The 17" machine is wide enought to fit a full-sized keyboard, but it still comes with the same cramped minature one as the 12" machine has. I'd be far more likely to buy one if Apple fixed this.
So, we have two purported 'reviews' that manage to reveal a grand total of NO NEW FACTS WHATSOEVER about the film, everything they say can be guessed from the cast list stills that are available on the official site. All the opinions stated (and let's not forget these reviews disagree about the film's merits - handy since it means that one is bound to be right about the quality of the film) read like opinions on the actors previous work.
Here's the 3 things I'd most like to know about the movie: 1) How does the major new character played by John Malkovich fit in? 2) What is the trick used to avoid seeing Zaphod's other head? 3) How much of the '5 book trilogy' does the movie cover?
Guess what... these 'reviews' don't mention anything at all about these issues, presumably because the reviewers made the whole thing up and haven't even seen the latest cast announcements (Bill Bailey as the voice of the whale, and Stephen Fry as the voice of the Guide), let alone a rough cut of the finished article.
I think it's worth pointing out that that would be a publishing copyright, not a recording copyright, and the case being discussed here is a recording copyright one.
It's the difference between using the same notes that Mozart used, and sampling the actual sound of the berlin symphony orchestra playing that pices of music. Mozart's copyright on the sequence of notes has expired, but the copyright on that particualr recording has not.
In this case, the piece of music was so trivial (a single 3 note chord) that it doesn't qualify for a publishing copyright (and if it did, there would be a million historical uses to go back to) but the plaintiff claims that the manner of playing them and the recording was distinctive enough to be covered by copyright law.
The court doesn't seem to have taken into account that a line has to be drawn somewhere - otherwise the copyight holder of the very first audio CD could sue over every other CD, since every other CD undoubtedly contains one or two 16-bit numbers (or sequences thereof) that the first one used.
The slower MacMini configured with the larger hard drive and the DVD writer costs $649, and includes iMove and iDVD.
Compare this to the price of: a DVD writer a firewire card an 80Gb drive movie editing software DVD authoring software
Use your exisiting mouse, keyboard and screen (consider the belkin KVM switch if you'll be giving it heavy use).
Once you factor in the knowledge that you'll have a tried and tested set-up, good software, no driver issues, a shallow learning curve, and just 1 small desirable multi-purpose box on your desk rather than 3 or 4 specialist ones, then it makes a lot of sense to think of the MacMini as a video editing box in addition to your Linux machine, the fact that it has it's own CPU and OS rather than inhabiting the same beige shell isn't really that relevant.
You don't actually NEED a converter, you can just use a mini-DV camcorder with inputs to do the same job. Doing this does mean that you have to bounce your video to mini-DV in real time, then play it into the computer in real time, so it makes the process slower, but if you are not planning on doing it very often, it will probably make sense to save the money and spend it on more drive space.
That's because the artictecture is (supposedly) a PowerPC core plus 8 APUs. If this is true, the necessary re-writes would be no more complex than they were the last time Apple bolted on some vector bits to the PowerPC, with Alti-Vec (just a hell of a lot more powerful).
Assuming they don't need to offer PSPs on sale or return, then Sony probably has sold 800k units to shops. It's the shops that may (or may not) have sold them on to consumers yet.
In an embedded system, it's not such a big issue if you have to GPL your code, since it won't be any use without the hardware you are embedding it in. Unique hardware is effectively a 'dongle' for Linux, in this case.
Things I want to know before I decide to buy one of these - does anyone have answers?
1) Is it fanless? 2) Are the 'dealer fit only' options (ram, bluetooth, airport) actually difficult to fit yourself? 3) What's things thing's performance like when used as a Logic Audio Node? 4) Any reports from people using the Belkin KVM switcher that Apple is selling?
I'd like to see the first window much quicker when I run the app - this is where a lot of users will percieve the 'speed' of the browser. How about cacheing a run length encoded copy of a blank window and putting that on screen first, before loading everything else up. The actual back end doesn't need to be ready until I've finished typing a url and hit enter, but if I could start typing it earlier, Mozilla would feel faster.
I'd also like adblock/flashblock installed by default, with a nice strong set of predefined rules in place, and automatic updating of those rules regularly. I know it's easy to set up if you know what you are doing at the moment, but let's face it, a lot of potential switchers from IE don't know what they are doing.
"Pages is compatible. It imports AppleWorks documents and imports and exports Microsoft Word documents. Want to share your documents online? Pages also offers the easiest way to create great looking PDF files. Pages makes it easy to share your work with others."
