OK, if the cow-dog of the Macintosh says "Moof!", what does the cow-penguin of Linux say?
Quackoo? Mooack?
It's these kind of issues that confuse pointy-headed bosses untill they decided against implementing Linux! We must find the answer if Linux is to continue to gain popularity!
Well, it uses QT and such, so with the exception of the audio code it shouldn't be to hard to port if it's written well.
But the audio code is the sticker. There is no free cross-platform sound code (other than relativly simple stuff like SDL (simple by comparison to some of the more interesting things you can do native)). So if you were to port the audio engine, then it should be easy. Either that or write an ALSA emulation layer for Windows or OS X.
Graphics are portable thanks to toolkits and OpenGL/SDL. Audio isn't always that easy. And, as another poster pointed out, people tend to write OSS for THEMSELVES on the platform THEY USE and hope it's useful for other people. If they were out to sell it, I'm sure they would have used Windows. But for themselves, they used Linux (and I would too, I like the dev tools better, but that's personal preference.)
What I meant was, with cellphones banned the plane would be peaceful. But people would get around that with VOIP, so they could make phone calls in the air, making the noise that would annoy people.
(This part added:) As for the lawyer stuff, while you can argue about if it's OK for campuses to ban WiFi equiptment, planes are a different matter and I think people will understand. Planes are little islands of dictatorship in the air, for safety reasons. The FAA has COMPLETE AND TOTAL controll of airplanes when in the air. If they decide it for whatever reason (interference, distraction to pilots, makes it hard to flight attendants to keep controll because they can't be heard), it would take an act of congress to over rule it if the FAA decides to stick to it over people's complaints (I think).
Either way, as I've said, I'd like to keep them banned. If it's that important, you can pay the $4/min for those in-seat phones.
Crud, posted that under the wrong child. It's the airline's business for two reasons. First, they can do it if they want, just like they can ban smoking. But more importantly, I will fly less, MUCH less if cell-phones are allowed in the air and people yak on 'em. Right now, at least once a year I take a vacation by flying, and often fly other places too (like places that are within a 10 hour drive or so) because of the convenince. But if I have to be trapped listening to a large group of idiot talk about nothing using terrible english (a pet peeve of mine) for 5 hours, I won't take that vacation, I'll go somewhere else or stay home. And I'll drive to those other places if it spares me that headache on top of everything else. About the ONLY time I'd fly would be if I had to make a long flight (say moving from one coast to the other). And there is no way I would want to take a trans-continental flight. They would lose me as a passenger, and I'm sure they would lose other people's unneccessary flights. That's not good for them, especially when they are already having trouble.
Smoking was banned for physical health reasons, how 'bout banning cell phones for mental health reasons?
What I meant was, with cellphones banned the plane would be peaceful. But people would get around that with VOIP, so they could make phone calls in the air, making the noise that would annoy people.
I head a piece on NPR about this today. I have two thoughts.
First, I like the WiFi, that would be great. The only thing that worries me is that people will start using it for VOIP to get around any anti-cellphone regulations.
Second, the FAA has its own ban on cell phones in airplanes. So even if the FCC says it's OK (which, from a technological/interference point of view it is), the FAA can still keep it banned (like smoking is banned, for example) keeping us all sane in the air.
If the FAA doesn't save us, I suspect that portable cell-phone jammers will become VERY popular among frequent travelers. And how dangerous do you think THOSE unregulated things will be for pilots?
And this is MY biggest complaint. Spike TV is NOT A NETWORK FOR MEN. I'm sorry but real men (not adult males) don't spend all their time looking at scantaly clad women and big trucks and stuff like that. I HATE that image. It is terribly demeaming. You think the images of women on TV are bad? What about men? 9 out of 10 times on sitcoms they are portrayed as sex crazed idiots (and you're starting to see that in dramas too). Not all shows are like that, but they seem to be more and more common. Where are the "Father Knows Best" and "Andy Griffith" shows now?
