the game without trying to understand what you're getting, which I don't think most of these people are doing).
Or, one I'm slightly more familiar with, it is like if Bethesda had incorporated an equivalent of the Old-blivion mod into their game so that graphics cards without the later Pixel Shader 2 technology could run it and then someone had sold "Oblivion capable" machines. An older and slower graphics would still be capable of running the Old-blivion version, but you wouldn't get all of the enhancements from the later technologies. I think some DirectX 10 stuff may be similar.
As for the car analogy, sorry, but it had to get in somewhere! I still think that there would be cars that are listed at a certain speed that wouldn't normally be possible (close, perhaps, but not exact). If you're testing a car and getting numbers for stats for it then you would (amongst other things) get optimal track conditions, ensure the car is perfectly tuned, fit the best tyres, tweak any performance that doesn't involve overhauling the engine, put in just enough of the highest grade fuel, etc. Once you've done that then you're still using the car you're selling, but in real world conditions then you need the same 'upgrades' to get what the marketing people want you to think you're getting (if you take a naive interpretation).
If they were only selling one version of Vista, where eye candy was just an option, that'd be fine
Instead they're selling half a dozen or more version of Vista where eye candy is an option - more so in some than others.
Vista Ultimate costs quite a bit more than Vista Basic.
And that doesn't hint at anything? TBH I wouldn't expect my new £50,000 sports car to run well at all on the £60 each cheap tyres I bought for my Fiat Punto.
it was a very misleading label, and should be enough for a lawsuit
Only if you take marketing at their word and assume (naively) that "capable" means "fully functional of everything" rather than taking the more normal meaning of "capable" which is "it can do it in some way". Capable has an implied undertone of "and not much more". Some of its synonyms imply more than a basic level, but I would always take capable to mean capable, not capable and exceeding the minimum.
But the important point is why did Joe Sixpack expect to run everything including all of the flashy bits? Does Joe Sixpack expect to buy any game off the shelf (including Crysis) and run it on full res with all of the effects or does he expect to have to make do with older games/lower settings? And even if he does buy it and not get full, doesn't he get effectively laughed out of the shop and told "I'm sorry sir, but it has minimum requirements listed"?
I don't know much about cars, but if I saw "150mph capable" on a Fiat Punto then I'd think "yeah, maybe on a test track but I'm never getting that in real life, I'll make do with the realistic 70mph on the motorway". Or on a plane you see "two mile altitude capable" (or something huge - I don't know flight altitudes) and you expect that you're going to need oxygen and might struggle at it (if you can ever make it) because conditions will need to be right and the marketing/testing people will have pushed it right to the edge to make it seem better.
I'm having problems with analogies here as nothing is quite the same. With software it is easy to have a core and then have additional features, but real-world equipment that I have less expertise in is more absolute.
As for Vista Ready, IIRC they came out first and the company my dad works at bought some (they develop software so they had to check how badly Vista broke it).
No, that's a problem with the customer's assumption of the version policy;) I wouldn't touch Vista anyway (my wife has it on her laptop and it is okay but not great) but if I saw "Vista capable" I would read it as "it is about capable of running Vista". If I saw "Vista Ready" then I'd read it as "it can handle more Vista or be decently quick while doing it" and if I saw "Vista Premium Ready" then I'd assume it could run Ultimate with everything.
Vista Ultimate isn't Vista. The lowest common denominator of all versions of Vista is Vista. That means Vista Home Basic is Vista, where as everything else is "Vista plus extras". Yes, the multiple versions made it worse, but then how can half a dozen or more versions ever make it better?
...hence you can't really call it "Vista Capable".
Why not? Taking the definition of capable ("Permitting an action to be performed" or "Having capacity or ability") then can your machine run Vista? No, not "can it run Vista with all the flashy bits", but can it run Vista without falling in a heap? (Excluding any normal Windows crashes but instead aiming at "will it install and run and be functional to some degree")
Okay, so it is slightly under-handed to make people expect Aero when they're going to get core Vista, but that's just marketing. I'm sure there would have been machines around the release of XP that could handle old-style window decorations but not the fancy MS themes as well (which was potentially a blessing with the XP windows) and this is the same situation - you can run the OS, your machine is capable of running the core OS, it just isn't capable of eye candy.
