I thought of that before I posted, but came to the conclusion that I don't really care much about compression any more - the convenience is using a bundle of files rather than that it's 25% of the size of the original...
Sure, there are times when I will compress something for transfer over the net with time-saving in mind, but this is rare compared to "I have 2500 class files and source files and it needs to be on that machine"...
.. so it concerns me not a lot. Now if there was a competing 'tar' standard, I'd take more notice:-) Since they've agreed to play nice, this is surely just a "it's ok folks, use whichever you want" moment ? Great. Next.
Given there is a good freely-available format to rip into (OGG), the only way the publishers are going to get rich(er) is by value-add. That's not a terribly strong argument for a product.
The fundamental problem is I want to copy the music once I've paid for it. The music industry doesn't want me to do this - because if I can easily move it around, I can move it to my friends house (for visits, you understand:-) If they'd not been so damn greedy at the start, this state of affairs might have been (well, almost) completely avoided....
All I can say is, Good Luck - you're going to need it...
I'd suggest it's a combination of 'not-invented-here' syndrome, along with a gross under-estimation of the amount of work required. There are exceptions, but I'd guess most fall into this...
Waay back in the mists of time, when slackware was on single-figure floppies, I wrote and distributed the 'MDK', a unix-like distribution for the Atari-ST using MiNT as the unix-like kernel. It's bloody difficult, even with the relatively-tiny number of packages that I used, to keep everything in sync. It didn't help that compiling gcc took 8 hours, either:-)
as in all other things, if you can afford to market a product to millions, you're likely to end up with a larger share of the pie. Whether it's worth it is up to you...
He's done a lot of work for charity, and lots of his songs point out inequality/bigotry/social issues. I have a lot of respect for a bloke who can make good music with such activism inherent in the whole thing. It'll take a guy with this level of credibility to really hit the music industry where it hurts.... cos basically we want to reform it, so we can start actually buying CD's and so on again, right ? Or download (and pay for) them from the internet... Oh happy day...
The Queen's personal net income last year, after taxes and all expenditure was some 20-odd million pounds (roughly 40 million dollars) IIRC. That's once her accountants had pushed her income as low as possible, after every conceivable dodge had been done. I remember about 10 years ago reading a newspaper article saying the queen was personally worth several billion pounds, mostly in property and land.
Anyway, she ain't short of a pound or two... Maybe she just wants a one-on-one with BG, with a sword in her hand:-)
Er. I really don't think the queen of England needs Billy-G's money... I really think she has enough to be going on with:-) Not to mention a *country*, the largest group of nations in the World (the Commonwealth), and a fucking army:-)))
Sorry, just had to laugh:-)))
Simon
Another example of the UK Govt getting it wrong
on
Bill Gates to be Knighted
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
After all, it's not the Queen's fault - she gets told who's to be knighted by the PM, although it seems this time the Chancellor has stuck his oar in...
I always did think Labour were too damn close to WBG the III. At least he doesn't get to call himself 'Sir', not being British...
The article uses highly emotive words in the headline, "Tyranny" is almost guaranteed to get more than a casual glance, but the body is pretty factual (although sympathetic to the students, for example). Well written - articles like this are the only way that the rights-restrictions will get wider coverage. It's a good thing to have a free-from-tyranny press:-)
... which was admittedly about 18 years ago, we were happy to have the very latest technology... microphones and headphones (well, it was on a school-sized budget:-)
To be honest, I'd be surprised if WiFi would help you very much - it'd have to be a VoIP network, which isn't an obvious use of WiFi (the range is too short - most people would simply shout!)
Bluetooth might be an option, but they're basically clever walkie-talkies. Buy some rechargeable batteries and carry them. Sometimes the "clever" solution is the low-tech one...
Simon.
Didn't see this one coming
on
United Linux Dead
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I'm pretty sure that 'united' doesn't mean 'backstabbing'... It's about the only thing they could do and keep some shred of dignity for the partner companies...
"It's because of this setup that we normally only see big IP cases come from companies that don't actually produce anything (and thus have little to fear from a counter-attack) - like SCO."
You could also get a big IP case against someone without any patent portfolio, which is cause for concern within the OS (specifically Linux, but also Apache, Samba, etc.) arena.
People are currently relaxed because IBM has too much to lose if it rocked the boat for Linux - IBM's service-based business model would suffer heavy losses if Linux went down in flames.
