I have to agree about sony, I picked up an old vaio sr11k which someone had removed the HD, and crucially, the HD cable from. that cable was the most expensive cable, for length I've ever bought. standard 44pin ide on one end, some wierd assed sony connector on the other. it cost me £50 (for a cable 1.5cm long), but they did at least sell it to me.
I think part of the problem is that the grass is always greener on the other side. from wherever we are, elsewhere has benefits we don't, and we fail to see the benefits of where we are because we're so used to them.
personally I like iceland, it's a beautiful country. I'd love to visit it to see what it's like. if it comes up to my hopes then I have this vision of running it and moulding it into the country I'd like to live in (no offence to any icelanders here, I'm sure you wouldn't vote me in anyways, but a guy can dream can't he?)
dave
Re:Better than retina scanning
on
DIY Iris Scanning?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
and of course, it could also be used to affect your future career or health insurance as it reveals to your company things such as high blood pressure, diabetes, drugs use and leukemia. hell, even aids and syphilis.
things most people would rather keep to themselves.
dave
Re:Better than retina scanning
on
DIY Iris Scanning?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Retina scans are not likely to injure you, but are considered less acceptable than iris scanning as it gives away too much information. Yes, it can uniquely identify you, but it can also divulge various health issues and show if you're pregnant. This is usually information that employees prefer to reveal on their own, than have the door security guard congratulate or commiserate them about information that they haven't told their partner about yet, or might not even know them selves.
I've got a lapinator and frankly, it's great. the bottom of my MBP does get pretty (read very) hot, but the bottom of the lapinator pad is far more comfortable. the instructions that came with it recommended putting the 3 rubber bungs on the top, to lift the back of th laptop, but I never bothered with that, it copes very well as it is.
So why should neighbors have a say in what you can do to your property? Becuase your actions impact thier property values to a greater or lesser extent.
no, I appreciate that what I do with my house could affect the value of a neighbours property, my point is, so what? it's *my house*.
if I use linux/BSD/osx instead of buying microsoft windows then I am affecting microsoft's profits but that doesn't mean they can control what operating system I use.
if I write a whole new OS that is very well received and everyone starts using it, I could have a large effect on microsoft's share price, thus affecting their profit margins and the value or millions of people's portfolio's and possibly pension schemes. it doesn't mean that they can sue me to stop making my product.
just because something I do affects the money other people make, should not necessarily mean that they should have influence over what I do.
And finally, having to live next to a neighbor whose house or property is a real eyesore will turn the house that I liked at one time into one I don't like very much.
not liking it is one thing, but investments go up as well as down. if I plant a really beautiful garden that raises the value of property in the neighbourhood, will you give me a percentage of your house sale? unlikely I feel.
many people might feel that certain races living with them might lower the property values but that's called discrimination and is now illegal. as long as your neighbour isn't causing pollution (either noxious smoke, or aural), isnt causing trouble, isn't blocking all your sunlight. then why should you have much of a say in to what someone does with their own land?
Don't many Europeans make fun of Americans for thinking 50 years is old?
what's the old joke? the americans think a hundred years is a long time. the british think a hundred miles is a long way...
and another:
an american farmer and a british one were talking, the american one was talking about how much land he owned and said "I can get in my car and drive all dy and still not get to the end of my land!", the british farmer said "yeah, I've got a car like that too!"
thanks you, thank you, I'll be here till thursday, try the veal...
*ahem*
anyway, back on topic.
okay, if I paint my house bright green it might bring the value of your property down, but so what? why should that give you licence to determine what I can or cannot do? it's just tough really. it's my house and I can, in general terms, do what I want.
admittedly, it doesn't work like that, and yes, there are limits, but I think that far too much power is exerted over what you can or cannot do with your own home. personally I like the look of wind farms and have no issues with them. if I lived somewhere with a garden I would look into getting a grant to install one (or more).
I personally am not stirred by this as I have a set of linux servers set up to do the same functionality with much more speed and efficiency, but I can see this as a neat black-box turn-key solution for someone who can't deal with that level of complexity but can deal with a straight-forward UI.