I wonder if Microsoft are illegally leveraging their OS monopoly here... after all it's only Microsoft who can send an internal memo to all staff saying "hey, did any of you guys stick something called grstblbflo.dll in Windows, and if so, what (if anything) is it doing?"
Porsche is represented by the Ruf tuner as before, but there are no Ferarris, or Lamborghinis (although the Cizesta V16 looks like a even more of a Diabolo rip-off than it does in real life.
I've read that these companies signed exclusive licencing deals with other games companies before GT1, and are kicking themselves for doing so, although facts are thin on the ground.
There isn't a complete car list out there, because some of the cars are only revealed as prizes that even the most dedicated players have not been able to get. The best list I've seen is here, since it has screencaps, it's unlikely to be faked.
So far they have only found 34 Skylines.
There has been some speculation that the lists will be re-jigged for European and US audiences, since the list is even more Japan-centric than before, and Polophony Digital has been seen scanning many US and European cars that are not in the Japanese version.
You've missed out the monopoly element to the complaint. Try it like this:
"Judge, I bought 400 gallons of diesel fuel because that's the only kind of fuel I can buy not that Dieselco own all the gas stations, and NONE of it will work in my Honda Civic! MAKE the gas station sell normal gas too."
If you want skills that will be useful 5 or 10 years down the line, you need to look ahead at what's not yet possible.
I'd concentrate on learning how to make the same content look good on screens that vary in size from a wristwatch to a billboard. This means dropping everything that uses pixel-based measurement, and going to vector graphics. Learning how to present the same content in a linear way for small screens and a parallel way for big ones would also be good. All you've really got available now for vector graphics is Flash and it's associated language, Actionscript. Flash isn't greatly loved, but that's because it's immature, and people use it badly (just like HTML a few years back - rememeber the blink tag?). 10 years on we'll be using tools that are to Flash as C is to z80 assembler, but the lessons learned will still hold.
Secondly, learn video editing. Content will keep getting richer. If you know the theory and practice of editing 10 video streams and 32 audo channels into a cohesive programme, then you'll be better prepared than most for the arrival of bandwidth/compression which will make that possible.
You have got the completely the wrong end of the stick. All the points you make are true, but not relevant, since the plaintiff isn't complaining about iTunes/iPod locking you into iTMS (which it doesn't), he's complaining about iTMS locking you into iTunes/iPod.
The essence of the complaint is that once you have bought music from iTMS, you can't play it back on normal MP3 players, only on an iPod. The allegation is that this is illegally extending Apple's monopoly of selling downloads into a monopoly on portable music players, not the other way round.
This provides a lovely loophole for all Charter customers, if the RIAA come knocking, all they have to do is point out that the RIAA can't touch them without breaking part (3) above.
It doesn't matter that if they were not on the list that Charter supplied, becasue the RIAA can't check if they were or not without violating the ruling!
Remember we are talking about Apple users here, not regular PC users, by choosing an Apple, these people have already demonstrated they are willing to (I hate to use a cliche but it's so accurate here) "Think different".
It's easy to forget how apallingly bad Word is compared to a modern, back to basics, start from scratch, think it all through properly word processor, because there aren't any of those.
Word reflows documents whenever you change printers, defaults to criticising your every move, doing anything complex dumps you off into a half-baked mini-app like word-art, and things that can be expressed simply (like "make this a 16 side A5 document instead of a 7 side A4, and spread the copy out so it looks good", "make all the hadings in this 300 page book the same size" or "give this document the same style as that one") are at best thousand click processes rather than 1 click choices, and at worst impossible to do reliably.
This laddermill requires a lot of untested technology, and some of the problems don't seem to have been addressed at all (such as how the kites 'know' if they should be going up or down, how to make cables that never break but are light enough to lift, and how to stop the 'up' kites and 'down' kites colliding.
Given that all the down kites, and the up kites below the level of high winds are dead weight, wouldn't it make more sense to just put a big tethered autogyro or 10 on the cable instead, and drive a generator from the prop rotation? This would eliminate the dead weight, replace the unstable kites with fail-safe autogyros that land gently naturally, and changes the requirement for a flexible cable that can cope with extreme tension for a requirement for a weaker less flexible cable that can transmit electricity, which should be easier to produce.
Slashdot Mirror
The 17" machine is wide enought to fit a full-sized keyboard, but it still comes with the same cramped minature one as the 12" machine has. I'd be far more likely to buy one if Apple fixed this.
So, we have two purported 'reviews' that manage to reveal a grand total of NO NEW FACTS WHATSOEVER about the film, everything they say can be guessed from the cast list stills that are available on the official site. All the opinions stated (and let's not forget these reviews disagree about the film's merits - handy since it means that one is bound to be right about the quality of the film) read like opinions on the actors previous work.