Spike TV is not the first network for men. It's the first network for horny adolecents who what to THINK they are adults and dumber adult males. The only reason I've ever watched Spike TV has been MacGyver or a Star Trek. But their origional content, and their ads (first time I ever saw "male enhancement" ads other than SPAM was on Spike) are just demeaning to any guy with a brain.
I HATE them. Real men wouldn't find that kind of crud entertaining. If you don't agree with me, I guess that means that I have a much higher standard for "man" than you, for better or worse. Sorry for the rant.
PS: For more on TV making men look terrible, read "The War Against Boys", which talks about that issue and many more. Facinating book.
Re:The future's so bright, I gotta wear used shade
on
iTunes Accepts PayPal
·
· Score: -1, Troll
Don't forget you can go down to local stores and buy prepaid iTunes "gift certificates." I saw a $15 dollar one at my local Target yesterday. All you have to do if pay $15 plus tax to the retailer and then buy 15 songs. Surely Apple stores (and I would expect other computer stores) sell them too.
PS: I would assume that the artists/Apple get more money this way since you don't get PayPal taking their cut.
PPS: Not to mention that with all I've heard of PayPal, I wouldn't trust them with anything but a credit card in the first place.
PPPS: You can buy prepaid Visa cards (work just like debit cards and are accepted wherever credit cards are) easily too. So really this doesn't change anything.
The problem with the automakers is that everyone did it. So even if all 20 car makers (just a random number) went back to the old pricing structure, as long as 1 held out they were in trouble.
In this there is only two players. There is ESPN (the old $20 people) and EA (Madden at $50 or whatever). They can raise their price. The only danger would be if Madden would be cut to $20 (never going to happen). They may lose sales for a year when people realize what happened, but after that things will stabalize and they'll be OK.
That said, I would be suprised if Madden got discounted either before or now from it's old price. I don't know if it has already happened, but if ESPN goes back to $50 games and Madden all of a sudden goes to $40, they are in DEEP trouble (at least for football).
This isn't like the automaker situation. This is the same as if there was only Ford and GM (and all dealerships were company owned so everyone followed company prices, no discounting or haggleing).
I agree. I think he could definatly parlay his success into speaking engaugements for graduations, maybe for motivational/public speaking classes, study advice (he must know good ways), etc. He seems to be pretty at ease in front of a croud, doesn't have an annoying voice, etc. There is a lot he could do.
I'm with the other people in this thread. I think this fake. There is no real evidence and it just sounds fishy.
I know there are many here at/. who would like to see a story like this be true (both for political reasons and for anti-e-voting reasons (I'm in this second group)). But if this has ANY truth to it, here is my guess:
It's a half-truth. The guy was paid to write a program to do it as an exercise to see how simple it would be to do. For all we know it was requested as part of a security review to be turned over to the company that made the e-voting equiptment to show them security holes that people were concerned about.
Now I have no proof, but if this is true at all, that would be my guess. And, of course, there is nothing wrong or illegal about writing such a program unless you intend to use or distribute it, which we also don't know about.
Why not give Ken his own trivia show where people try to stump him? It's not that far from what MS will have him doing.
So then I remember that episode of Keen Eddie (great show killed before it's time). The case in the episode involvs an EXTREEMLY famous man in England (fictional, of course) who had a trivia show where no one could stump him. One day he was stumped and then lost his show. He then became a bike messanger who forgot what he did with a package (this is the guy who remembers EVERYTHING). That's where he meets Keen Eddie.
Still, coincidince? Will Ken's memory start to slip untill he is attacked by a group that is trying to rob a bank because he lost their package?
I remember when CD drives first became popular in computers, encyclopedias on CD were a big deal and Encarta was very popular. It was on a CD encyclopedia (under Win 3.1) that I saw the famous footage of the Hindenburg disaster for the first time that I can remember (that was also the first video clip I can ever remember seeing on a computer).
But I saw Encarta in a computer store the other day and thought... so what? With the internet now common and simple to use to find things (thanks to Google and it's forefathers), why would I want to pay for an encyclopedia on CD/DVD?