We feel secure because we think we're needed. Mostly, I think that's right, but IBM was surprisingly nimble, and able to jump on the Linux bandwagon pretty fast. If another disruptive technology came along, we might find that Linux was surplus to requirements, and suddenly be rather vulnerable, as IBM tried to disrupt it's business competition by destroying Linux... It's not too likely in the near future, but it's possible...
*A* problem is that he's right. *The* problem is that stopping this from becoming a reality (it's sort of already one, but unofficially) in the EU is going to be a long hard slog against the entrenched companies that will benefit from it.
The European patent office has been dishing out software patents like there's no tomorrow simply because it thinks the US model will eventually win out. The "harmonisation" directive raconteur (I think that's her title) was pissed off because people took the time to contact her and give her their view (!) - which was contrary to what she wanted.
Politicians are bemoaning the lack of political interest in the populace. Here's a clue: we get disillusioned really quickly when you simply pay court every N years, then do whatever you want in-between election years. Perhaps if (as originally planned) you were the voice of the people, it might be a bit different.
Sorry. A bit rambling. It's because I'm simultaneously angry and depressed at "the system":-(
I thought it was pretty well-established that sleep plays a role in post-analysis of the days accumulatd information ? There have been too-many-to-count articles on the subject in New Scientist / Scientific American...
There must be an evolutionary advantage to having a time when nothing else was going on to do something, and what else apart from the days events could occupy a brain if it has no external sensory input... I seriously doubt all the higher life-forms on the planet would do it if there wasn't a good reason....
Round and round they go... being sucked inexorably to the bottom of the funnel, at which point they die.
SCO's updated SEC documents found it necessary to state that they can't afford to pay their lawyers in cash, so they're using stock instead. So it makes a lot of sense to take on a new lawsuit... Oh, except they have to, to defend their other lawsuits.... And they don't seem to be noticing anything *wrong* here. Either they or us are missing something.
it's the people who decide things like this. If sufficient people stop purchasing games that restrict their ability to play them, then it's a simple business decision for the company to make - stop over-restricting the user.
If companies adopt the attitude that consumers en-mass are stupid (usually justifiable, to be fair to the companies) they might just get burnt on this one - gamers particularly and (to be fair to the great unwashed, this time) people in general are getting more au fait with the technology. Removing the ability to share games or play with friends may just result in non-protected-in-this-way games being more popular instead.
The games market is very very cut-throat. It's similar to the post-production market (where I work) except that the games companies are far more in control than the advertising agencies (our paymasters). If one company goes down the "wrong" alley, I reckon another might just jump to go down the "right" one, especially if they're currently not the market leader...
Of course, IBM and Intel aren't doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, but it's still a nice gesture, 'cos it works for us (well, them, I'm not a kernel contributor:-)
Er, I'm not apologising for anyone. This is my opinion - if they'd put a 9200 in there, I would have experienced no difference in operation. There is no possibility of upgrade, no future issues. I just don't see the problem.
You obviously do. Fine. Please don't put words into my mouth.
The only difference between the 9000 and the 9200 is that the 9200 can do 8x AGP bursts. I think the drivers might be the same...
The only other drivers that ATI offer are for the Mac, which isn't likely on a PC portable, so anything else (Beos ?, whatever) is going to be in the typical situation of unsupported hardware - trying to figure it out from first principles. I reckon they'd crack it pretty quickly since it's identical apart from the bus frequency....
Your call. I'll bet they're not the first vendor (from any manufacturing sector) to replace functionally-identical parts with cheaper ones though. I'd be willing to bet that parts from a range of items (your toaster through washing machine, car through calculator, skiing-jacket through water-heater,.....) have had "alternate" supplies made where the customer can't tell the difference.
Buying something like this is a promise by the manufacturer that you'll get X for your $Y. If you are getting X for $Y then that's the end of the story for me. We obviously differ on this one...
1. Get annoyed with vendor
2. Justify aggreived state by removing a chip from an (at least) 4-layer circuit board surrounded by delicate tracks and routing.
You'd need a professional rig to desolder something like that, or possibly the steadiest pair of hands in existence. I know it's vaguely possible, but it's hardly a justification.
Mmm. Not convinced - ATI unify their drivers, so there's only one driver across the range. If you download the linux version of the 9200 driver, you'll find 3 options (for 3 different XFree86 versions). The same files are available for the 9000 driver...
One thing I ought to stress is that I don't support ATI doing this, I just don't see that the users have anything really to moan about. Human nature being what it is, I reckon most of these people are out for a new portable....
Slashdot Mirror
I thought of that before I posted, but came to the conclusion that I don't really care much about compression any more - the convenience is using a bundle of files rather than that it's 25% of the size of the original...