I think it's an excellent idea. both my girlfriend and I run wireless laptops and I don't really want a full PC humming away in a corner somewhere that requires another plug to be used, electricity and time spent maintaining it. I used to do that kind of thing but then I've moved on a bit and no-longer want to spend large chunks of my time at home messing about on command lines, I do enough of that at work.
This kind of thing looks like a useful device. If asus released a version with an integrated adsl modem so I'd just have the one box, then I'd be quite tempted. the idea of a simple box which serves a printer, downloads stuff while I sleep and is a better WAP than my current setup.
you're right about a linux box being able to do it better, but I can't be bothered with it any more. I want something simple that allows me to focus my time on other things, simple enough for my non-techie GF to use easily asnd that doesn't involve me spending hours adminning the thing.
btw, One thing I would find very useful on a device like this, is the ability to set times for the downloads to occur within. I'd like to give it a url or torrent to download, and tell it to only download between midnight and 8am, so the downloads don't get in my way.
well, it's all down to the circles you move in, as someone else said. I only use AIM and while I know a number of people with MSN accounts, I know several people who are only on AIM, as I am.
well, I do have an ICQ number somewhere, but I don't have a reason to use it really.
yeah, but how many people (even on slashdot where geeks are common) actually *use* google talk? I've got an account, and even set up ichat to use it but I never log into it now as I don't know anyone else who uses it.
so yeah, it's nice that googletalk and AIM might interoperate, but I think the real action will be when msn and aim interoperate.
I think virtually every user wants all the IM networks to interconnect and from 4 big IM networks, we've had two mergers. First AIM and ICQ interconnected and now MSN and yahoo. lets get these two big networks to talk to each other and settle all the messing about!
try playing the original command and conquer and you can see the evolution
never mind C&C, Dune 2 was the origin of the modern RTS wasn't it? I put many hours into that on my Amiga 500. I won as Harkonnen, but never managed it as Atredies or Ordos (the 2 nuke's coming at me, instead of one, was abit too much for my limited abilities).
(I've never understood the rationale for "Das Mädchen" in German. Probably because there is no rationale.)
my theory is that gendered nouns are only really rules to surround how to say words more easily. when I was learning french and german, if I couldn't remember the gender of a word, I'd usually just pick whatever pronoun was easiest to say in context, and more often than not I'd be right.
so it's probably "Das Madchen", because it sounds a bit more natural than "de madchen".
I have never heard *anyone* refer to a website as "world wide web dot something dot com". everyone I know typically uses "wuh-wuh-wuh" or, for the less savvy, "double-u double-u double-u".
My glasses now are the best I've had in 15 years. Just as good as my contacts
umm..? I don't know anyone for whom their contacts are nearly as good as their glasses. for me, glasses are much better than contacts but contacts are acceptable. I do need toric lenses though.
Incidentally, do Macs still have that Ethernet hack that allows you to connect two systems without a hub or a special cable? That's the classical "Yeah, a good idea, but not worth the cost it adds to a system" -- how many folks have precisely two systems and no broadband internet connection?
nowadays, that's called gigabit ethernet...
seriously, gig ethernet over copper has that functionality as standard I beleive.
and most modern mac's have gig ethernet so yes.
dave
Re:Head to head against Winders and *nix
on
MacBook Pro Reviewed
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Frankly, I'm quite surprised that it appears that the Dell was the best choice for the consumer who wants to encode quicktime.
to be fair, quicktime encoding is a CPU intensive operation, and the dell laptop had over a Gig of processor power over the macbook. perhaps osx wasn't taking adsvantage of the HT on the dell, but even so, that's a formiddable lead and I'm quite surprised the macbook kept up so well.
I've got a 7.1 system, but I'm not sure how muchbeffect the extra back two speaks are having and for several months I've been thinking about reverting to 5.1. makes cabling easier and leaves mroe power available.
one of the reasons I think the 7.1 isn't working that the two centre back's are a different brand, and frankly not as good as the others. mostly because I just happened to have them, rather than anything else.
the rest of the system sounds great though, Onkyo DS989THX with Kef reference front's and Kef Q rears (and crappie centre back's).