But it is "Vista capable", just not "Full Vista-with-all-eye-candy-features capable".
As much as I dislike Microsoft products, I can't see how they have a basis for this law suit.
Is the machine incapable of running Vista? No, just the flashy bits that aren't a requirement of the OS. Did Microsoft have a separate designation for machines that could run Vista better? Yes, it was "Premium Ready". Is Vista completely unusable because of their system specs? No (or not any more than normal).
It isn't as if they've been sold a "High Def capable TV" that only has 640x480 res, they've been sold the equivalent of a 720i/p TV - it is capable of what is classed as "High Def", just not the really high HD because it is only "capable" of some minimum requirement to be called what it is called.
As a similar situation: Am I capable of running a marathon? Probably. Would I do very good at it? No, because I'm not ready, not trained and not fit enough.
People need to get a dictionary and learn the definition of the word "capable".
I got the impression they were some US military organisation, hence the reason I didn't bother wasting my time searching for them and instead put a rhetorical "whoever they are" in there.
The BBC iPlayer lets you download content for a week or a month after it was shown on the channel, as well as letting you stream it. The iPlayer then starts a background service (which is always running) which uses P2P to distribute the files you've downloaded to others. It saves the BBC bandwidth, but it does mean it'll chew your bandwidth allowance if you use it a lot or have Windows running and don't kill the process.
Multicast would be a good idea for live broadcasts, though.
Not that I actually use any of it - my wireless and 2GB cap wouldn't cope. A co-worker found the "always running, even when iPlayer isn't" service recently, though.
And we need to retrieve some from the Vatican as well!
Looking at the information here then the Vatican has far too many IPs per capita. Ditto for the other tiny nations of Gibralta and Monaco. I'm sure it'll buy us at least a week!
And for anyone geeky enough to care (who isn't geeky enough to have it bookmarked already) here is the assignment list. Each of the companies mentioned owns an entire top level block (e.g. Ford own 19.xxx.xxx.xxx) and some like the Defense Information Systems Agency (whoever they are) own multiple blocks! That's an awful lot of addresses.
And at no point did I say that you did, only that we use them in the UK as carriage way dividing lines (specifically as a "do not cross this line to overtake as it is unsafe to do so" marking).
No, that's the difference between a "it is safe to overtake" divider on a single carriage way road or lane dividers on multi-lane stretches and a "only overtake if you're absolutely sure or it is a tractor doing 5mph" divider on a single carriage way road.
The general idea with telling the difference is that it is two-way unless it says otherwise, so your side is for you and the other side is for other people. If there are two lanes then it is normally either a dual-carriage way or you get the short gaps or solid lines on the divider. We use yellow for "do not park here" (which makes sense as everything else tends to be obvious with white lines).
Motorways and dual-carriage ways use colour, but only at night. Different colour cats eyes mean different things (central reservation, lane line, hard shoulder and slip road entry). The rest of the time we assume that you can drive and pay attention at the same time.
On topic: Sony obviously haven't learned that, since they had BetaMax, Mini Disks and something else proprietary that escapes me at the moment and yet they still went in to the HD fight with BluRay.
Off-topic: We do drive on the right (correct) side of the road, it is just those strange foreigners who insist on driving on the wrong ('right-hand') side of the road;) As for Euros, all I can say is "funny money" - it looks like you've pilfered your Monopoly game for extra cash!
See my other post for what doesn't work quite right with my ATI card. I guess there might be a difference between desktop and laptop, but most of those things aren't an issue for me. Can't say a kernel update has ever screwed up the graphics drivers on my work machine with an nVidia card, but then I use the Livna repositories for Fedora to download the RPMs for the graphics along with the kernel update.
