All that most anyone needs is maybe 3mb and even that would allow you to some some video streaming (Perhaps not in HD) 5mb would do most American's just fine for now.
Fixed that for you. 56K was enough for most uses in 1999, when Flash was used sparingly, coding was still fairly tight, patches for Windows were a few hundred KBytes and were one-or-two at a clip, not a dozen every Tuesday. In 1999, we used HTML, not AJAX, and our monitors were still 1024x768. "Streaming video" was at best 15fps and extremely blocky at 320x24. Digital cameras started at $400, were 1megapixel (tops), and photos were either printed out or burnt to CD instead of being uploaded somewhere. MP3s were typically encoded at 128kbps and shared on Napster. Microsoft Word was still duking it out with WordPerfect and bought on CD, which also was a feasible medium to backup our 10GByte hard drives.
Over the last decade, Myspace, Facebook, Photobucket, Youtube, Hulu, Google Docs, Mozy, and nearly a gig's worth of Windows patches have changed the way we use the Internet. What about the next decade? Do you think that 3Mbits/sec is going to be enough in 2019? I doubt it.
Re:5 Megapixel camera?!? Why this thing again?
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iPhone 4 Rumors Rumble
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· Score: 3, Interesting
[citation needed] for phones taking 12MP photos. Additionally, in the case of camera phones, the true upgrades need to be done on the CMOS sensors, which are terrible in anything but broad daylight. "HD Video" from a camera phone is, as far as I have seen, almost always a joke as well. yes technically it may have more than 480 horizontal lines of resolution, but the quality has always lagged severely behind digital cameras and camcorders, and throwing more megapixels at it isn't the answer. The issue is that everyone wants devices that are smaller, thinner, have longer battery life, and can withstand abuse. Pro photographers and videographers still use huge cameras for a reason.
Verizon is making bing the only search site usable by Verizon customers.
Either they messed up on my Curve (because I can search Google just fine from the browser, it's even still the default since I used it last), Microsoft simply paid to have "bing" icon rolled onto my blackberry's app screen, or [citation needed].
Similar success here. I was just talking to a friend of mine last night about getting T-Mo, because of everything I've heard and read about everyone else, they consistently seem to be the least corrupt. My Touch Pro2 supports 3G and the times I've used a data plan (I said "pretty please" when I bought the phone and they let me get away with not having a data plan consistently), it's been MUCH faster than Verizon on my BlackBerry Curve (yes, I carry both, work pays for the Blackberry). The CSRs have been friendly, courteous, know what they're talking about, and in five years of service with them haven't left an issue unresolved. This includes getting MMS to work with my jailbroken, unlocked iPhone when I had one.
With regards to this search issue, I think it's half FUD. When I read the summary, I looked at my Curve. Yes, there was a nifty Bing icon on my applications screen, and it might have even replaced a search icon that I've never used in the six months that I've owned the Curve. But I went into the Browser, and both Google and Wikipedia are both immediately available from the search function there, which is the only place I've ever used it. If there was a search icon that I hadn't noticed and they replaced it, then yeah that's kinda not-nice, but there's a difference between switching an icon and removing functionality. It's not like they firewalled Google or even removed them as being the default in the Browser (mine was at Wiki, the last place I did a search). Not that I have a whole lot of love for Verizon (see previous paragraph), but it's interesting that customer loyalty only goes as far as having to do a single extra click on the trackball.
I agree with you to a certain point. A standard XP disc does require lots of maintenance to get up to speed, I won't argue that. Sometimes I wonder which source the OS gets more data from - the disc or Windows Update, 'cuz it feels like I'm downloading half an operating system after the initial installation.
At the same time, there are two other points that make it an unfair comparison. First off, XP is nearly a decade old. Comparing a vintage-2001 version of Windows to a vintage-2009 distro of Linux (any distro) is an unfair comparison. Comparing Windows 7 to Ubuntu 9.04 would be a bit more fair; both of them worked OOTB with similar hardware and most of the undetected stuff was consistent (nVidia chipset and Sigmatel Audio both worked, Logitech LCD and M-Audio Connectiv box didn't work on either). Conversely, I don't have versions of Linux from vintage-2001 to test on the same hardware, but I'm guessing my SLI'd GeForce 8700M's wouldn't get much further than a generic SVGA driver from most distros of that era, any more than XP provides out of the box. Second, while Windows does tend to require visits to various third party manufacturers to get drivers, most of them tend to be Installshield next->agree->next->finish->reboot affairs, whether downloaded or coming from the CDs that ship with hardware. Sure it's a bit time consuming to gather them, but in most cases that can be done in less than an hour over DSL or cable. No matter whose fault it is, ultimately I've found that in the vast majority of cases that if $HARDWARE doesn't work out of the box with a given distro, then getting it to work can easily become a rather time-consuming process of forum searching, terminal commands, and dependency downloads, the scope of which depends on which piece of hardware needs to be supported.
My question is where Google will put the ads so that they are actually seen. If they build it into software, it's only a matter of time before the phone is rooted/jailbroken/HardSPL'd and ad-free firmware ends up on Rapidshare. Then it's just a matter of simplifying the process down to making it feasible for anyone sick enough of the ads to make the gamble of performing a warranty-voiding process on their phone, and unless ads live unobtrusively in the browser, Google will end up right next to the iPhone, silently fighting the gPhone Dev Team.