I know I tend up uprate the rears more than I "should", mostly because I just like hearing the rears working and the more enhanced surround effect.
If this thing goes through, somebody's gonna come up with a little adapter box that'll convert it into S-video. That can be converted to composite / RCA. Problem solved.
I've no doubt that the next gen dvdp's will have RCA (as in composite) and svideo output's on them when they ship anyway. but those output's don't support high def anyway, so they don't care.
There are already boxes that take a HDCP encrypted DVI input and spit out a an unencrypted DVI output, and that's much better.
The thing is, this isn't news. haven't we all* known that this would be the case for quite some time? I certainly have and my standard gen dvd player even has a HDCP supporting DVI output and all HDTV's sold recently should have HDMI or hdcp supporting DVI ports for ages.
dave
* where all = all the people who have been following HD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray in any sense
also, everyone would have to use the same tokens, and some way would have to be found about how to keep everyone's token servers in sync with your token.
when you log in with a token, the server will accept several numbers. if it's something like an RSA time based token, the serveral numbers are accepted due to the time it takes you to read and enter the number (and some clock skew) means that when the server receives the number, the next number is up. this isn't such a huge problem for multiple servers.
the other kind of token has a keypad on (such as safeword), and it generates ba new number whenever you input your PIN. if you log into one of your 6 sites every day, and the other only once every 6 months, then how does the server at the second site keep sync? you've gone through hundreds of numbers at the first site so what number should it expect?
err.. virtually all of them. or via bluetooth. know some carriers in the states limit that functionality, but the phone can do it, an in, the UK at least, virtually every camera phone does work like that, certainly mine sony's have, and the old siemens I used to have, and my friends RAZR V3 etc
my TV doesn't even have an off button. it only has a standby button. as soon as you plug it into the wall it's technically on. it's an LCD tv though, not a tube based one, still uses a bit of power while "off".
Slashdot Mirror
I have to agree about sony, I picked up an old vaio sr11k which someone had removed the HD, and crucially, the HD cable from. that cable was the most expensive cable, for length I've ever bought. standard 44pin ide on one end, some wierd assed sony connector on the other. it cost me £50 (for a cable 1.5cm long), but they did at least sell it to me.
I think part of the problem is that the grass is always greener on the other side. from wherever we are, elsewhere has benefits we don't, and we fail to see the benefits of where we are because we're so used to them.
personally I like iceland, it's a beautiful country. I'd love to visit it to see what it's like. if it comes up to my hopes then I have this vision of running it and moulding it into the country I'd like to live in (no offence to any icelanders here, I'm sure you wouldn't vote me in anyways, but a guy can dream can't he?)
dave
and of course, it could also be used to affect your future career or health insurance as it reveals to your company things such as high blood pressure, diabetes, drugs use and leukemia. hell, even aids and syphilis.
things most people would rather keep to themselves.
dave
Retina scans are not likely to injure you, but are considered less acceptable than iris scanning as it gives away too much information. Yes, it can uniquely identify you, but it can also divulge various health issues and show if you're pregnant. This is usually information that employees prefer to reveal on their own, than have the door security guard congratulate or commiserate them about information that they haven't told their partner about yet, or might not even know them selves.
dave
I've got a lapinator and frankly, it's great. the bottom of my MBP does get pretty (read very) hot, but the bottom of the lapinator pad is far more comfortable. the instructions that came with it recommended putting the 3 rubber bungs on the top, to lift the back of th laptop, but I never bothered with that, it copes very well as it is.
dave
So why should neighbors have a say in what you can do to your property? Becuase your actions impact thier property values to a greater or lesser extent.
no, I appreciate that what I do with my house could affect the value of a neighbours property, my point is, so what? it's *my house*.
if I use linux/BSD/osx instead of buying microsoft windows then I am affecting microsoft's profits but that doesn't mean they can control what operating system I use.
if I write a whole new OS that is very well received and everyone starts using it, I could have a large effect on microsoft's share price, thus affecting their profit margins and the value or millions of people's portfolio's and possibly pension schemes. it doesn't mean that they can sue me to stop making my product.