Graphics drivers that run Compiz-Fusion and let my play DirectX games through Wine without having to do a force redirect with a key combo? Graphics drivers on a 256MB X800 that rotate the cube as smoothly as the low-end nVidia in my machine at work? Graphics drivers that run video at full-screen with Compiz-Fusion running without all the tweaking and tinkering?
Yes, the open sourcing might be useful, but nVidia works more smoothly with DirectX, Compiz-Fusion and media played through anything other than VLC (where I can easily set the output mode, although it still seems a tad sluggish at times).
Because they don't get developers to plaster things like that "en-veeee-diar" voice over the start of games?
Having said that, I use Linux so my next card probably will be an nVidia because of the better drivers. Unless ATI get better in the one/two/three years until I buy a new card.
It'll be interesting to see what they can do to really exploit this PhysX and make it worth its while, though.
Slashdot Mirror
They wanted an incubator for academically minded people and they called it VeloCity? Seriously? You'd have thought they'd have come up with a decent name rather than trying to combine a word for speed with a word for a large conurbation (which I doubt it is) in some jauntily capitalised construction.
The basic idea is quite good, even if it does just sound like a slightly more segregated version of "Halls of Residence" from the summary.
It's only a month ago that Slashdot covered the UK's decision to not reject software patents "out of hand".
So, while software patents probably do need abolishing (or at the very least being converted to a proper patent that can then be implemented or described in software, rather than an algorithmic patent) I think we in the UK have a leadership that think otherwise and a populace who don't know much better and don't care unless it is in some reality TV show.
Or say you own a site that does skins for a computer game and it is on the subdomain "skins." and then you have a database that contains the domain in the address when you access it on both your local machine and the remote machine. Previously you get to go "sk", down, enter to get to the site. Now you get to go "ski", no, that's the database, more database matches, more database matches, nope, needs more letters, "skins.", ah, there it is, fifth down the list once I've had to type in three times more character than normal and browse a list.
I do occasionally use the new functionality to search for results, but searching is hugely inconsistent. Previously I could type "fo" and hit the three or four forums I visit most as the top results. Now I get Slashdot even with "for", which wasn't what I was looking for. Even entering "forums." mixes the results compared to previously. If I started using search (e.g. "hiveworld" for my own forums) it might work at the moment, but then if I visit my main site more than the forums then the forums will vanish for that search, and it'll be way longer and less consistent than "fo
Only Oldbar doesn't fix it, it just fixes the rendering so that it isn't huge with a big long list of overly tall items over your main page.
There's actually a [url=http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=613781]reasonable long thread[/url] on Mozillazine.org of people (including myself) saying "yes, I guess it can occasionally be useful to search but it is hugely inconsistent for those of us who know what we're doing".
There are apparently several SoC changes in Pidgin (formerly Gaim)
Or they could do it with (amongst others and just as big names I know): Google, Redhat, Novell, Canonical and dozens of other companies who are FOSS and provide paying customers with support.
It isn't just proprietary, closed-source companies who offer support.
Okay, so it was the other way around. To be a bit more accurate it is like buying a PC labelled "Crysis capable" and then trying to sue when you find "capable" means "it can run it, but without full detail, without maximum resolution, without bloom lighting effects etc". You're still capable of running it, just not with all of the flash (only in this case you didn't shell out a larger amount for the game without trying to understand what you're getting, which I don't think most of these people are doing).
Or, one I'm slightly more familiar with, it is like if Bethesda had incorporated an equivalent of the Old-blivion mod into their game so that graphics cards without the later Pixel Shader 2 technology could run it and then someone had sold "Oblivion capable" machines. An older and slower graphics would still be capable of running the Old-blivion version, but you wouldn't get all of the enhancements from the later technologies. I think some DirectX 10 stuff may be similar.
As for the car analogy, sorry, but it had to get in somewhere! I still think that there would be cars that are listed at a certain speed that wouldn't normally be possible (close, perhaps, but not exact). If you're testing a car and getting numbers for stats for it then you would (amongst other things) get optimal track conditions, ensure the car is perfectly tuned, fit the best tyres, tweak any performance that doesn't involve overhauling the engine, put in just enough of the highest grade fuel, etc. Once you've done that then you're still using the car you're selling, but in real world conditions then you need the same 'upgrades' to get what the marketing people want you to think you're getting (if you take a naive interpretation).
