the quote at the end of the article saying something like "key groups of users are currently left out because operators haven't figured out how to charge for it" is extreemly telling for how absolutely useless this stuff is.
phone companies want to bill you for every little thing you do with your phone regardless of wether or not to costs them a thing to provide. ultimately the -only- additional cost to the telco for these services will be the maintainance of a complicated billing network.
get a clue telcos. woo customers too your network with features. don't drive them away by trying to nickel and dime them to death.
CompactFlash cards are hardly any faster than a USB interface to begin with so firewire would be pointless. all computers have a USB 1.1 interface. how many have firewire?
most people don't use these things with a microdrive (half the battery life). A 512mb CF card is currenty 180 bucks.
Nex IIs not nearly as convenient as something with 10gigs (ipod wins there!) but they are much lighter and cheaper.
this is a tiny device. Mhz has no meaning. You think the CPU actually runs at a constant speed?
Long battery life so that you can use the thing without ever worrying if you've got enouch juice to hold you until you're near your charger is much more important.
I seriously hope people aren't being as stupid as they are with computers and buying PDAs based on the processor speed rather than the features.
even though it is easy and cheap to include such a feature. apple won't do it. doing that would prevent "serious users" (read: users with cash burning a hole in their pocket) from buying their $3000 machine in favor of their $1500 one.
just as the proliforation of car ignition kill switches making traditional theft difficult caused the number of car hijacking to sky rocket, this could do the same for laptop users with their key attached to or hidden on or in their person.
i'll keep my hand rather than attach a key controlling access to millions dollar secrets to it.
any application or standard dialog that lists filenames but does not sort them in a case insensitive manner should be trashed. its useless. i don't care if the filesystem itself is case sensitive or not but the high level application user should not present them to the user in a messed up order putting apple after Orange.
any website based on perl is doomed to become an unmaintainable mess. look at languages better designed for web use or at least maintainability (php, python, etc).
i'll always choose a program that exists and works with a good user interface over one that is never released because the author(s) thought it could be faster.
minimize the use of threads whenever possible. write your code in an event driven fashion as your friendly AC suggested. the poll() system call [superior to select(), though select() works well within its fixed size filedescriptor array limits] makes this possible.
the basic mentality to switch from threads to event programming is this: anytime you're using a thread solely so that it can sit around and block on high latency events (network or disk I/O) most of its lifetime, it should not be a thread.
its acceptable to have worker threads/processes that you hand computational tasks to and they trigger an event in your event loop when they hand a result back, but don't use threads of execution to manage your state. you'll pull your hair out and still have a nonfunctional program.
this is one of the biggest geek drawback for apple laptops if you intend to be using X11 apps. to find out how annoying it is, map all of your current mouse buttons to button_1 and see how well you survive.
i sure wish apple would put 2 or 3 button pads on their laptops, they could leave them configured to all act as the same button for dummies by default.
small, light, amazing battery life, awesome screen (1280x768), includes a cd-rw/dvd combo drive. check their website. slightly over your price range starting at around $1449 but worth it for a machine that'll you'll enjoy for several years.
the broadcaster has no need or reason to know how many people are receiving the stream as they only send out one copy of the data. granted with the ISP monopoly controlled by media companies today its doubtful we'll ever see multicast to the edge of the network.:(
agreed. build your own if you really know what you're doing and -enjoy- building it. I still do that. however i'd be more than happy to buy a prebuilt or mostly prebuilt system for myself if i could find a whitebox vendor that uses the parts i want (easy access case, ultra quiet high quality power supply, and the motherboard + cpu that i want). i'd still buy the ram and possibly the hard drive from elsewhere as those are extreemly marked up by most vendors compared to the best raw price you can get for what you need elsewhere.
you save a -lot- of time and headaches and messy vs. nice cabling if you buy a prebuilt system from a decent whitebox or bigname vendor. [you can even get warranties and support which can be good depending on how you plan to use the computer]
their business model is charging you per second or minute that you use the service. without going through a centralized system like cell towers they lose this ability.
very nice, but not gonna happen due to existing billion dollar companies not liking it.
"Recently there was a/. story about an FSF quiz that was designed to gauge your GPL knowledge. Just about everyone here on/. scored 70% or so. That's 30% misunderstanding."
What percentage of the microsoft license do people understand?
if ms and intel didn't continue to release software that continually pushed the hardware requirements they would both lose their largest source of revenue: new computer purchases!
python apparently has excellent macos X gui support. (i don't pay the apple tax myself so i can't judge first hand). on top of that you should be able to use anything with Qt or Gtk bindings using X on the mac (python and perl both have good bindings there).
[and before any perl weenies mod this down because i said to use a different language: grow up!]
The more obfuscated a password is, the more difficult of a time people have remembering it. thus is more likely it is that they will write it down and store it on a piece of paper near their workplace.
Try a combo of a reasonable but not insanely restrictive pass phrase plus a digital token (smart card, assuming you trust smart cards) to be safe. that way just writing the pass phrase down doesn't hurt and the pass phrase doesn't have to be so difficult to remember that it needs writing down.
