The RIAA has absolutely *zero* interest in seeing digital music devices become accepted by the public.
They know that SDMI is a giant pain in the ass. This way they can let the CONSUMER kill portable digital music devices -- people will buy SDMI devices, they'll suck rocks, and people will naturally return them in droves.
Net result: hardware companies get royally screwed, and they all vow to never produce another portable MP3 player. And it's all because the "consumer doesn't like hardware players" . . . .
I used to think the RIAA was filled with morons. Now I know that they're not morons -- they're evil.
Yeah, I know I'm gonna get flamed back to the Stone Age for this one, but let's not have someone waste time porting Starcraft . . . it's just too old.
There are so many newer, up-and-coming games that Loki could be spending their time on:
Halo
Oni
Tribes2
TeamFortress2
Warcraft3
. . . et cetera . . .
After all, why don't we aim our proselytizing at games BEFORE they come out? Have you seen the Halo trailers? Good lord, we need to have that game on Linux.
. . . although I'd disagree about the key-chording, but that's probably just because I'm a keyboard bigot . . .
But seriously, what about the Clio form-factor? Clio sucks because it uses WinCE (I own a CE device, and CE still sucks). From a design perspective, Clio rocks the house! I *love* that reversable laptop-now-it's-a-slate concept.
If someone could make a Clio-shaped device with a bigger screen and an easily-accessible CompactFlash slot (IBM Microdrive!) -- I'd buy one in an instant.
Also, you can get around the problems of wireless range depending on what tech you use. A powerful, but battery-destroying, option would be to include a cellmodem that automatically switched into action when you moved outside of regular wireless range.
Lastly, let's not forget about durability. With the Clio form-factor, I'd say use crazy alloys or carbon-fiber. Of course, that would cost a fortune, but *man* it might be worth it.
One of the audience asked about Native Mode during the Q&A session:
. . . it sounds like Transmeta will definitely NOT be releasing the info needed to code directly against their hardware. Their argument hinges around the fact that the two chips they have today both have different code requirements -- so if they let you write directly to the 3120, your code wouldn't work at all on the 5400.
Moreover, they expect to continue this state of affairs. The result is that if you coded directly for any given Transmeta chip, you'd be writing stuff that didn't work on any other Transmeta CPU.
Which, naturally, they view as a bad thing.
Toward the end of their answer to that question, the CEO did hedge a little, so it's still possible that they'll release the info needed to go Native. But it doesn't sound likely.
. . . frankly, you're not missing much. It's mostly a guy walking around on stage, and he's doing a pretty good job of explaining things -- the slides don't add much.
The prototype portables are mostly "slate" designs -- you've probably seen 'em before elsewhere.
. . . but I think I'm gonna have to buy a new mobile computing system pretty soon . . .
I recently saw a TV science show talking about how the moon came into existance -- the show took the angle that a "moon-creating impact" must have occurred at some point in the distant past.
Basically, the idea was that the Earth got hit by another planet, at a fairly oblique angle. The show argued that this would explain why the Earth has an iron core (we got most of the iron from the other planet, in addition to the one we had already), and so on.
Since the impact was so cataclysmic, everything on the pre-impact Earth (Earth Mk I) got annihilated, and everything on the impacting planet gets killed too (since both planets get liquified).
My question is this: if we assume that the moon-creating impact happened, then WHEN did it happen, and how does that affect the possibility of life arriving on Earth from elsewhere in the solar system?
I mean, if everything on Earth (even bacteria) got killed only a couple billion years ago, it makes it somewhat unlikely that anything could have arrived from Mars post-impact, given the purported rates of Mars Rock Impacts mentioned in the article . . .
If I had to guess, I'd say that the RS6000 product line is exactly why IBM is endorsing Linux.
. . . because many of my customers are bailing out of the RS60000, and moving to Linux machines. Nobody wants to buy an RS6K if they can possibly avoid it, and some of my customers are even trying to avoid using RS6K in situations where it's almost *required*!