Here's the 3 things I'd most like to know about the movie:
1) How does the major new character played by John Malkovich fit in?
2) What is the trick used to avoid seeing Zaphod's other head?
3) How much of the '5 book trilogy' does the movie cover?
Guess what... these 'reviews' don't mention anything at all about these issues, presumably because the reviewers made the whole thing up and haven't even seen the latest cast announcements (Bill Bailey as the voice of the whale, and Stephen Fry as the voice of the Guide), let alone a rough cut of the finished article.
Surely an archive copy is legally usable if the original is beyond repair - otherwise what's the point of having it (as the law allows you to do)?
This would mean you can legally use emulation if you own the orginal rom (floppy/CD/etc.) and it's broken beyond reasonable repair.
I think it's worth pointing out that that would be a publishing copyright, not a recording copyright, and the case being discussed here is a recording copyright one.
It's the difference between using the same notes that Mozart used, and sampling the actual sound of the berlin symphony orchestra playing that pices of music. Mozart's copyright on the sequence of notes has expired, but the copyright on that particualr recording has not.
In this case, the piece of music was so trivial (a single 3 note chord) that it doesn't qualify for a publishing copyright (and if it did, there would be a million historical uses to go back to) but the plaintiff claims that the manner of playing them and the recording was distinctive enough to be covered by copyright law.
The court doesn't seem to have taken into account that a line has to be drawn somewhere - otherwise the copyight holder of the very first audio CD could sue over every other CD, since every other CD undoubtedly contains one or two 16-bit numbers (or sequences thereof) that the first one used.
The slower MacMini configured with the larger hard drive and the DVD writer costs $649, and includes iMove and iDVD.
Compare this to the price of:
a DVD writer
a firewire card
an 80Gb drive
movie editing software
DVD authoring software
Use your exisiting mouse, keyboard and screen (consider the belkin KVM switch if you'll be giving it heavy use).
Once you factor in the knowledge that you'll have a tried and tested set-up, good software, no driver issues, a shallow learning curve, and just 1 small desirable multi-purpose box on your desk rather than 3 or 4 specialist ones, then it makes a lot of sense to think of the MacMini as a video editing box in addition to your Linux machine, the fact that it has it's own CPU and OS rather than inhabiting the same beige shell isn't really that relevant.
You don't actually NEED a converter, you can just use a mini-DV camcorder with inputs to do the same job. Doing this does mean that you have to bounce your video to mini-DV in real time, then play it into the computer in real time, so it makes the process slower, but if you are not planning on doing it very often, it will probably make sense to save the money and spend it on more drive space.
That's because the artictecture is (supposedly) a PowerPC core plus 8 APUs. If this is true, the necessary re-writes would be no more complex than they were the last time Apple bolted on some vector bits to the PowerPC, with Alti-Vec (just a hell of a lot more powerful).
Assuming they don't need to offer PSPs on sale or return, then Sony probably has sold 800k units to shops. It's the shops that may (or may not) have sold them on to consumers yet.
In an embedded system, it's not such a big issue if you have to GPL your code, since it won't be any use without the hardware you are embedding it in. Unique hardware is effectively a 'dongle' for Linux, in this case.
"Fetch the Logic Probe!" - Sark
Things I want to know before I decide to buy one of these - does anyone have answers?
1) Is it fanless?
2) Are the 'dealer fit only' options (ram, bluetooth, airport) actually difficult to fit yourself?
3) What's things thing's performance like when used as a Logic Audio Node?
4) Any reports from people using the Belkin KVM switcher that Apple is selling?
I'd like to see the first window much quicker when I run the app - this is where a lot of users will percieve the 'speed' of the browser. How about cacheing a run length encoded copy of a blank window and putting that on screen first, before loading everything else up. The actual back end doesn't need to be ready until I've finished typing a url and hit enter, but if I could start typing it earlier, Mozilla would feel faster.
I'd also like adblock/flashblock installed by default, with a nice strong set of predefined rules in place, and automatic updating of those rules regularly. I know it's easy to set up if you know what you are doing at the moment, but let's face it, a lot of potential switchers from IE don't know what they are doing.
1Gb iPod Shuffle = 99 UK pounds
Expanding MacMini from 256 Mb to 1Gb = 290 UK pounds!
Yes. It's expandable to 1Gb.
Yes. From http://www.apple.com/iwork/
"Pages is compatible. It imports AppleWorks documents and imports and exports Microsoft Word documents. Want to share your documents online? Pages also offers the easiest way to create great looking PDF files. Pages makes it easy to share your work with others."