Instead they're selling half a dozen or more version of Vista where eye candy is an option - more so in some than others.
And that doesn't hint at anything? TBH I wouldn't expect my new £50,000 sports car to run well at all on the £60 each cheap tyres I bought for my Fiat Punto.
Only if you take marketing at their word and assume (naively) that "capable" means "fully functional of everything" rather than taking the more normal meaning of "capable" which is "it can do it in some way". Capable has an implied undertone of "and not much more". Some of its synonyms imply more than a basic level, but I would always take capable to mean capable, not capable and exceeding the minimum.
But the important point is why did Joe Sixpack expect to run everything including all of the flashy bits? Does Joe Sixpack expect to buy any game off the shelf (including Crysis) and run it on full res with all of the effects or does he expect to have to make do with older games/lower settings? And even if he does buy it and not get full, doesn't he get effectively laughed out of the shop and told "I'm sorry sir, but it has minimum requirements listed"?
I don't know much about cars, but if I saw "150mph capable" on a Fiat Punto then I'd think "yeah, maybe on a test track but I'm never getting that in real life, I'll make do with the realistic 70mph on the motorway". Or on a plane you see "two mile altitude capable" (or something huge - I don't know flight altitudes) and you expect that you're going to need oxygen and might struggle at it (if you can ever make it) because conditions will need to be right and the marketing/testing people will have pushed it right to the edge to make it seem better.
I'm having problems with analogies here as nothing is quite the same. With software it is easy to have a core and then have additional features, but real-world equipment that I have less expertise in is more absolute.
As for Vista Ready, IIRC they came out first and the company my dad works at bought some (they develop software so they had to check how badly Vista broke it).
At least not that anyone saw ;)
No, that's a problem with the customer's assumption of the version policy ;) I wouldn't touch Vista anyway (my wife has it on her laptop and it is okay but not great) but if I saw "Vista capable" I would read it as "it is about capable of running Vista". If I saw "Vista Ready" then I'd read it as "it can handle more Vista or be decently quick while doing it" and if I saw "Vista Premium Ready" then I'd assume it could run Ultimate with everything.
Vista Ultimate isn't Vista. The lowest common denominator of all versions of Vista is Vista. That means Vista Home Basic is Vista, where as everything else is "Vista plus extras". Yes, the multiple versions made it worse, but then how can half a dozen or more versions ever make it better?
Why not? Taking the definition of capable ("Permitting an action to be performed" or "Having capacity or ability") then can your machine run Vista? No, not "can it run Vista with all the flashy bits", but can it run Vista without falling in a heap? (Excluding any normal Windows crashes but instead aiming at "will it install and run and be functional to some degree")
Okay, so it is slightly under-handed to make people expect Aero when they're going to get core Vista, but that's just marketing. I'm sure there would have been machines around the release of XP that could handle old-style window decorations but not the fancy MS themes as well (which was potentially a blessing with the XP windows) and this is the same situation - you can run the OS, your machine is capable of running the core OS, it just isn't capable of eye candy.
But it is "Vista capable", just not "Full Vista-with-all-eye-candy-features capable".
As much as I dislike Microsoft products, I can't see how they have a basis for this law suit.
Is the machine incapable of running Vista? No, just the flashy bits that aren't a requirement of the OS. Did Microsoft have a separate designation for machines that could run Vista better? Yes, it was "Premium Ready". Is Vista completely unusable because of their system specs? No (or not any more than normal).
It isn't as if they've been sold a "High Def capable TV" that only has 640x480 res, they've been sold the equivalent of a 720i/p TV - it is capable of what is classed as "High Def", just not the really high HD because it is only "capable" of some minimum requirement to be called what it is called.
As a similar situation: Am I capable of running a marathon? Probably. Would I do very good at it? No, because I'm not ready, not trained and not fit enough.