As a promotion goes, it's a good idea, except it seems like trying to sell horse & buggy carts to 1920s urbanites. It's a product that is past it's prime and will dissapear soon.
PS: Ken Jennins, works as a programmer in Utah, hired by MS. I can make a conspiracy out of that:)
Now just to set the record straight, I agree with what the PTC is doing. Now onto my comment:
I don't support something like that. The problem is it would discourage normal people from filing a complaint. What's to keep the government from saying "that was OK" to everything to collect a little more revenue (I don't think they would, but some people would).
That said, if a group is found to be behind all the thousands and THOUSANDS of complaints that are found to be largely baseless (hypothetical here, for example if they set up a program to automatically call for action whenever the word "ass" was found in closed captioning, even if it refered to a donkey), then the FCC should simply sue the group wasting time and money and preventing them from doing their jobs.
Plus while taking $100 from people after submitting how-ever-many bogus report might slow things down some, taking $1,000,000 from the group organising it would slow things down faster. (IMHO)
Context is everything. Now I don't know the contexts for those two incedents, but I can guess. Oprah was probably being discussed with a doctor about women's health issues or something like that. Stern was probably making dirty jokes instead of doing some kind of information piece like Oprah was (again, my conjecture, I don't know for sure). In that case that's perfectly fine. Now if they were both making leud jokes and one got fined and the other didn't, that would be unfair. But you just can't discuss some issues without using some of those works.
Reminds me of an episode of News Radio. Phil Hartman's character did an on air editorial about how another station shouldn't have run a show where they constantly and continuisly used words like "Penis" and how people shouldn't stand for that indecency, blah blah blah.
Later in the show he was forced to retract that on air because the show was talking to a doctor about Erectile Disfunction (or some such).
Stem cell research is also important because it could also be used to cure/treat other things from Alzeihmers (bad sp, I know) to maybe even regrowing organs (way in the future).
That said, I agree. This is pretty cool and could give benefits soon and cheap. I wonder how long it will be before this treatment becomes common (assuming it's found safe, etc.)
The only way it could happen, would be if the screens were analog. That would mean the DS would generate a TV signal (just like a normal console) and that signal was sent up to the LCD unit where it was then decoded and displayed (like an LCD TV). That's unneccessary and probably more expensive. So unless that's the case (and the wire/trace that carries the signal is radiating at a specific frequency that the TV can pick up (say channel 3 VHF)) then I'm with you and call bunk.
Lines, wavyness, causing ghosting of the normal image, etc would all make sense to me. Making static or beeps or some such on a radio would make sense to me. Magical TV transmition is doubtfull. I don't have a TV to test it with (all mine lack antennas), but untill someone posts a good video of it, I doubt it.
Finally, to the editors, stop knocking XM an satellite radio. Half the satellite radio stories seem to denounce it somehow. The AP review doesn't really say anything bad about it. Some of you that knock satellite radio need to try it before worshiping your iPOD again.
Thanks for saying that (I've noticed too and I don't get why), and thanks for the review (of sorts). Can I ask where you got yours? Did a local store have it early (they are supposed to be available in "early December"), or were you in on some beta test or what? I'd love to get my hands on one of these things.
All the sibling replies to this are right. Analog works, but it's a hassle.
It's Analog. That means that you go from Digital->Analog in the radio (which introduces imperfections). Then it goes from Analog->Digital in the computer (which introduces imperfections). While the quality may be close, it's not the same and without knowing exactly HOW it was compressed origionally, you can't get the same quality to filesize of the origional.
It's SLOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW. I can fill my 40gig iPod with music in a few minutes. But to copy all that off though analog would take days. While it's not as bad when the thing only holds 4 hours of stuff, that's 4 hours of my life that I'm wasting (compared to the 30 seconds to a minute 128mb of stuff should take).
You lose metadata (didn't see this in siblings). When it's on the XM thing, it knows how long each song is and the title and artist (I assume, XM broadcasts this info so it should be easy to save). When I copy that 4 hours to my PC through analog, I get one 4 hour file. No song names, no track marks, no artists, NOTHING. So you either have to do it manually or try to autodetect (like with silence) which has its own flaws.