I wonder if Microsoft are illegally leveraging their OS monopoly here... after all it's only Microsoft who can send an internal memo to all staff saying "hey, did any of you guys stick something called grstblbflo.dll in Windows, and if so, what (if anything) is it doing?"
Porsche is represented by the Ruf tuner as before, but there are no Ferarris, or Lamborghinis (although the Cizesta V16 looks like a even more of a Diabolo rip-off than it does in real life.
I've read that these companies signed exclusive licencing deals with other games companies before GT1, and are kicking themselves for doing so, although facts are thin on the ground.
There isn't a complete car list out there, because some of the cars are only revealed as prizes that even the most dedicated players have not been able to get. The best list I've seen is here, since it has screencaps, it's unlikely to be faked.
So far they have only found 34 Skylines.
There has been some speculation that the lists will be re-jigged for European and US audiences, since the list is even more Japan-centric than before, and Polophony Digital has been seen scanning many US and European cars that are not in the Japanese version.
You've missed out the monopoly element to the complaint. Try it like this:
"Judge, I bought 400 gallons of diesel fuel because that's the only kind of fuel I can buy not that Dieselco own all the gas stations, and NONE of it will work in my Honda Civic! MAKE the gas station sell normal gas too."
Now do you see the problem?
If you want skills that will be useful 5 or 10 years down the line, you need to look ahead at what's not yet possible.
I'd concentrate on learning how to make the same content look good on screens that vary in size from a wristwatch to a billboard. This means dropping everything that uses pixel-based measurement, and going to vector graphics. Learning how to present the same content in a linear way for small screens and a parallel way for big ones would also be good. All you've really got available now for vector graphics is Flash and it's associated language, Actionscript. Flash isn't greatly loved, but that's because it's immature, and people use it badly (just like HTML a few years back - rememeber the blink tag?). 10 years on we'll be using tools that are to Flash as C is to z80 assembler, but the lessons learned will still hold.
Secondly, learn video editing. Content will keep getting richer. If you know the theory and practice of editing 10 video streams and 32 audo channels into a cohesive programme, then you'll be better prepared than most for the arrival of bandwidth/compression which will make that possible.
Well, someone needs to tell the music industry that we don't want DRM, and if anyone has the bargaining power to do that, it's Apple.
If Apple lose this case, the record industry will have a choice - sell in mp3 format via the iTMS, or lose all that revenue source altogether.
You have got the completely the wrong end of the stick. All the points you make are true, but not relevant, since the plaintiff isn't complaining about iTunes/iPod locking you into iTMS (which it doesn't), he's complaining about iTMS locking you into iTunes/iPod.
The BBC coverage of the story makes the distinction clearer.
The essence of the complaint is that once you have bought music from iTMS, you can't play it back on normal MP3 players, only on an iPod. The allegation is that this is illegally extending Apple's monopoly of selling downloads into a monopoly on portable music players, not the other way round.
This provides a lovely loophole for all Charter customers, if the RIAA come knocking, all they have to do is point out that the RIAA can't touch them without breaking part (3) above.
It doesn't matter that if they were not on the list that Charter supplied, becasue the RIAA can't check if they were or not without violating the ruling!
Remember we are talking about Apple users here, not regular PC users, by choosing an Apple, these people have already demonstrated they are willing to (I hate to use a cliche but it's so accurate here) "Think different".
It's easy to forget how apallingly bad Word is compared to a modern, back to basics, start from scratch, think it all through properly word processor, because there aren't any of those.
Word reflows documents whenever you change printers, defaults to criticising your every move, doing anything complex dumps you off into a half-baked mini-app like word-art, and things that can be expressed simply (like "make this a 16 side A5 document instead of a 7 side A4, and spread the copy out so it looks good", "make all the hadings in this 300 page book the same size" or "give this document the same style as that one") are at best thousand click processes rather than 1 click choices, and at worst impossible to do reliably.
This laddermill requires a lot of untested technology, and some of the problems don't seem to have been addressed at all (such as how the kites 'know' if they should be going up or down, how to make cables that never break but are light enough to lift, and how to stop the 'up' kites and 'down' kites colliding.
Given that all the down kites, and the up kites below the level of high winds are dead weight, wouldn't it make more sense to just put a big tethered autogyro or 10 on the cable instead, and drive a generator from the prop rotation? This would eliminate the dead weight, replace the unstable kites with fail-safe autogyros that land gently naturally, and changes the requirement for a flexible cable that can cope with extreme tension for a requirement for a weaker less flexible cable that can transmit electricity, which should be easier to produce.