In my opinion, it really depends. The Ribbon was a royal pain for the first 2-3 weeks, because I had to find commands that I used to know where they were. That was, indeed, annoying. Once I found those though, the ribbon made it a whole lot easier to find commands that I used less consistently, or that seemed to be obscured. Styles, mail merging, tracking changes,
I remember having to deal with page numbering in Office 2003, and spent half an hour trying to figure out how to get it to do what I wanted it to do. I fired up Office 2007, and had the job done in about five minutes. While adding comments has been around since office 97, no one ever used it. I can't tell you how annoying group projects were when it came time to make the final version to hand in, because showing the rest of the group how to add comments was an exercise in futility. Now, I can tell them "Click 'New Comment' in the 'Review' Tab".
I don't think the Ribbon is the perfect UI, nor do I think that it should become a universal interface (DirectDVD is a prime example of a software UI that doesn't need it), but I do think that in the case of Office, it did solve a bunch of problems that the original UI had. Options are available to help if you're having issues finding something specific.
Sorry if I come off as an MS shill, I'm not on their payroll, nor am I a fanboi, nor am I trying to attack your personal preference, and I apologize if I came across as such.
It will always depend. If Friend A tries to show me how cool Widget A is, and I always see him using it and how it has been a positive acquisition for him, then I'm likely to take his endorsement of the product into account. If Friend B tries to show me that she thinks that Widget B is cool, but she never walks around with it, and the only time I ever hear anything about it is when she tries to get me to buy one, and when I really buckle down and ask her what she thinks of it she avoids a direct answer, then you can bet that I'm not going to be terribly impressed with Widget B and certainly won't be buying one.
this happens all the time, right now. People come to me all the time to talk to me about buying computers and cell phones. I give them my honest opinion, which is typically reflected in what I own, or in spite of what I own. I tell friends that I love my Touch Pro2 and to seriously consider getting one, but tell fellow DJ friends that I'm dissatisfied with my purchase of Torq and that I would recommend Deckadance or Serato instead. My influence comes from the fact that I give it honestly, consistently, and that people are generally happy with purchases I recommend to them. If Microsoft wants to start giving me $29 copies of Win7 and $49 copies of Office for doing what I do now, I've got no problem with that. In fact, when I worked retail, they gave me copies of Halo 2 and Gears of War for free if I took some tests and answered a few multiple choice questions on it.
until they switch away from Windows, your influence doesn't affect their bottom line. The issue with influence-based discounts like this is that in most cases that influence must be quantifiable. Unfortunately from Microsoft's standpoint, your influence on them has not yet affected a purchasing decision.
I think it really depends on the game, and what the DLC advantages are. Rock Band's DLC is new songs. Given that Rock Band is generally a party game or a string of song plays, it makes some sense in theory. The problem here is the slippery slope. (disclaimer: I don't own rock band, so i'm pulling these numbers out of thin air) Say that Rock Band 1 came with 50 songs, cost $60, and each new song was $3 a pop. Fine. That makes sense; there was a good value with the initial purchase, and anything after that was simply paying extra for extra value. Seeing how lucrative the extra $3/song deal became let's say that Rock Band 2 came with 40 songs, but fewer top 40 hits, the game still debuted at $60, and additional songs were still $3 a pop. Again, a decent value, but more reason to spend some more money to get the songs you really wanna play. Rock Band 3 costs the same $60, comes with 30 songs that were B-side tracks from bands you never heard of, and new songs are now $4 a pop. I'm not being scared of change, I just know a frog boiling in a pot when I see one.
For the first time ever, I pre-ordered a game: Mass Effect 2. The first game was incredible, and if the second one is as good as it looks, then I have no problem whatsoever forking over the $60 for the super-deluxe edition; I even did so at GameStop so that I could get the special armor. That's all well and good. In the first game, the DLC was a single level that took me an extra 90 minutes to complete and got me a few extra XP and Paragon points. I only used it the second time around, and it was a nice expansion, but it wasn't like I had issues completing the game the first time. If Mass Effect 3 costs me $70 up front to get the full game on discs, so be it. But I'd rather walk into a store knowing that I got what essentially amounts to a full product (patches & freebies notwithstanding), then spend $60 and have to pay real money for the armor from the arms dealers in the game. Micropayments are micro-for-now payments, which I guarantee you won't be going away or going down once they become integral parts of games whereby after plunking down $60 for the game, you'll be parting with another $20 to complete the game with any degree of expedience. Personally, I wonder how much of that revenue they could re-obtain simply by ditching SecuROM.
I neither feel bad for EA, nor do I agree with them. I do, however, see a very easy means to improperly maximize revenue. If you trust Electronic Arts, a publicly traded for-profit company, to implement an easy means of maximizing revenue and NOT begin to exploit it at some point in the future, then that's all well and good. Personally, I'll tread VERY lightly and realize that the idea of lending games to my friends (on a they-can-play-it-i-can't basis) or reselling them at some point of the future is a right granted to all gamers by legislation, but taken away by technology.
Once the bittorrent trackers in China are down, I'm sure the professional counterfeiters will appreciate the boost in business as everyone heads to the streets for their warez. For the first time, the pirates and the **AA both benefit from the same political action!