And that's not to mention things like the soundcard on my laptop (the only PC I really use) is noisy (so the analog solution would require me to buy some kind of breakout box to get decent quality) and things look even worse.
Analog can work for a handfull of songs, but more than that... it's just too hard.
Now, wouldn't it be great if you could get a license to transfer stuff off this device ONTO your iPod? If they could work that out (say make it get automatically deleted, or you can't have any more than 12 hours of content recorded max or something) that would be FANTASTIC. Think how many of these things they could sell (even if they charged an extra $1 or $2 per month to do that).
Either way, a DVR for satellite radio (DAR - Digital Audio Recorder?) is an interesting development. Let's see if other recievers start adding these kind of features.
Both would be nice. But the thing is still a great deal. For the $350, you get the device, a car kit, a home kit, earphones, etc. If you take the little Delphi XM radio I have now ($99), buy the car kit ($99), the home kit ($99), the boombox so you can listen anywhere ($99), you're already over the price (those numbers may be a tad high, like $10 each).
So for the same or less, this little thing is smaller, portable, AND CAN TIMESHIFT.
As an XM radio reciever goes, this is THE DEVICE unless you only want to ever listen in your car (which, by the way, would change).
It's not cheap, but it's a good deal relative to other solutions. Plus you can use it anywhere like a walkman and it could tape Art Bell or This American Life or any other show for you to listen to later.
I'd LOVE one. I'd suggest that they offer it stand alone (no home/car kits) to lower the price, but I think we all know that would only save maybe $50 bucks because the little device is by FAR the most expensive part.
OK, I don't know if anyone is strill reading this, but that is a GREAT idea. Then you WOULD be able to read the 'net with such a small resoultion. But if you just tried to render directly to the screen, many sites just wouldn't be viewable.
Slashdot Mirror
Note, I've never seen the movie, just heard about it in an episode of Nova or something about cirgarette companies.
Quackoo? Mooack?
It's these kind of issues that confuse pointy-headed bosses untill they decided against implementing Linux! We must find the answer if Linux is to continue to gain popularity!
Maybe "Mackoo"???
But the audio code is the sticker. There is no free cross-platform sound code (other than relativly simple stuff like SDL (simple by comparison to some of the more interesting things you can do native)). So if you were to port the audio engine, then it should be easy. Either that or write an ALSA emulation layer for Windows or OS X.
Graphics are portable thanks to toolkits and OpenGL/SDL. Audio isn't always that easy. And, as another poster pointed out, people tend to write OSS for THEMSELVES on the platform THEY USE and hope it's useful for other people. If they were out to sell it, I'm sure they would have used Windows. But for themselves, they used Linux (and I would too, I like the dev tools better, but that's personal preference.)
What I meant was, with cellphones banned the plane would be peaceful. But people would get around that with VOIP, so they could make phone calls in the air, making the noise that would annoy people.
(This part added:) As for the lawyer stuff, while you can argue about if it's OK for campuses to ban WiFi equiptment, planes are a different matter and I think people will understand. Planes are little islands of dictatorship in the air, for safety reasons. The FAA has COMPLETE AND TOTAL controll of airplanes when in the air. If they decide it for whatever reason (interference, distraction to pilots, makes it hard to flight attendants to keep controll because they can't be heard), it would take an act of congress to over rule it if the FAA decides to stick to it over people's complaints (I think).
Either way, as I've said, I'd like to keep them banned. If it's that important, you can pay the $4/min for those in-seat phones.
Smoking was banned for physical health reasons, how 'bout banning cell phones for mental health reasons?
What I meant was, with cellphones banned the plane would be peaceful. But people would get around that with VOIP, so they could make phone calls in the air, making the noise that would annoy people.
First, I like the WiFi, that would be great. The only thing that worries me is that people will start using it for VOIP to get around any anti-cellphone regulations.
Second, the FAA has its own ban on cell phones in airplanes. So even if the FCC says it's OK (which, from a technological/interference point of view it is), the FAA can still keep it banned (like smoking is banned, for example) keeping us all sane in the air.