People need to get a dictionary and learn the definition of the word "capable".
I got the impression they were some US military organisation, hence the reason I didn't bother wasting my time searching for them and instead put a rhetorical "whoever they are" in there.
The BBC iPlayer lets you download content for a week or a month after it was shown on the channel, as well as letting you stream it. The iPlayer then starts a background service (which is always running) which uses P2P to distribute the files you've downloaded to others. It saves the BBC bandwidth, but it does mean it'll chew your bandwidth allowance if you use it a lot or have Windows running and don't kill the process.
Multicast would be a good idea for live broadcasts, though.
Not that I actually use any of it - my wireless and 2GB cap wouldn't cope. A co-worker found the "always running, even when iPlayer isn't" service recently, though.
Yeah, that is always a prettier one to show people. I like the IPv6 map they have on that page as well!
And we need to retrieve some from the Vatican as well!
Looking at the information here then the Vatican has far too many IPs per capita. Ditto for the other tiny nations of Gibralta and Monaco. I'm sure it'll buy us at least a week!
And for anyone geeky enough to care (who isn't geeky enough to have it bookmarked already) here is the assignment list. Each of the companies mentioned owns an entire top level block (e.g. Ford own 19.xxx.xxx.xxx) and some like the Defense Information Systems Agency (whoever they are) own multiple blocks! That's an awful lot of addresses.
I think you need a new quantum computer - you seem to have been beaten to that first post you claim.
And at no point did I say that you did, only that we use them in the UK as carriage way dividing lines (specifically as a "do not cross this line to overtake as it is unsafe to do so" marking).
No, that's the difference between a "it is safe to overtake" divider on a single carriage way road or lane dividers on multi-lane stretches and a "only overtake if you're absolutely sure or it is a tractor doing 5mph" divider on a single carriage way road.
The general idea with telling the difference is that it is two-way unless it says otherwise, so your side is for you and the other side is for other people. If there are two lanes then it is normally either a dual-carriage way or you get the short gaps or solid lines on the divider. We use yellow for "do not park here" (which makes sense as everything else tends to be obvious with white lines).
Motorways and dual-carriage ways use colour, but only at night. Different colour cats eyes mean different things (central reservation, lane line, hard shoulder and slip road entry). The rest of the time we assume that you can drive and pay attention at the same time.
On topic: Sony obviously haven't learned that, since they had BetaMax, Mini Disks and something else proprietary that escapes me at the moment and yet they still went in to the HD fight with BluRay.
;) As for Euros, all I can say is "funny money" - it looks like you've pilfered your Monopoly game for extra cash!
Off-topic: We do drive on the right (correct) side of the road, it is just those strange foreigners who insist on driving on the wrong ('right-hand') side of the road
See my other post for what doesn't work quite right with my ATI card. I guess there might be a difference between desktop and laptop, but most of those things aren't an issue for me. Can't say a kernel update has ever screwed up the graphics drivers on my work machine with an nVidia card, but then I use the Livna repositories for Fedora to download the RPMs for the graphics along with the kernel update.
"nVidia - the way it is meant to be" (or whatever it is).
No, the way it is meant to be is a game that I play on my computer, not an advert for a specific card manufacturer!
Graphics drivers that run Compiz-Fusion and let my play DirectX games through Wine without having to do a force redirect with a key combo? Graphics drivers on a 256MB X800 that rotate the cube as smoothly as the low-end nVidia in my machine at work? Graphics drivers that run video at full-screen with Compiz-Fusion running without all the tweaking and tinkering?
Yes, the open sourcing might be useful, but nVidia works more smoothly with DirectX, Compiz-Fusion and media played through anything other than VLC (where I can easily set the output mode, although it still seems a tad sluggish at times).
Because they don't get developers to plaster things like that "en-veeee-diar" voice over the start of games?
Having said that, I use Linux so my next card probably will be an nVidia because of the better drivers. Unless ATI get better in the one/two/three years until I buy a new card.
It'll be interesting to see what they can do to really exploit this PhysX and make it worth its while, though.