I think that putting electronic music on vinyl is 1/6 about the mix itself (which, in the hands of a skilled vinyl DJ, will sound better), and 1/6 the fact that vinyl playback will result in smoother waveforms. A digital file, when zoomed in on the waveform, will eventually reveal a slight "stairstep" effect from one sample to the next, instead of a smooth sine curve. after playing back a few times, digital artifacts will smooth over with wear from the needle. The other 2/3 of it is likely psychological: a live DJ spinning vinyl makes the crowd feel "closer" to the music, the bandwagon vinyl-must-sound-better-because-everyone-says-it-does phenomenon, and of course the amount of drugs and alcohol traditionally consumed at a rave will make everything sound better, i'd imagine.
I just got myself a pair of Numark TTX turntables and a copy of Torq (M-Audio's response to FinalScratch and Serato) earlier this year. Nearly every timecoded vinyl system supports both absolute mode and relative mode; the former mapping playback of a song to exact positions on the record, while the latter only uses velocity and direction. In absolute mode, it's easier to do needle drops and jump to specific parts of a song, while relative mode gives you cue points, so jumping to a particular downbeat or scratch sample can be done instantly with a keyboard shortcut or MIDI pad. It's much easier to DJ using relative mode and cue points since the needle's position doesn't matter, but whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is the DJ scene's version of the vi vs. emacs debate.
The GP's comment about working with vinyl vs. DAT is correct - it's MUCH easier to jump to a specific point on a track with a needle drop than it is with linear media like tape (although apparently it can be done). Beat Juggling for more than a measure (MAYBE two) is just about impossible to do with linear media like tape.
Finally, the lack of a wide dynamic range has its advantages, too. When I DJ weddings, many couples want to hear Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin during dinner, and I'm happy to oblige. Specifically Sinatra's tracks are a bit annoying because they change volume very suddenly. Inevitably this leads to grandpa (who invariably gets seated right next to the speakers) complaining about how loud it is when the brass section blasts it out, while the bride and groom who are in the back are complaining because they can't hear anything *but* the horn blasts. During dancing segments, it's also jarring to go from one song that's at -6db and go to one at -2db. I appreciate it when songs are fairly normalized and are fairly consistent (a few measures of the drums cutting out during the bridge is one thing, having to constantly ride the gain control on my mixer is a royal pain when I have to cue up the next track). Wide dynamic ranges are wonderful from an artistic perspective and I can appreciate them in "listening music" (classical, jazz, opera, even some rock), but less in dance music (although it can be done properly there, too [this song def sounds better on vinyl than on youtube, btw]).
Manual Mod +1 Informative; people with points PLEASE mod this person up. Also, I wouldn't recommend every slashdotter clogging his inbox. E-mails from places within the regional demographic are going to carry much more weight than some angry slashdotter who is, based on region, unlikely to ever be a potential customer. Given that I live in New York, my e-mail would mean nothing, so people nearby PLEASE take a stand!
By the numbers, and largely ignoring the fact that Linux is an OS while Photoshop is a design app...
1.) Photoshop simply has a much higher installed user base. Admittedly I've only got anecdotal evidence, but my Linux class in college had about 23 students in it, and there were only two of them. There were a dozen Photoshop classes, all with 30 students or more. Odds are that you're within two degrees of separation from several people who know photoshop. Similarly, every library I've ever been in has at least one book on how to use Photoshop, and even if it's a version or two outdated, much of it is still relevant, which segues me to...
2.) Photoshop is largely consistent. Yes, there are several versions of Photoshop currently in production use, but the core commands that most people are going to use have remained largely consistent, and there's nowhere NEAR as many variables between the different Photoshop iterations and Linux. Gnome or KDE? What Distro? Which repositories are in Synaptic? Are you even USING Synaptic, or are you using Yum? Does your distro use RPMs, DEBs, or simply tarballs? All of those are going to come into play just to INSTALL an application, and will directly affect the steps required. Adding a Gaussian Blur in Photoshop has required the exact same steps since at least 7.0, likely earlier.
3.) There is never, ever, a command line to deal with in Photoshop. I'll completely admit that most recent distros make the command line as optional as it is in Windows, but there isn't even a possibility that anyone will ever need to do anything in a command line in Photoshop.
4.) The average new Photoshop user is more likely to have *some* rudimentary form of graphic design experience than a new Linux user will have in UNIX. I'm sure that virtually everyone who starts using Photoshop has done at least SOMETHING in Paint, Publisher, or hand-drawn something. Others had formal training in manually doing tasks with ink, paper, and film, that Photoshop has replaced. Regardless, there is some prior knowledge that makes Photoshop more familiar to a new user than Linux. Admittedly though, there is enough similarity between GNOME/KDE and Windows to make getting to Firefox simple enough, but even things like the folder structure to some people takes time (explaining that "Home" is "My Documents" is easy, but explaining that "/dev/hda1" is the same as "C:" is a little less intuitive).
5.) Similarly, Photoshop's output is a whole lot easier to determine whether what you had in your head ended up coming to fruition, while Linux isn't necessarily as obvious. Yes, starting a program or closing a window will be obvious, but what about manually configuring an IP address, or figuring out whether you have the proper driver installed? these problems are a bit more difficult for the average end-user to see, depending on their circumstance (i.e. bad video driver is easy, while a multifunction driver might print fine, but not scan, or might print fine locally, but not over a network).