If the FAA doesn't save us, I suspect that portable cell-phone jammers will become VERY popular among frequent travelers. And how dangerous do you think THOSE unregulated things will be for pilots?
Spike TV is not the first network for men. It's the first network for horny adolecents who what to THINK they are adults and dumber adult males. The only reason I've ever watched Spike TV has been MacGyver or a Star Trek. But their origional content, and their ads (first time I ever saw "male enhancement" ads other than SPAM was on Spike) are just demeaning to any guy with a brain.
I HATE them. Real men wouldn't find that kind of crud entertaining. If you don't agree with me, I guess that means that I have a much higher standard for "man" than you, for better or worse. Sorry for the rant.
PS: For more on TV making men look terrible, read "The War Against Boys", which talks about that issue and many more. Facinating book.
Thanks for the idea!
PS: I would assume that the artists/Apple get more money this way since you don't get PayPal taking their cut.
PPS: Not to mention that with all I've heard of PayPal, I wouldn't trust them with anything but a credit card in the first place.
PPPS: You can buy prepaid Visa cards (work just like debit cards and are accepted wherever credit cards are) easily too. So really this doesn't change anything.
In this there is only two players. There is ESPN (the old $20 people) and EA (Madden at $50 or whatever). They can raise their price. The only danger would be if Madden would be cut to $20 (never going to happen). They may lose sales for a year when people realize what happened, but after that things will stabalize and they'll be OK.
That said, I would be suprised if Madden got discounted either before or now from it's old price. I don't know if it has already happened, but if ESPN goes back to $50 games and Madden all of a sudden goes to $40, they are in DEEP trouble (at least for football).
This isn't like the automaker situation. This is the same as if there was only Ford and GM (and all dealerships were company owned so everyone followed company prices, no discounting or haggleing).
Of course, it ran fine. Then I installed 95 and it wouldn't run smooth anymore because 95 took up more resources than 3.1.
And I would have KILLED for 90mhz back then. Simpler times.
I agree. I think he could definatly parlay his success into speaking engaugements for graduations, maybe for motivational/public speaking classes, study advice (he must know good ways), etc. He seems to be pretty at ease in front of a croud, doesn't have an annoying voice, etc. There is a lot he could do.
I know there are many here at /. who would like to see a story like this be true (both for political reasons and for anti-e-voting reasons (I'm in this second group)). But if this has ANY truth to it, here is my guess:
It's a half-truth. The guy was paid to write a program to do it as an exercise to see how simple it would be to do. For all we know it was requested as part of a security review to be turned over to the company that made the e-voting equiptment to show them security holes that people were concerned about.
Now I have no proof, but if this is true at all, that would be my guess. And, of course, there is nothing wrong or illegal about writing such a program unless you intend to use or distribute it, which we also don't know about.
Why not give Ken his own trivia show where people try to stump him? It's not that far from what MS will have him doing.
So then I remember that episode of Keen Eddie (great show killed before it's time). The case in the episode involvs an EXTREEMLY famous man in England (fictional, of course) who had a trivia show where no one could stump him. One day he was stumped and then lost his show. He then became a bike messanger who forgot what he did with a package (this is the guy who remembers EVERYTHING). That's where he meets Keen Eddie.
Still, coincidince? Will Ken's memory start to slip untill he is attacked by a group that is trying to rob a bank because he lost their package?
If TV has taught us anything, yes!
I warned it was off-topic.
But I saw Encarta in a computer store the other day and thought... so what? With the internet now common and simple to use to find things (thanks to Google and it's forefathers), why would I want to pay for an encyclopedia on CD/DVD?
As a promotion goes, it's a good idea, except it seems like trying to sell horse & buggy carts to 1920s urbanites. It's a product that is past it's prime and will dissapear soon.
PS: Ken Jennins, works as a programmer in Utah, hired by MS. I can make a conspiracy out of that :)
I don't support something like that. The problem is it would discourage normal people from filing a complaint. What's to keep the government from saying "that was OK" to everything to collect a little more revenue (I don't think they would, but some people would).