Sure, there are times when I will compress something for transfer over the net with time-saving in mind, but this is rare compared to "I have 2500 class files and source files and it needs to be on that machine"...
Simon
.. so it concerns me not a lot. Now if there was a competing 'tar' standard, I'd take more notice :-) Since they've agreed to play nice, this is surely just a "it's ok folks, use whichever you want" moment ? Great. Next.
Simon
Given there is a good freely-available format to rip into (OGG), the only way the publishers are going to get rich(er) is by value-add. That's not a terribly strong argument for a product.
:-) If they'd not been so damn greedy at the start, this state of affairs might have been (well, almost) completely avoided....
The fundamental problem is I want to copy the music once I've paid for it. The music industry doesn't want me to do this - because if I can easily move it around, I can move it to my friends house (for visits, you understand
All I can say is, Good Luck - you're going to need it...
Simon
I'd suggest it's a combination of 'not-invented-here' syndrome, along with a gross under-estimation of the amount of work required. There are exceptions, but I'd guess most fall into this...
:-)
Waay back in the mists of time, when slackware was on single-figure floppies, I wrote and distributed the 'MDK', a unix-like distribution for the Atari-ST using MiNT as the unix-like kernel. It's bloody difficult, even with the relatively-tiny number of packages that I used, to keep everything in sync. It didn't help that compiling gcc took 8 hours, either
Simon.
as in all other things, if you can afford to market a product to millions, you're likely to end up with a larger share of the pie. Whether it's worth it is up to you...
Simon
... but having one group looking after all these libs would seem to offer some scope for optimisation and consolidation. Sounds like a good thing...
What's the DBUS ? (Desktop bus ?)
Simon
He's done a lot of work for charity, and lots of his songs point out inequality/bigotry/social issues. I have a lot of respect for a bloke who can make good music with such activism inherent in the whole thing. It'll take a guy with this level of credibility to really hit the music industry where it hurts. ... cos basically we want to reform it, so we can start actually buying CD's and so on again, right ? Or download (and pay for) them from the internet... Oh happy day...
Simon
The Queen's personal net income last year, after taxes and all expenditure was some 20-odd million pounds (roughly 40 million dollars) IIRC. That's once her accountants had pushed her income as low as possible, after every conceivable dodge had been done. I remember about 10 years ago reading a newspaper article saying the queen was personally worth several billion pounds, mostly in property and land.
:-)
Anyway, she ain't short of a pound or two... Maybe she just wants a one-on-one with BG, with a sword in her hand
Simon.
Er. I really don't think the queen of England needs Billy-G's money... I really think she has enough to be going on with :-) Not to mention a *country*, the largest group of nations in the World (the Commonwealth), and a fucking army :-)))
:-)))
Sorry, just had to laugh
Simon
After all, it's not the Queen's fault - she gets told who's to be knighted by the PM, although it seems this time the Chancellor has stuck his oar in...
I always did think Labour were too damn close to WBG the III. At least he doesn't get to call himself 'Sir', not being British...
Simon
The article uses highly emotive words in the headline, "Tyranny" is almost guaranteed to get more than a casual glance, but the body is pretty factual (although sympathetic to the students, for example). Well written - articles like this are the only way that the rights-restrictions will get wider coverage. It's a good thing to have a free-from-tyranny press :-)
Simon
... which was admittedly about 18 years ago, we were happy to have the very latest technology... microphones and headphones (well, it was on a school-sized budget :-)
To be honest, I'd be surprised if WiFi would help you very much - it'd have to be a VoIP network, which isn't an obvious use of WiFi (the range is too short - most people would simply shout!)
Bluetooth might be an option, but they're basically clever walkie-talkies. Buy some rechargeable batteries and carry them. Sometimes the "clever" solution is the low-tech one...
Simon.
I'm pretty sure that 'united' doesn't mean 'backstabbing'... It's about the only thing they could do and keep some shred of dignity for the partner companies...
Simon
You could also get a big IP case against someone without any patent portfolio, which is cause for concern within the OS (specifically Linux, but also Apache, Samba, etc.) arena.
People are currently relaxed because IBM has too much to lose if it rocked the boat for Linux - IBM's service-based business model would suffer heavy losses if Linux went down in flames.
We feel secure because we think we're needed. Mostly, I think that's right, but IBM was surprisingly nimble, and able to jump on the Linux bandwagon pretty fast. If another disruptive technology came along, we might find that Linux was surplus to requirements, and suddenly be rather vulnerable, as IBM tried to disrupt it's business competition by destroying Linux... It's not too likely in the near future, but it's possible...