6.) Photoshop's internal documentation *is* much better than many Linux apps I've used. My copy of the Adobe CS3 suite came in a box with about 18 pounds of printed manuals, one for each app. The one for After Effects is an inch-and-a-half thick, and it lists EVERY command you can use for expressions (about as close to a command line as you're gonna get from the Adobe suite), along with the best contexts to use it in, and the syntax of the arguments. The help file mirrors this as well, and covers all of the basics and lots of the intermediate stuff. Additionally, it's not at all hard to find largely simplified tutorials to get specific looks out of Photoshop (stuff like "make a new document...press F7...use these exact parameters...make a new layer...add this filter using these parameters..."). some of this is mirrored in Linux (I was able to find one such tutorial for installing Torrentflux that was written in a similar stepwise manner), but i'd dare say the majority of it isn't.
But would you have a problem with the two ideologies being taught side-by-side? As a creationist, I was taught both ideologies, and made my choice as to what I believe. I'm not in favor of pushing evolution out of the classroom, but I do think it's wrong to push creationism out just because the vast majority of slashdotters don't believe it.
There are several. First and most realistically, Google has a whole lot more money to spend in court than TPB does. Second, also from a completely practical standpoint, I'm sure that the number of judges/juries who have use Google are orders of magnitude above the number that have used Pirate Bay, so familiarity is on Google's side. Third, Google has complied with legal takedown notices, whereas Pirate Bay has basically said "go walk the plank". Google has shown good faith when asked to, while Pirate Bay has not. Fourth is a little common sense: Google indexes a huge amount of stuff online, and if there are pirated materials available online, then by nature, some will end up on Google. While Pirate Bay might also host game patches, linux distros, Creative Commons licensed artwork, and other legal materials, when their search cloud shows people searching for theatrical releases, Top 100 music, and Adobe Photoshop (i.e. stuff that's obviously copyrighted), it's going to be a rough day for the lawyer who's defending Pirate Bay. Finally, there was/is a community on TPB that helped "cleanse" "bad releases" and/or help highlight "good releases", while Google has no such community in place specifically for pirated material.
To further the GP's example, no one is going to press charges on you because you have a phone book which happens to include a few drug dealers in it (it's a statistical inevitability). Any jury would laugh that out of court. On the other hand, if you've got a little black book which is largely filled with drug dealers, even if you also have some of your friends' numbers in there, if half the people in your black book get arrested, you're going to have a pretty lousy day in court if your only defense is "it's just a list of phone numbers, who doesn't have one of those?" - the DA's response will be "yes, I do. To get into MY phone book, you have to be a family member, close friend, or business contact. 96% of the people in your Rolodex are known drug dealers, Mister Anderson, and I've got a dozen witnesses saying that they got the numbers of everyone else we've arrested from you. How do you explain that?"
I'm no fan of the RIAA by ANY means, nor am I entirely convinced that TPB deserves to be sued out of existence from a legal standpoint. I am saying that they are among the biggest public torrent trackers, made it no secret that they had warez/music/movies for download, and not only did they refuse to comply with the copyright holders, but they were very well known for replying to takedown notices with public replies that usually amounted to "go shove it". Outside of Google being the biggest search engine, they have very little in common.
My turn for a troll/flamebait mod. My parents told me about sex. And I learned that it was a good thing in a proper context, but has very negative consequences in others. I was told about condoms and the pill and all that other stuff (by them), but I was taught that the best form of contraception is KEEPING YOUR PANTS UP!
Everyone pointed and laughed at Sarah Palin and her abstinence-education-works attitude when it came to light that her daughter was pregnant (and a few people here have sigs as such). But the thing is that her daughter didn't listen, and thus is carrying a child because of it. If a couple where the guy and the girl both decide that a condom need not be worn and a pill need not be taken, will that make "safe sex ed" just as invalid? Regardless of the message as to how to avoid pregnancy and STD's, if teens/tweens don't heed the warning, it doesn't matter what that message was.
Yes, given the option between unprotected sex and protected sex, I would rather people grab a condom. But I think that the stigma of being a virgin after graduating college is a pretty sad state of society. Personally, I'm proud of being a virgin because while I can lose my virginity tomorrow if I wanted to, it's something that the entire cheerleading squad you're referring to can't get back ever. And one day, I will get to walk down the aisle and tell my future wife that I've been waiting $NUM_YEARS for her. That's a day that I look forward to, and I'd be incredibly sorry if I had to look her in the eye and say, "you're number five" or whatever that number might be. "Safe Sex" might be fun, but I'm old school and am holding out for the best.
I specifically made it reason number three on the list, because I do comepletely agree with the GP's first two points. As I said before, both of my parents are teachers, so I hear exactly what they're going through to try to convince parents that they need to take a part in their child's education as well.
I'ma flip the question on you a bit and ask you to clarify your statement, which says that "we can't compel parents to be better parents", but then implies that it's possible to compel schools to do a better job.
I'll be honest and say that I really don't know what the solution is, because I don't want to be a parent before I am in a place to become one. When I finally do become a parent, I want to be an active part of that child's life. I don't think it's a good idea to start legislating good parenting, nor do I think that some kind of "parenting license" is the answer. Maybe I am cursing the dark instead of lighting a candle here, but perhaps that's because I simply can't relate to a parent who has a child and then lets Nickelodeon and Disney Channel raise him/her. I can't relate to a childhood where I was told, "No, that behavior isn't acceptable". And I certainly can't relate to a childhood where abuse is present.
You've caught me, sir/madam. I don't know the answer. But do you truly believe that having a school say "$BEHAVIOR isn't acceptable" is going to work when at home, "Do whatever you want" is the standard to follow?