just because something I do affects the money other people make, should not necessarily mean that they should have influence over what I do.
dave
And finally, having to live next to a neighbor whose house or property is a real eyesore will turn the house that I liked at one time into one I don't like very much.
not liking it is one thing, but investments go up as well as down. if I plant a really beautiful garden that raises the value of property in the neighbourhood, will you give me a percentage of your house sale? unlikely I feel.
many people might feel that certain races living with them might lower the property values but that's called discrimination and is now illegal. as long as your neighbour isn't causing pollution (either noxious smoke, or aural), isnt causing trouble, isn't blocking all your sunlight. then why should you have much of a say in to what someone does with their own land?
dave
Don't many Europeans make fun of Americans for thinking 50 years is old?
what's the old joke? the americans think a hundred years is a long time. the british think a hundred miles is a long way...
and another:
an american farmer and a british one were talking, the american one was talking about how much land he owned and said "I can get in my car and drive all dy and still not get to the end of my land!", the british farmer said "yeah, I've got a car like that too!"
thanks you, thank you, I'll be here till thursday, try the veal...
*ahem*
anyway, back on topic.
okay, if I paint my house bright green it might bring the value of your property down, but so what? why should that give you licence to determine what I can or cannot do? it's just tough really. it's my house and I can, in general terms, do what I want.
admittedly, it doesn't work like that, and yes, there are limits, but I think that far too much power is exerted over what you can or cannot do with your own home. personally I like the look of wind farms and have no issues with them. if I lived somewhere with a garden I would look into getting a grant to install one (or more).
dave
I personally am not stirred by this as I have a set of linux servers set up to do the same functionality with much more speed and efficiency, but I can see this as a neat black-box turn-key solution for someone who can't deal with that level of complexity but can deal with a straight-forward UI.
I think it's an excellent idea. both my girlfriend and I run wireless laptops and I don't really want a full PC humming away in a corner somewhere that requires another plug to be used, electricity and time spent maintaining it. I used to do that kind of thing but then I've moved on a bit and no-longer want to spend large chunks of my time at home messing about on command lines, I do enough of that at work.
This kind of thing looks like a useful device. If asus released a version with an integrated adsl modem so I'd just have the one box, then I'd be quite tempted. the idea of a simple box which serves a printer, downloads stuff while I sleep and is a better WAP than my current setup.
you're right about a linux box being able to do it better, but I can't be bothered with it any more. I want something simple that allows me to focus my time on other things, simple enough for my non-techie GF to use easily asnd that doesn't involve me spending hours adminning the thing.
btw, One thing I would find very useful on a device like this, is the ability to set times for the downloads to occur within. I'd like to give it a url or torrent to download, and tell it to only download between midnight and 8am, so the downloads don't get in my way.
dave
well, it's all down to the circles you move in, as someone else said. I only use AIM and while I know a number of people with MSN accounts, I know several people who are only on AIM, as I am.
well, I do have an ICQ number somewhere, but I don't have a reason to use it really.
dave
yeah, but how many people (even on slashdot where geeks are common) actually *use* google talk? I've got an account, and even set up ichat to use it but I never log into it now as I don't know anyone else who uses it.
so yeah, it's nice that googletalk and AIM might interoperate, but I think the real action will be when msn and aim interoperate.
dave
They would only need to infect one, probably the weakest link...
isn't the weakest link typically the users?
dave
I think virtually every user wants all the IM networks to interconnect and from 4 big IM networks, we've had two mergers. First AIM and ICQ interconnected and now MSN and yahoo. lets get these two big networks to talk to each other and settle all the messing about!
dave
but tomorrow is a big holiday over here celebrating why we don't use your money any more. : )
;)
you call it independance day, we call it thanksgiving
dave
try playing the original command and conquer and you can see the evolution
never mind C&C, Dune 2 was the origin of the modern RTS wasn't it? I put many hours into that on my Amiga 500. I won as Harkonnen, but never managed it as Atredies or Ordos (the 2 nuke's coming at me, instead of one, was abit too much for my limited abilities).