Simon.
*A* problem is that he's right. *The* problem is that stopping this from becoming a reality (it's sort of already one, but unofficially) in the EU is going to be a long hard slog against the entrenched companies that will benefit from it.
:-(
The European patent office has been dishing out software patents like there's no tomorrow simply because it thinks the US model will eventually win out. The "harmonisation" directive raconteur (I think that's her title) was pissed off because people took the time to contact her and give her their view (!) - which was contrary to what she wanted.
Politicians are bemoaning the lack of political interest in the populace. Here's a clue: we get disillusioned really quickly when you simply pay court every N years, then do whatever you want in-between election years. Perhaps if (as originally planned) you were the voice of the people, it might be a bit different.
Sorry. A bit rambling. It's because I'm simultaneously angry and depressed at "the system"
Simon.
I thought it was pretty well-established that sleep plays a role in post-analysis of the days accumulatd information ? There have been too-many-to-count articles on the subject in New Scientist / Scientific American ...
There must be an evolutionary advantage to having a time when nothing else was going on to do something, and what else apart from the days events could occupy a brain if it has no external sensory input... I seriously doubt all the higher life-forms on the planet would do it if there wasn't a good reason....
Simon
Simon
Round and round they go... being sucked inexorably to the bottom of the funnel, at which point they die.
SCO's updated SEC documents found it necessary to state that they can't afford to pay their lawyers in cash, so they're using stock instead. So it makes a lot of sense to take on a new lawsuit... Oh, except they have to, to defend their other lawsuits.... And they don't seem to be noticing anything *wrong* here. Either they or us are missing something.
Simon
Aye. Gets my vote.
Simon
it's the people who decide things like this. If sufficient people stop purchasing games that restrict their ability to play them, then it's a simple business decision for the company to make - stop over-restricting the user.
If companies adopt the attitude that consumers en-mass are stupid (usually justifiable, to be fair to the companies) they might just get burnt on this one - gamers particularly and (to be fair to the great unwashed, this time) people in general are getting more au fait with the technology. Removing the ability to share games or play with friends may just result in non-protected-in-this-way games being more popular instead.
The games market is very very cut-throat. It's similar to the post-production market (where I work) except that the games companies are far more in control than the advertising agencies (our paymasters). If one company goes down the "wrong" alley, I reckon another might just jump to go down the "right" one, especially if they're currently not the market leader...
Simon.
Big, Rich friends :-))
:-)
Of course, IBM and Intel aren't doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, but it's still a nice gesture, 'cos it works for us (well, them, I'm not a kernel contributor
Simon
Er, I'm not apologising for anyone. This is my opinion - if they'd put a 9200 in there, I would have experienced no difference in operation. There is no possibility of upgrade, no future issues. I just don't see the problem.
You obviously do. Fine. Please don't put words into my mouth.
Simon.
The only difference between the 9000 and the 9200 is that the 9200 can do 8x AGP bursts. I think the drivers might be the same...
....
The only other drivers that ATI offer are for the Mac, which isn't likely on a PC portable, so anything else (Beos ?, whatever) is going to be in the typical situation of unsupported hardware - trying to figure it out from first principles. I reckon they'd crack it pretty quickly since it's identical apart from the bus frequency
Simon.
Your call. I'll bet they're not the first vendor (from any manufacturing sector) to replace functionally-identical parts with cheaper ones though. I'd be willing to bet that parts from a range of items (your toaster through washing machine, car through calculator, skiing-jacket through water-heater, .....) have had "alternate" supplies made where the customer can't tell the difference.
...
Buying something like this is a promise by the manufacturer that you'll get X for your $Y. If you are getting X for $Y then that's the end of the story for me. We obviously differ on this one
Simon
Good luck to them.
How to destroy a laptop in 2 easy stages
1. Get annoyed with vendor
2. Justify aggreived state by removing a chip from an (at least) 4-layer circuit board surrounded by delicate tracks and routing.
You'd need a professional rig to desolder something like that, or possibly the steadiest pair of hands in existence. I know it's vaguely possible, but it's hardly a justification.
Simon
Mmm. Not convinced - ATI unify their drivers, so there's only one driver across the range. If you download the linux version of the 9200 driver, you'll find 3 options (for 3 different XFree86 versions). The same files are available for the 9000 driver...
One thing I ought to stress is that I don't support ATI doing this, I just don't see that the users have anything really to moan about. Human nature being what it is, I reckon most of these people are out for a new portable....
Simon