MOD PARENT UP! Seriously, that's gotta be the most level-headed comment I've read yet. I mean seriously, how much of modern medicine wouldn't be practical without plastic? I'm all for finding a practical, safer replacement, but IMO I think that the number of lives that plastic has helped saved and/or improved (and not talking toys or food containers, but things that directly keep people healthy) is likely to be much greater than the number of lives one study has possibly adversely affected.
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All that most anyone needs is maybe 3mb and even that would allow you to some some video streaming (Perhaps not in HD) 5mb would do most American's just fine for now.
Fixed that for you. 56K was enough for most uses in 1999, when Flash was used sparingly, coding was still fairly tight, patches for Windows were a few hundred KBytes and were one-or-two at a clip, not a dozen every Tuesday. In 1999, we used HTML, not AJAX, and our monitors were still 1024x768. "Streaming video" was at best 15fps and extremely blocky at 320x24. Digital cameras started at $400, were 1megapixel (tops), and photos were either printed out or burnt to CD instead of being uploaded somewhere. MP3s were typically encoded at 128kbps and shared on Napster. Microsoft Word was still duking it out with WordPerfect and bought on CD, which also was a feasible medium to backup our 10GByte hard drives.
Over the last decade, Myspace, Facebook, Photobucket, Youtube, Hulu, Google Docs, Mozy, and nearly a gig's worth of Windows patches have changed the way we use the Internet. What about the next decade? Do you think that 3Mbits/sec is going to be enough in 2019? I doubt it.
[citation needed] for phones taking 12MP photos. Additionally, in the case of camera phones, the true upgrades need to be done on the CMOS sensors, which are terrible in anything but broad daylight. "HD Video" from a camera phone is, as far as I have seen, almost always a joke as well. yes technically it may have more than 480 horizontal lines of resolution, but the quality has always lagged severely behind digital cameras and camcorders, and throwing more megapixels at it isn't the answer. The issue is that everyone wants devices that are smaller, thinner, have longer battery life, and can withstand abuse. Pro photographers and videographers still use huge cameras for a reason.
This video sums it up quite nicely: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8ZVZRsy8N8
Verizon is making bing the only search site usable by Verizon customers.
Either they messed up on my Curve (because I can search Google just fine from the browser, it's even still the default since I used it last), Microsoft simply paid to have "bing" icon rolled onto my blackberry's app screen, or [citation needed].
Similar success here. I was just talking to a friend of mine last night about getting T-Mo, because of everything I've heard and read about everyone else, they consistently seem to be the least corrupt. My Touch Pro2 supports 3G and the times I've used a data plan (I said "pretty please" when I bought the phone and they let me get away with not having a data plan consistently), it's been MUCH faster than Verizon on my BlackBerry Curve (yes, I carry both, work pays for the Blackberry). The CSRs have been friendly, courteous, know what they're talking about, and in five years of service with them haven't left an issue unresolved. This includes getting MMS to work with my jailbroken, unlocked iPhone when I had one.
With regards to this search issue, I think it's half FUD. When I read the summary, I looked at my Curve. Yes, there was a nifty Bing icon on my applications screen, and it might have even replaced a search icon that I've never used in the six months that I've owned the Curve. But I went into the Browser, and both Google and Wikipedia are both immediately available from the search function there, which is the only place I've ever used it. If there was a search icon that I hadn't noticed and they replaced it, then yeah that's kinda not-nice, but there's a difference between switching an icon and removing functionality. It's not like they firewalled Google or even removed them as being the default in the Browser (mine was at Wiki, the last place I did a search). Not that I have a whole lot of love for Verizon (see previous paragraph), but it's interesting that customer loyalty only goes as far as having to do a single extra click on the trackball.
you would be paying top dollar for your Microsoft OS and applications
I do pay top dollar for my Microsoft OS and applications, you insensitive clod! And I'm very happy with my stable software pla@#%[NO CARRIER]
I agree with you to a certain point. A standard XP disc does require lots of maintenance to get up to speed, I won't argue that. Sometimes I wonder which source the OS gets more data from - the disc or Windows Update, 'cuz it feels like I'm downloading half an operating system after the initial installation.
At the same time, there are two other points that make it an unfair comparison. First off, XP is nearly a decade old. Comparing a vintage-2001 version of Windows to a vintage-2009 distro of Linux (any distro) is an unfair comparison. Comparing Windows 7 to Ubuntu 9.04 would be a bit more fair; both of them worked OOTB with similar hardware and most of the undetected stuff was consistent (nVidia chipset and Sigmatel Audio both worked, Logitech LCD and M-Audio Connectiv box didn't work on either). Conversely, I don't have versions of Linux from vintage-2001 to test on the same hardware, but I'm guessing my SLI'd GeForce 8700M's wouldn't get much further than a generic SVGA driver from most distros of that era, any more than XP provides out of the box. Second, while Windows does tend to require visits to various third party manufacturers to get drivers, most of them tend to be Installshield next->agree->next->finish->reboot affairs, whether downloaded or coming from the CDs that ship with hardware. Sure it's a bit time consuming to gather them, but in most cases that can be done in less than an hour over DSL or cable. No matter whose fault it is, ultimately I've found that in the vast majority of cases that if $HARDWARE doesn't work out of the box with a given distro, then getting it to work can easily become a rather time-consuming process of forum searching, terminal commands, and dependency downloads, the scope of which depends on which piece of hardware needs to be supported.
Two words: Divorce Attorney.