That said, if a group is found to be behind all the thousands and THOUSANDS of complaints that are found to be largely baseless (hypothetical here, for example if they set up a program to automatically call for action whenever the word "ass" was found in closed captioning, even if it refered to a donkey), then the FCC should simply sue the group wasting time and money and preventing them from doing their jobs.
Plus while taking $100 from people after submitting how-ever-many bogus report might slow things down some, taking $1,000,000 from the group organising it would slow things down faster. (IMHO)
Reminds me of an episode of News Radio. Phil Hartman's character did an on air editorial about how another station shouldn't have run a show where they constantly and continuisly used words like "Penis" and how people shouldn't stand for that indecency, blah blah blah.
Later in the show he was forced to retract that on air because the show was talking to a doctor about Erectile Disfunction (or some such).
It all depends on the situation.
That said, I agree. This is pretty cool and could give benefits soon and cheap. I wonder how long it will be before this treatment becomes common (assuming it's found safe, etc.)
Lines, wavyness, causing ghosting of the normal image, etc would all make sense to me. Making static or beeps or some such on a radio would make sense to me. Magical TV transmition is doubtfull. I don't have a TV to test it with (all mine lack antennas), but untill someone posts a good video of it, I doubt it.
Thanks for saying that (I've noticed too and I don't get why), and thanks for the review (of sorts). Can I ask where you got yours? Did a local store have it early (they are supposed to be available in "early December"), or were you in on some beta test or what? I'd love to get my hands on one of these things.
It's Analog. That means that you go from Digital->Analog in the radio (which introduces imperfections). Then it goes from Analog->Digital in the computer (which introduces imperfections). While the quality may be close, it's not the same and without knowing exactly HOW it was compressed origionally, you can't get the same quality to filesize of the origional.
It's SLOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW. I can fill my 40gig iPod with music in a few minutes. But to copy all that off though analog would take days. While it's not as bad when the thing only holds 4 hours of stuff, that's 4 hours of my life that I'm wasting (compared to the 30 seconds to a minute 128mb of stuff should take).
You lose metadata (didn't see this in siblings). When it's on the XM thing, it knows how long each song is and the title and artist (I assume, XM broadcasts this info so it should be easy to save). When I copy that 4 hours to my PC through analog, I get one 4 hour file. No song names, no track marks, no artists, NOTHING. So you either have to do it manually or try to autodetect (like with silence) which has its own flaws.
And that's not to mention things like the soundcard on my laptop (the only PC I really use) is noisy (so the analog solution would require me to buy some kind of breakout box to get decent quality) and things look even worse.
Analog can work for a handfull of songs, but more than that... it's just too hard.
Now, wouldn't it be great if you could get a license to transfer stuff off this device ONTO your iPod? If they could work that out (say make it get automatically deleted, or you can't have any more than 12 hours of content recorded max or something) that would be FANTASTIC. Think how many of these things they could sell (even if they charged an extra $1 or $2 per month to do that).
Either way, a DVR for satellite radio (DAR - Digital Audio Recorder?) is an interesting development. Let's see if other recievers start adding these kind of features.
So for the same or less, this little thing is smaller, portable, AND CAN TIMESHIFT.
As an XM radio reciever goes, this is THE DEVICE unless you only want to ever listen in your car (which, by the way, would change).
It's not cheap, but it's a good deal relative to other solutions. Plus you can use it anywhere like a walkman and it could tape Art Bell or This American Life or any other show for you to listen to later.
I'd LOVE one. I'd suggest that they offer it stand alone (no home/car kits) to lower the price, but I think we all know that would only save maybe $50 bucks because the little device is by FAR the most expensive part.
OK, I don't know if anyone is strill reading this, but that is a GREAT idea. Then you WOULD be able to read the 'net with such a small resoultion. But if you just tried to render directly to the screen, many sites just wouldn't be viewable.
I wouldn't be suprised if someone sold that, but the screens are under 300x200 each. Great for games, but not much for web surfing.