Of course, this probably isn't a representative sample, but in mainframe shops that I deal with, they're all trying to bail out on RS6K -- they like AIX just fine, but they can't stand the stuff it runs on.
. . . is that SNA experts are so freakin expensive, and they're nearly impossible to find!
As a result, many of my customer sites rely on ad hoc, in-house SNA "expertise", resulting in poorly configured networks that simply throw performance out the window.
THEN the customers have the gall to blame my *nix app, and call screaming about multi-second response time on simple queries.
So I end up doing an exhaustive performance analysis of the link, demonstrate that the *nix server is responding in about 500ms, show that their mainframe is responding in about the same time, and then demonstrate that their network is completely screwed.
Net Revenue to me: zero. Net time expended: six hours.
Arrrggghhhh!! Working with mainframes is a giant pain in the ass, simply because of SNA. The mainframe app works quickly, my *nix app works quickly, and SNA just kills both of 'em because it's impossible for a non-expert to tune an SNA network.
Of course, this really isn't the fault of SNA; but I still blame it every time I can't find an SNA guy to fix a customer network . . .
Actually, headphones attached to your wrist works pretty well. When I was a kid I got a gift of one of those radio watches, and it worked like a charm.
When you put on a jacket, the headphone cable simply goes up the jacket sleeve. No fuss, no muss, and it's actually LESS likely to catch on things than a regular headphone cable.
The biggest difficulty was the controls -- the dials were so small you basically ended up selecting a single station, and leaving it at that. I expect that the MP3 watch will be similar -- people will just press PLAY and nothing else.
It was also interesting that the interviewer made the implicit assumption that space travel was primarily a means to reduce terrestrial overpopulation!
I mean, dang, talk about the wrong reason for space travel!
Another way to handle space travel would be (as mentioned in passing in the article) wholesale genetic engineering.
The harsh environment of space and the other planets would be less of a concern if the humans living there were sufficiently engineered.
This doesn't mean that we could just go walking about Mars without a suit -- just that we wouldn't need as much of a suit in the first place. Radiation resistance, for example, would be inordinately useful . . .
Given the relevant bioengineering skillz, we could conceivably engineer different types of people for different tasks -- one type for zero-g orbital, another type for Mars, another type for living under continuous thrust, etc.
. . . it would be sort of ironic if the only way for humanity to reach space was to destroy Humanity and replace it with dozens of customized non-human species . . .
. . . why are you still here, and why should anybody care what you think?
Ohhh, how foolish of me, I forgot -- you don't actually want to make constructive criticism, you'd rather rant and throw your little toys around.
Here's a tip that you clearly need:
Take a deep breath, and count to ten before you say anything.
The next time you feel like ranting, follow the advice above, and then try to come up with something constructive you could do to help the situation!
After all, simply screaming about a "morass of half-assed-ness" doesn't really do anybody any good, and it makes you look about as appealing as the gum I just scraped off my shoe.
Well, one way to look at it (as mentioned by another poster in this thread, above) would be to say that "It is my fiduciary duty to my shareholders to take advantage of this financial windfall". See, if you treat yourself like a corporate entity, these things are easier to justify.
Perhaps the most persuasive argument (to me) however, is this:
Microsoft has zillions of lawyers and accountants.
Microsoft has zillions of executives.
The lawyers, accountants, and executives all decided that this scam of theirs was a good idea.
They collectively decided that this was a gamble worth taking, and they went for it.
As so often happens in gambling, the other side (us citizens) won.
Microsoft took a shot, and they lost. Big deal. I feel no guilt in taking the money of someone that bet, and lost -- especially if they can afford it.
It's not official, mind you, so it could just be wishful thinking on the part of various rumor-mongers, but I've heard that Apple still has secret support for Intel hardware.
In particular, I'd heard that they do occasional snapshot builds on Intel hardware to make sure that they haven't broken anything too seriously.
In addition, some website (possibly Ars Technica?) reported finding evidence of x86 build capability inside OS X Server (I think it was the DP2 build).