My question is where Google will put the ads so that they are actually seen. If they build it into software, it's only a matter of time before the phone is rooted/jailbroken/HardSPL'd and ad-free firmware ends up on Rapidshare. Then it's just a matter of simplifying the process down to making it feasible for anyone sick enough of the ads to make the gamble of performing a warranty-voiding process on their phone, and unless ads live unobtrusively in the browser, Google will end up right next to the iPhone, silently fighting the gPhone Dev Team.
In my opinion, it really depends. The Ribbon was a royal pain for the first 2-3 weeks, because I had to find commands that I used to know where they were. That was, indeed, annoying. Once I found those though, the ribbon made it a whole lot easier to find commands that I used less consistently, or that seemed to be obscured. Styles, mail merging, tracking changes,
I remember having to deal with page numbering in Office 2003, and spent half an hour trying to figure out how to get it to do what I wanted it to do. I fired up Office 2007, and had the job done in about five minutes. While adding comments has been around since office 97, no one ever used it. I can't tell you how annoying group projects were when it came time to make the final version to hand in, because showing the rest of the group how to add comments was an exercise in futility. Now, I can tell them "Click 'New Comment' in the 'Review' Tab".
I don't think the Ribbon is the perfect UI, nor do I think that it should become a universal interface (DirectDVD is a prime example of a software UI that doesn't need it), but I do think that in the case of Office, it did solve a bunch of problems that the original UI had. Options are available to help if you're having issues finding something specific.
Sorry if I come off as an MS shill, I'm not on their payroll, nor am I a fanboi, nor am I trying to attack your personal preference, and I apologize if I came across as such.
It will always depend. If Friend A tries to show me how cool Widget A is, and I always see him using it and how it has been a positive acquisition for him, then I'm likely to take his endorsement of the product into account. If Friend B tries to show me that she thinks that Widget B is cool, but she never walks around with it, and the only time I ever hear anything about it is when she tries to get me to buy one, and when I really buckle down and ask her what she thinks of it she avoids a direct answer, then you can bet that I'm not going to be terribly impressed with Widget B and certainly won't be buying one.
this happens all the time, right now. People come to me all the time to talk to me about buying computers and cell phones. I give them my honest opinion, which is typically reflected in what I own, or in spite of what I own. I tell friends that I love my Touch Pro2 and to seriously consider getting one, but tell fellow DJ friends that I'm dissatisfied with my purchase of Torq and that I would recommend Deckadance or Serato instead. My influence comes from the fact that I give it honestly, consistently, and that people are generally happy with purchases I recommend to them. If Microsoft wants to start giving me $29 copies of Win7 and $49 copies of Office for doing what I do now, I've got no problem with that. In fact, when I worked retail, they gave me copies of Halo 2 and Gears of War for free if I took some tests and answered a few multiple choice questions on it.
until they switch away from Windows, your influence doesn't affect their bottom line. The issue with influence-based discounts like this is that in most cases that influence must be quantifiable. Unfortunately from Microsoft's standpoint, your influence on them has not yet affected a purchasing decision.
I think it really depends on the game, and what the DLC advantages are. Rock Band's DLC is new songs. Given that Rock Band is generally a party game or a string of song plays, it makes some sense in theory. The problem here is the slippery slope. (disclaimer: I don't own rock band, so i'm pulling these numbers out of thin air) Say that Rock Band 1 came with 50 songs, cost $60, and each new song was $3 a pop. Fine. That makes sense; there was a good value with the initial purchase, and anything after that was simply paying extra for extra value. Seeing how lucrative the extra $3/song deal became let's say that Rock Band 2 came with 40 songs, but fewer top 40 hits, the game still debuted at $60, and additional songs were still $3 a pop. Again, a decent value, but more reason to spend some more money to get the songs you really wanna play. Rock Band 3 costs the same $60, comes with 30 songs that were B-side tracks from bands you never heard of, and new songs are now $4 a pop. I'm not being scared of change, I just know a frog boiling in a pot when I see one.
For the first time ever, I pre-ordered a game: Mass Effect 2. The first game was incredible, and if the second one is as good as it looks, then I have no problem whatsoever forking over the $60 for the super-deluxe edition; I even did so at GameStop so that I could get the special armor. That's all well and good. In the first game, the DLC was a single level that took me an extra 90 minutes to complete and got me a few extra XP and Paragon points. I only used it the second time around, and it was a nice expansion, but it wasn't like I had issues completing the game the first time. If Mass Effect 3 costs me $70 up front to get the full game on discs, so be it. But I'd rather walk into a store knowing that I got what essentially amounts to a full product (patches & freebies notwithstanding), then spend $60 and have to pay real money for the armor from the arms dealers in the game. Micropayments are micro-for-now payments, which I guarantee you won't be going away or going down once they become integral parts of games whereby after plunking down $60 for the game, you'll be parting with another $20 to complete the game with any degree of expedience. Personally, I wonder how much of that revenue they could re-obtain simply by ditching SecuROM.
I neither feel bad for EA, nor do I agree with them. I do, however, see a very easy means to improperly maximize revenue. If you trust Electronic Arts, a publicly traded for-profit company, to implement an easy means of maximizing revenue and NOT begin to exploit it at some point in the future, then that's all well and good. Personally, I'll tread VERY lightly and realize that the idea of lending games to my friends (on a they-can-play-it-i-can't basis) or reselling them at some point of the future is a right granted to all gamers by legislation, but taken away by technology.