dave
(I've never understood the rationale for "Das Mädchen" in German. Probably because there is no rationale.)
my theory is that gendered nouns are only really rules to surround how to say words more easily. when I was learning french and german, if I couldn't remember the gender of a word, I'd usually just pick whatever pronoun was easiest to say in context, and more often than not I'd be right.
so it's probably "Das Madchen", because it sounds a bit more natural than "de madchen".
dave
I have never heard *anyone* refer to a website as "world wide web dot something dot com". everyone I know typically uses "wuh-wuh-wuh" or, for the less savvy, "double-u double-u double-u".
dave
My glasses now are the best I've had in 15 years. Just as good as my contacts
umm..? I don't know anyone for whom their contacts are nearly as good as their glasses. for me, glasses are much better than contacts but contacts are acceptable. I do need toric lenses though.
dave
Incidentally, do Macs still have that Ethernet hack that allows you to connect two systems without a hub or a special cable? That's the classical "Yeah, a good idea, but not worth the cost it adds to a system" -- how many folks have precisely two systems and no broadband internet connection?
nowadays, that's called gigabit ethernet...
seriously, gig ethernet over copper has that functionality as standard I beleive.
and most modern mac's have gig ethernet so yes.
dave
Frankly, I'm quite surprised that it appears that the Dell was the best choice for the consumer who wants to encode quicktime.
to be fair, quicktime encoding is a CPU intensive operation, and the dell laptop had over a Gig of processor power over the macbook. perhaps osx wasn't taking adsvantage of the HT on the dell, but even so, that's a formiddable lead and I'm quite surprised the macbook kept up so well.
I bet the macbook is alot thinner too.
dave
I've got a 7.1 system, but I'm not sure how muchbeffect the extra back two speaks are having and for several months I've been thinking about reverting to 5.1. makes cabling easier and leaves mroe power available.
one of the reasons I think the 7.1 isn't working that the two centre back's are a different brand, and frankly not as good as the others. mostly because I just happened to have them, rather than anything else.
the rest of the system sounds great though, Onkyo DS989THX with Kef reference front's and Kef Q rears (and crappie centre back's).
I know I tend up uprate the rears more than I "should", mostly because I just like hearing the rears working and the more enhanced surround effect.
dave
If this thing goes through, somebody's gonna come up with a little adapter box that'll convert it into S-video. That can be converted to composite / RCA. Problem solved.
I've no doubt that the next gen dvdp's will have RCA (as in composite) and svideo output's on them when they ship anyway. but those output's don't support high def anyway, so they don't care.
There are already boxes that take a HDCP encrypted DVI input and spit out a an unencrypted DVI output, and that's much better.
The thing is, this isn't news. haven't we all* known that this would be the case for quite some time? I certainly have and my standard gen dvd player even has a HDCP supporting DVI output and all HDTV's sold recently should have HDMI or hdcp supporting DVI ports for ages.
dave
* where all = all the people who have been following HD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray in any sense
also, everyone would have to use the same tokens, and some way would have to be found about how to keep everyone's token servers in sync with your token.
when you log in with a token, the server will accept several numbers. if it's something like an RSA time based token, the serveral numbers are accepted due to the time it takes you to read and enter the number (and some clock skew) means that when the server receives the number, the next number is up. this isn't such a huge problem for multiple servers.
the other kind of token has a keypad on (such as safeword), and it generates ba new number whenever you input your PIN. if you log into one of your 6 sites every day, and the other only once every 6 months, then how does the server at the second site keep sync? you've gone through hundreds of numbers at the first site so what number should it expect?
dave
err.. virtually all of them. or via bluetooth. know some carriers in the states limit that functionality, but the phone can do it, an in, the UK at least, virtually every camera phone does work like that, certainly mine sony's have, and the old siemens I used to have, and my friends RAZR V3 etc
dave
my TV doesn't even have an off button. it only has a standby button. as soon as you plug it into the wall it's technically on. it's an LCD tv though, not a tube based one, still uses a bit of power while "off".
dave