Again, it could all be nothing more than wishful thinking. Heck, it could just be a rogue engineer inside Apple doing his own thing. But at the very least there is still a *glimmer* of hope regarding x86 and OSX . . .
. . . is the apparent fact that the "dock" icons have a zoom effect when the mouse rolls over them.
So if your dock has tiny 4x4 icons, they'll zoom up to a readable size when you pass the mouse over -- I believe that this is the effect being shown in the screenshot.
I don't know how well that will actually work, but it'll be interesting to see how it all turns out . . .
Although it's a nifty "hack" of a way to check credit numbers, your friends are opening themselves up to serious lawsuit action.
There are about a zillion laws against this kind of thing, and unless they've got really deep pockets they could find themselves in VERY serious trouble (like, the kind of trouble that completely ruins your finances, forever).
If someone detects this "extracurricular" activity on their credit cards, they can complain to the card issuer. If the issuer gets enough complaints, they'll come after your friends with lawyers -- the individual customers won't have to spend a dime in legal fees. The gigantic financial institution will take care of that for them . . .
MS knew *exactly* what they were getting into when they offered these deals in Oregon and California -- they simply made the educated bet that enough people wouldn't cancel out.
Now then, if lots of people cancel out, then they lost their bet. Fair and square. If almost nobody cancels out, then they win their bet. Also fair and square.
You can't tell me that MS didn't research this. They research EVERYTHING!
It was a gamble, MS knew it, so if we can take advantage of it -- good! Nobody is breaking any laws, nobody is getting screwed by accident. They took their chances, and now we get to take our turn at the table . . .
Besides which, this is only in two states. MS (and CompuServe, and AOL, etc. etc.) is busy screwing everyone else in every other state with these deals, so it's only fair that at least some consumers get a chance at the bonus.
I've always had pretty good luck with Pair Networks.
Mind you, I only use server space there -- I haven't tried to colocate whole machines -- but they recently moved their entire NOC and they did a pretty damn fine job of it.
If I lived in California, I think I might be headed out to buy a free computer tonight.
After all, $400 takes a big chunk of expense out of a low-end machine, and just about any of those crummy E-Machines units would still make a decent firewall/router etc.
Moreover, the $400 isn't so much money that I wouldn't be willing to take the chance on getting burned.
I mean, if they pull a 180 and enforce a cancellation penalty, I'm still not so badly off . . . and if they don't enforce, I get a free computer!
Somebody give this a try & let us know how it works out.
Slashdot Mirror
They know that SDMI is a giant pain in the ass. This way they can let the CONSUMER kill portable digital music devices -- people will buy SDMI devices, they'll suck rocks, and people will naturally return them in droves.
Net result: hardware companies get royally screwed, and they all vow to never produce another portable MP3 player. And it's all because the "consumer doesn't like hardware players" . . . .
I used to think the RIAA was filled with morons. Now I know that they're not morons -- they're evil.
There are so many newer, up-and-coming games that Loki could be spending their time on:
- Halo
- Oni
- Tribes2
- TeamFortress2
- Warcraft3
- . . . et cetera . . .
After all, why don't we aim our proselytizing at games BEFORE they come out? Have you seen the Halo trailers? Good lord, we need to have that game on Linux.. . . of course, I could be wrong . . .
But seriously, what about the Clio form-factor? Clio sucks because it uses WinCE (I own a CE device, and CE still sucks). From a design perspective, Clio rocks the house! I *love* that reversable laptop-now-it's-a-slate concept.
If someone could make a Clio-shaped device with a bigger screen and an easily-accessible CompactFlash slot (IBM Microdrive!) -- I'd buy one in an instant.
Also, you can get around the problems of wireless range depending on what tech you use. A powerful, but battery-destroying, option would be to include a cellmodem that automatically switched into action when you moved outside of regular wireless range.