Once the bittorrent trackers in China are down, I'm sure the professional counterfeiters will appreciate the boost in business as everyone heads to the streets for their warez. For the first time, the pirates and the **AA both benefit from the same political action!
Yes. And vinyl.
Thats not true. I totally have herpes and I feel much better having admitted it.
Says the anonymous coward.
I think that putting electronic music on vinyl is 1/6 about the mix itself (which, in the hands of a skilled vinyl DJ, will sound better), and 1/6 the fact that vinyl playback will result in smoother waveforms. A digital file, when zoomed in on the waveform, will eventually reveal a slight "stairstep" effect from one sample to the next, instead of a smooth sine curve. after playing back a few times, digital artifacts will smooth over with wear from the needle. The other 2/3 of it is likely psychological: a live DJ spinning vinyl makes the crowd feel "closer" to the music, the bandwagon vinyl-must-sound-better-because-everyone-says-it-does phenomenon, and of course the amount of drugs and alcohol traditionally consumed at a rave will make everything sound better, i'd imagine.
I just got myself a pair of Numark TTX turntables and a copy of Torq (M-Audio's response to FinalScratch and Serato) earlier this year. Nearly every timecoded vinyl system supports both absolute mode and relative mode; the former mapping playback of a song to exact positions on the record, while the latter only uses velocity and direction. In absolute mode, it's easier to do needle drops and jump to specific parts of a song, while relative mode gives you cue points, so jumping to a particular downbeat or scratch sample can be done instantly with a keyboard shortcut or MIDI pad. It's much easier to DJ using relative mode and cue points since the needle's position doesn't matter, but whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is the DJ scene's version of the vi vs. emacs debate.
The GP's comment about working with vinyl vs. DAT is correct - it's MUCH easier to jump to a specific point on a track with a needle drop than it is with linear media like tape (although apparently it can be done). Beat Juggling for more than a measure (MAYBE two) is just about impossible to do with linear media like tape.
Finally, the lack of a wide dynamic range has its advantages, too. When I DJ weddings, many couples want to hear Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin during dinner, and I'm happy to oblige. Specifically Sinatra's tracks are a bit annoying because they change volume very suddenly. Inevitably this leads to grandpa (who invariably gets seated right next to the speakers) complaining about how loud it is when the brass section blasts it out, while the bride and groom who are in the back are complaining because they can't hear anything *but* the horn blasts. During dancing segments, it's also jarring to go from one song that's at -6db and go to one at -2db. I appreciate it when songs are fairly normalized and are fairly consistent (a few measures of the drums cutting out during the bridge is one thing, having to constantly ride the gain control on my mixer is a royal pain when I have to cue up the next track). Wide dynamic ranges are wonderful from an artistic perspective and I can appreciate them in "listening music" (classical, jazz, opera, even some rock), but less in dance music (although it can be done properly there, too [this song def sounds better on vinyl than on youtube, btw]).
Manual Mod +1 Informative; people with points PLEASE mod this person up. Also, I wouldn't recommend every slashdotter clogging his inbox. E-mails from places within the regional demographic are going to carry much more weight than some angry slashdotter who is, based on region, unlikely to ever be a potential customer. Given that I live in New York, my e-mail would mean nothing, so people nearby PLEASE take a stand!
By the numbers, and largely ignoring the fact that Linux is an OS while Photoshop is a design app...
1.) Photoshop simply has a much higher installed user base. Admittedly I've only got anecdotal evidence, but my Linux class in college had about 23 students in it, and there were only two of them. There were a dozen Photoshop classes, all with 30 students or more. Odds are that you're within two degrees of separation from several people who know photoshop. Similarly, every library I've ever been in has at least one book on how to use Photoshop, and even if it's a version or two outdated, much of it is still relevant, which segues me to...
2.) Photoshop is largely consistent. Yes, there are several versions of Photoshop currently in production use, but the core commands that most people are going to use have remained largely consistent, and there's nowhere NEAR as many variables between the different Photoshop iterations and Linux. Gnome or KDE? What Distro? Which repositories are in Synaptic? Are you even USING Synaptic, or are you using Yum? Does your distro use RPMs, DEBs, or simply tarballs? All of those are going to come into play just to INSTALL an application, and will directly affect the steps required. Adding a Gaussian Blur in Photoshop has required the exact same steps since at least 7.0, likely earlier.
3.) There is never, ever, a command line to deal with in Photoshop. I'll completely admit that most recent distros make the command line as optional as it is in Windows, but there isn't even a possibility that anyone will ever need to do anything in a command line in Photoshop.
4.) The average new Photoshop user is more likely to have *some* rudimentary form of graphic design experience than a new Linux user will have in UNIX. I'm sure that virtually everyone who starts using Photoshop has done at least SOMETHING in Paint, Publisher, or hand-drawn something. Others had formal training in manually doing tasks with ink, paper, and film, that Photoshop has replaced. Regardless, there is some prior knowledge that makes Photoshop more familiar to a new user than Linux. Admittedly though, there is enough similarity between GNOME/KDE and Windows to make getting to Firefox simple enough, but even things like the folder structure to some people takes time (explaining that "Home" is "My Documents" is easy, but explaining that "/dev/hda1" is the same as "C:" is a little less intuitive).