Slashdot Mirror
the quote at the end of the article saying something like "key groups of users are currently left out because operators haven't figured out how to charge for it" is extreemly telling for how absolutely useless this stuff is.
phone companies want to bill you for every little thing you do with your phone regardless of wether or not to costs them a thing to provide. ultimately the -only- additional cost to the telco for these services will be the maintainance of a complicated billing network.
get a clue telcos. woo customers too your network with features. don't drive them away by trying to nickel and dime them to death.
CompactFlash cards are hardly any faster than a USB interface to begin with so firewire would be pointless. all computers have a USB 1.1 interface. how many have firewire?
most people don't use these things with a microdrive (half the battery life). A 512mb CF card is currenty 180 bucks.
Nex IIs not nearly as convenient as something with 10gigs (ipod wins there!) but they are much lighter and cheaper.
mod the parent up :)
this is a tiny device. Mhz has no meaning. You think the CPU actually runs at a constant speed?
Long battery life so that you can use the thing without ever worrying if you've got enouch juice to hold you until you're near your charger is much more important.
I seriously hope people aren't being as stupid as they are with computers and buying PDAs based on the processor speed rather than the features.
even though it is easy and cheap to include such a feature. apple won't do it. doing that would prevent "serious users" (read: users with cash burning a hole in their pocket) from buying their $3000 machine in favor of their $1500 one.
welcome to apple. bend over.
just as the proliforation of car ignition kill switches making traditional theft difficult caused the number of car hijacking to sky rocket, this could do the same for laptop users with their key attached to or hidden on or in their person.
i'll keep my hand rather than attach a key controlling access to millions dollar secrets to it.
any application or standard dialog that lists filenames but does not sort them in a case insensitive manner should be trashed. its useless. i don't care if the filesystem itself is case sensitive or not but the high level application user should not present them to the user in a messed up order putting apple after Orange.
any website based on perl is doomed to become an unmaintainable mess. look at languages better designed for web use or at least maintainability (php, python, etc).
i'll always choose a program that exists and works with a good user interface over one that is never released because the author(s) thought it could be faster.
listen to your profiler. everything else lies.
minimize the use of threads whenever possible. write your code in an event driven fashion as your friendly AC suggested. the poll() system call [superior to select(), though select() works well within its fixed size filedescriptor array limits] makes this possible.
the basic mentality to switch from threads to event programming is this: anytime you're using a thread solely so that it can sit around and block on high latency events (network or disk I/O) most of its lifetime, it should not be a thread.
its acceptable to have worker threads/processes that you hand computational tasks to and they trigger an event in your event loop when they hand a result back, but don't use threads of execution to manage your state. you'll pull your hair out and still have a nonfunctional program.
all such security systems are by definition only a single bug away from total failure. don't be so worried.
this is one of the biggest geek drawback for apple laptops if you intend to be using X11 apps. to find out how annoying it is, map all of your current mouse buttons to button_1 and see how well you survive.
i sure wish apple would put 2 or 3 button pads on their laptops, they could leave them configured to all act as the same button for dummies by default.
small, light, amazing battery life, awesome screen (1280x768), includes a cd-rw/dvd combo drive. check their website. slightly over your price range starting at around $1449 but worth it for a machine that'll you'll enjoy for several years.
why did some moron mod this down and give it a troll rating? he makes a perfectly good observation asking a perfectly good question.
the broadcaster has no need or reason to know how many people are receiving the stream as they only send out one copy of the data. granted with the ISP monopoly controlled by media companies today its doubtful we'll ever see multicast to the edge of the network. :(
agreed. build your own if you really know what you're doing and -enjoy- building it. I still do that. however i'd be more than happy to buy a prebuilt or mostly prebuilt system for myself if i could find a whitebox vendor that uses the parts i want (easy access case, ultra quiet high quality power supply, and the motherboard + cpu that i want). i'd still buy the ram and possibly the hard drive from elsewhere as those are extreemly marked up by most vendors compared to the best raw price you can get for what you need elsewhere.
you save a -lot- of time and headaches and messy vs. nice cabling if you buy a prebuilt system from a decent whitebox or bigname vendor. [you can even get warranties and support which can be good depending on how you plan to use the computer]
their business model is charging you per second or minute that you use the service. without going through a centralized system like cell towers they lose this ability.
very nice, but not gonna happen due to existing billion dollar companies not liking it.
that'll teach them to backup! BOFH!
ooo, these will be some good games.
What percentage of the microsoft license do people understand?
if ms and intel didn't continue to release software that continually pushed the hardware requirements they would both lose their largest source of revenue: new computer purchases!
python apparently has excellent macos X gui support. (i don't pay the apple tax myself so i can't judge first hand). on top of that you should be able to use anything with Qt or Gtk bindings using X on the mac (python and perl both have good bindings there).
[and before any perl weenies mod this down because i said to use a different language: grow up!]
we already have dvd-r, dvd-ram, dvd-rw, dvd+rw... why not add a lower cost higher storage capacity alternative?
The more obfuscated a password is, the more difficult of a time people have remembering it. thus is more likely it is that they will write it down and store it on a piece of paper near their workplace.
Try a combo of a reasonable but not insanely restrictive pass phrase plus a digital token (smart card, assuming you trust smart cards) to be safe. that way just writing the pass phrase down doesn't hurt and the pass phrase doesn't have to be so difficult to remember that it needs writing down.
i wish i could sell absolutely nothing of value to a company for $8 million dollars.