Lastly, let's not forget about durability. With the Clio form-factor, I'd say use crazy alloys or carbon-fiber. Of course, that would cost a fortune, but *man* it might be worth it.
. . . it sounds like Transmeta will definitely NOT be releasing the info needed to code directly against their hardware. Their argument hinges around the fact that the two chips they have today both have different code requirements -- so if they let you write directly to the 3120, your code wouldn't work at all on the 5400.
Moreover, they expect to continue this state of affairs. The result is that if you coded directly for any given Transmeta chip, you'd be writing stuff that didn't work on any other Transmeta CPU.
Which, naturally, they view as a bad thing.
Toward the end of their answer to that question, the CEO did hedge a little, so it's still possible that they'll release the info needed to go Native. But it doesn't sound likely.
. . . or that's what *I* thought they said . . .
The prototype portables are mostly "slate" designs -- you've probably seen 'em before elsewhere.
. . . but I think I'm gonna have to buy a new mobile computing system pretty soon . . .
I mean, it ought to be publically available, but this *is* the NSA we're talking about here, so I'm not exactly holding my breath.
Ideas? Anyone? Bueller?
Basically, the idea was that the Earth got hit by another planet, at a fairly oblique angle. The show argued that this would explain why the Earth has an iron core (we got most of the iron from the other planet, in addition to the one we had already), and so on.
Since the impact was so cataclysmic, everything on the pre-impact Earth (Earth Mk I) got annihilated, and everything on the impacting planet gets killed too (since both planets get liquified).
My question is this: if we assume that the moon-creating impact happened, then WHEN did it happen, and how does that affect the possibility of life arriving on Earth from elsewhere in the solar system?
I mean, if everything on Earth (even bacteria) got killed only a couple billion years ago, it makes it somewhat unlikely that anything could have arrived from Mars post-impact, given the purported rates of Mars Rock Impacts mentioned in the article . . .
I dunno; it struck me as interesting.
Really.
If so, there's a problem with your analogy -- software patches are free, and weapons are not.
If all levels of weaponry were free, and none of them could be used for evil purposes, then your analogy would hold.
However, weapons are not free, and they CAN be used for evil purposes -- unlike software patches.
Ever accidentally patched your TCP/IP stack with a SCSI patch? I thought not. Ever missed a target with a bullet? I thought so.
This doesn't mean that your underlying point is equally flawed, but you'll need to elaborate on it a bit more . . .
If so, I'm interested in hearing about it . . . particularly in terms of how it compares to the usual "Open Edition" stuff.
. . . because many of my customers are bailing out of the RS60000, and moving to Linux machines. Nobody wants to buy an RS6K if they can possibly avoid it, and some of my customers are even trying to avoid using RS6K in situations where it's almost *required*!
Of course, this probably isn't a representative sample, but in mainframe shops that I deal with, they're all trying to bail out on RS6K -- they like AIX just fine, but they can't stand the stuff it runs on.
As a result, many of my customer sites rely on ad hoc, in-house SNA "expertise", resulting in poorly configured networks that simply throw performance out the window.
THEN the customers have the gall to blame my *nix app, and call screaming about multi-second response time on simple queries.
So I end up doing an exhaustive performance analysis of the link, demonstrate that the *nix server is responding in about 500ms, show that their mainframe is responding in about the same time, and then demonstrate that their network is completely screwed.
Net Revenue to me: zero. Net time expended: six hours.
Arrrggghhhh!! Working with mainframes is a giant pain in the ass, simply because of SNA. The mainframe app works quickly, my *nix app works quickly, and SNA just kills both of 'em because it's impossible for a non-expert to tune an SNA network.
Of course, this really isn't the fault of SNA; but I still blame it every time I can't find an SNA guy to fix a customer network . . .
When you put on a jacket, the headphone cable simply goes up the jacket sleeve. No fuss, no muss, and it's actually LESS likely to catch on things than a regular headphone cable.
The biggest difficulty was the controls -- the dials were so small you basically ended up selecting a single station, and leaving it at that. I expect that the MP3 watch will be similar -- people will just press PLAY and nothing else.