5.) Similarly, Photoshop's output is a whole lot easier to determine whether what you had in your head ended up coming to fruition, while Linux isn't necessarily as obvious. Yes, starting a program or closing a window will be obvious, but what about manually configuring an IP address, or figuring out whether you have the proper driver installed? these problems are a bit more difficult for the average end-user to see, depending on their circumstance (i.e. bad video driver is easy, while a multifunction driver might print fine, but not scan, or might print fine locally, but not over a network).
6.) Photoshop's internal documentation *is* much better than many Linux apps I've used. My copy of the Adobe CS3 suite came in a box with about 18 pounds of printed manuals, one for each app. The one for After Effects is an inch-and-a-half thick, and it lists EVERY command you can use for expressions (about as close to a command line as you're gonna get from the Adobe suite), along with the best contexts to use it in, and the syntax of the arguments. The help file mirrors this as well, and covers all of the basics and lots of the intermediate stuff. Additionally, it's not at all hard to find largely simplified tutorials to get specific looks out of Photoshop (stuff like "make a new document...press F7...use these exact parameters...make a new layer...add this filter using these parameters..."). some of this is mirrored in Linux (I was able to find one such tutorial for installing Torrentflux that was written in a similar stepwise manner), but i'd dare say the majority of it isn't.
7.) To build on #6, and ad
But would you have a problem with the two ideologies being taught side-by-side? As a creationist, I was taught both ideologies, and made my choice as to what I believe. I'm not in favor of pushing evolution out of the classroom, but I do think it's wrong to push creationism out just because the vast majority of slashdotters don't believe it.
i know, i know...it's flamebait...
To further the GP's example, no one is going to press charges on you because you have a phone book which happens to include a few drug dealers in it (it's a statistical inevitability). Any jury would laugh that out of court. On the other hand, if you've got a little black book which is largely filled with drug dealers, even if you also have some of your friends' numbers in there, if half the people in your black book get arrested, you're going to have a pretty lousy day in court if your only defense is "it's just a list of phone numbers, who doesn't have one of those?" - the DA's response will be "yes, I do. To get into MY phone book, you have to be a family member, close friend, or business contact. 96% of the people in your Rolodex are known drug dealers, Mister Anderson, and I've got a dozen witnesses saying that they got the numbers of everyone else we've arrested from you. How do you explain that?"
I'm no fan of the RIAA by ANY means, nor am I entirely convinced that TPB deserves to be sued out of existence from a legal standpoint. I am saying that they are among the biggest public torrent trackers, made it no secret that they had warez/music/movies for download, and not only did they refuse to comply with the copyright holders, but they were very well known for replying to takedown notices with public replies that usually amounted to "go shove it". Outside of Google being the biggest search engine, they have very little in common.
My turn for a troll/flamebait mod. My parents told me about sex. And I learned that it was a good thing in a proper context, but has very negative consequences in others. I was told about condoms and the pill and all that other stuff (by them), but I was taught that the best form of contraception is KEEPING YOUR PANTS UP!
Everyone pointed and laughed at Sarah Palin and her abstinence-education-works attitude when it came to light that her daughter was pregnant (and a few people here have sigs as such). But the thing is that her daughter didn't listen, and thus is carrying a child because of it. If a couple where the guy and the girl both decide that a condom need not be worn and a pill need not be taken, will that make "safe sex ed" just as invalid? Regardless of the message as to how to avoid pregnancy and STD's, if teens/tweens don't heed the warning, it doesn't matter what that message was.
Yes, given the option between unprotected sex and protected sex, I would rather people grab a condom. But I think that the stigma of being a virgin after graduating college is a pretty sad state of society. Personally, I'm proud of being a virgin because while I can lose my virginity tomorrow if I wanted to, it's something that the entire cheerleading squad you're referring to can't get back ever. And one day, I will get to walk down the aisle and tell my future wife that I've been waiting $NUM_YEARS for her. That's a day that I look forward to, and I'd be incredibly sorry if I had to look her in the eye and say, "you're number five" or whatever that number might be. "Safe Sex" might be fun, but I'm old school and am holding out for the best.
I specifically made it reason number three on the list, because I do comepletely agree with the GP's first two points. As I said before, both of my parents are teachers, so I hear exactly what they're going through to try to convince parents that they need to take a part in their child's education as well.
I'ma flip the question on you a bit and ask you to clarify your statement, which says that "we can't compel parents to be better parents", but then implies that it's possible to compel schools to do a better job.
I'll be honest and say that I really don't know what the solution is, because I don't want to be a parent before I am in a place to become one. When I finally do become a parent, I want to be an active part of that child's life. I don't think it's a good idea to start legislating good parenting, nor do I think that some kind of "parenting license" is the answer. Maybe I am cursing the dark instead of lighting a candle here, but perhaps that's because I simply can't relate to a parent who has a child and then lets Nickelodeon and Disney Channel raise him/her. I can't relate to a childhood where I was told, "No, that behavior isn't acceptable". And I certainly can't relate to a childhood where abuse is present.
You've caught me, sir/madam. I don't know the answer. But do you truly believe that having a school say "$BEHAVIOR isn't acceptable" is going to work when at home, "Do whatever you want" is the standard to follow?
MOD PARENT UP! Seriously, that's gotta be the most level-headed comment I've read yet. I mean seriously, how much of modern medicine wouldn't be practical without plastic? I'm all for finding a practical, safer replacement, but IMO I think that the number of lives that plastic has helped saved and/or improved (and not talking toys or food containers, but things that directly keep people healthy) is likely to be much greater than the number of lives one study has possibly adversely affected.