I mean, dang, talk about the wrong reason for space travel!
The harsh environment of space and the other planets would be less of a concern if the humans living there were sufficiently engineered.
This doesn't mean that we could just go walking about Mars without a suit -- just that we wouldn't need as much of a suit in the first place. Radiation resistance, for example, would be inordinately useful . . .
Given the relevant bioengineering skillz, we could conceivably engineer different types of people for different tasks -- one type for zero-g orbital, another type for Mars, another type for living under continuous thrust, etc.
. . . it would be sort of ironic if the only way for humanity to reach space was to destroy Humanity and replace it with dozens of customized non-human species . . .
Ohhh, how foolish of me, I forgot -- you don't actually want to make constructive criticism, you'd rather rant and throw your little toys around.
Here's a tip that you clearly need:
The next time you feel like ranting, follow the advice above, and then try to come up with something constructive you could do to help the situation!After all, simply screaming about a "morass of half-assed-ness" doesn't really do anybody any good, and it makes you look about as appealing as the gum I just scraped off my shoe.
Perhaps the most persuasive argument (to me) however, is this:
- Microsoft has zillions of lawyers and accountants.
- Microsoft has zillions of executives.
- The lawyers, accountants, and executives all decided that this scam of theirs was a good idea.
- They collectively decided that this was a gamble worth taking, and they went for it.
- As so often happens in gambling, the other side (us citizens) won.
Microsoft took a shot, and they lost. Big deal. I feel no guilt in taking the money of someone that bet, and lost -- especially if they can afford it.In fact, I feel pretty good about it . . .
In particular, I'd heard that they do occasional snapshot builds on Intel hardware to make sure that they haven't broken anything too seriously.
In addition, some website (possibly Ars Technica?) reported finding evidence of x86 build capability inside OS X Server (I think it was the DP2 build).
Again, it could all be nothing more than wishful thinking. Heck, it could just be a rogue engineer inside Apple doing his own thing. But at the very least there is still a *glimmer* of hope regarding x86 and OSX . . .
So if your dock has tiny 4x4 icons, they'll zoom up to a readable size when you pass the mouse over -- I believe that this is the effect being shown in the screenshot.
I don't know how well that will actually work, but it'll be interesting to see how it all turns out . . .
There are about a zillion laws against this kind of thing, and unless they've got really deep pockets they could find themselves in VERY serious trouble (like, the kind of trouble that completely ruins your finances, forever).
If someone detects this "extracurricular" activity on their credit cards, they can complain to the card issuer. If the issuer gets enough complaints, they'll come after your friends with lawyers -- the individual customers won't have to spend a dime in legal fees. The gigantic financial institution will take care of that for them . . .
Now then, if lots of people cancel out, then they lost their bet. Fair and square. If almost nobody cancels out, then they win their bet. Also fair and square.
You can't tell me that MS didn't research this. They research EVERYTHING!
It was a gamble, MS knew it, so if we can take advantage of it -- good! Nobody is breaking any laws, nobody is getting screwed by accident. They took their chances, and now we get to take our turn at the table . . .
Besides which, this is only in two states. MS (and CompuServe, and AOL, etc. etc.) is busy screwing everyone else in every other state with these deals, so it's only fair that at least some consumers get a chance at the bonus.
Mind you, I only use server space there -- I haven't tried to colocate whole machines -- but they recently moved their entire NOC and they did a pretty damn fine job of it.
As a result, I trust them even more.
I mean, it would make more sense that way.
After all, $400 takes a big chunk of expense out of a low-end machine, and just about any of those crummy E-Machines units would still make a decent firewall/router etc.
Moreover, the $400 isn't so much money that I wouldn't be willing to take the chance on getting burned.
I mean, if they pull a 180 and enforce a cancellation penalty, I'm still not so badly off . . . and if they don't enforce, I get a free computer!
Somebody give this a try & let us know how it works out.