Fair enough... again, I knew that the decoding was actually offloaded to a separate chip. No matter. The point stands that this chip simply cannot decode OGG even though it has no trouble with MPEG audio.
Before jumping to Logic, you should do some reading. What the article said is that the only known mechanism for producing those gasses is life. The further claim was this: What's more likely, the presence of an unknown chemical process that generates this rather unstable gas, or life, which generates the gas by a known mechanism. Both seem pretty improbable, but one of them must be true, and there is no good reason to think that life is a worse explanation than the "unknown mechanism."
If somebody figures out a non-biological process by which that gas is produced, the scales tip in the favor of that explanation. The fact nobody has figured out how this would happen, despite the fact we have tried, is some evidence that it is not happening, and that instead, life is producing the gas.
If the bacteria are tough enough to survive on Venus then they're tough enough to survive dormant in a terrestrial rock that gets kicked up by an incoming meteorite and lands on Venus. This sort of thing happens all the time. There are several rocks from Mars that have been found on Earth, and surely thousands more that have landed but haven't been recovered. You're right that life would transport itself from planet to planet, but it doesn't need Soviet space probes to do it.
And for all we know, terrestrial life might have been "seeded" from some other place--maybe Mars, because it cooled off faster so life there might have had a head start. So it's not so safe to assume that all the life in the solar system has Earth as its origin.
The temperature on the surface of Venus is so high that lead is a liquid. It's the hottest place in the solar system apart from our sun, hotter than Mercury. I'd love to see the volunteers for that "manned mission"! How about a little shower of sulfuric acid? Yeah, Venus has that--though it evaporates before it hits the surface, so you might be OK. The toughest landers survive in this environment for a matter of minutes. A guy in a spacesuit? LOL!
Jesus, though, didn't all of you read about the planets in the 6th grade? Who's moderating here?
Alright, I will correct you when you're wrong. Sailors are well aware that with tacking it is possible to sail against the wind. What's more, in order to "fall" towards the sun, all you need to do is decrease your orbital velocity. Basically, you use the solar wind as a break and your orbit will decay until you are in synch with Venus.
Look, nobody is asking you to believe anything. What's neat about this story is that it makes a surprisingly good argument for a conclusion that on the face of it looks stupid. I mean, most people are willing to accept that there might be life on Mars or on Europa or Titan, but nobody every talks about Venus anymore.
What I think you favor is a skeptical humility, and this story encourages exactly that: we (dogmatically) thought that there is no way anything can live on Venus. But it seems that when we critically examine that assumption, it is no longer so clear. Great! I say this is an excellent example of sound reasoning. The whole point of the research seems to be that we must check our assumptions... and that is a valuable lesson indeed for the credulous public.
I think this could be the beginning of something great. India already has thousands of talented coders, and once they get used to hacking Linux, some awesome things will start happening. After all, people who do good work in adding to Linux really get noticed, and their code winds up in millions of machines all over the world. It seems like a perfect opportunity for an Indian programmer to "lift herself up by the bootstraps." (North American and European coders of similar talent tend to get snatched up by companies faster, so there is less need to prove oneself.) Actually, there is nothing special India except maybe that the population really is so well educated in computer science. Brazil and China are in a similar position--and we are already seeing some awesome Linux hacking coming out of Brazil. I can only imagine how much cool code will come from India and (eventually) China. This sort of news really makes you think that Linux might be unstoppable after all.
How could Microsoft so shitty that they can't find a real MS-using freelance writer to take a picture of? They should be pretty damn embarassed by this. I mean, this is a real low! Sure, they pulled the "freelance writer" page now, but these other pages are still up. What an egg in the face!
I'm not saying that this sort of advertising is bad or ineffective (although I happen to think it's both). What I was saying is that it's disingenuous, that the agenda is not really to make ads that are most likely to result in an increase of MS sales.
If all Apple users switched to Windows, MS would hardly notice. Again--remember how much Apple users already pay for Microsoft products. Would they really pay that much more if they also ran Windows? So I'm saying that there is no way that Microsoft's real intention could be to draw users away from Apple. It's just not worth it! Their real intention is to give the appearance of competition, to look like fair players. Apple is a good patsy for this purpose, because everybody knows them, they still have vivid memories of the old "competitive" days, but the Apple of today poses no threat at all. They are (as I tried to write earlier but but made a typo) an amputated company, one that marches as MS whistles (they exist by permission of Microsoft). Still, it's very much in MS's interest to project the appearance that Apple is a threat to them, and making "competition" commecials is a perfect vehicle for this. We know who the real audience is! They wear robes to work.
All I know is that the SliMP3 player, which is a living room plug-in component, doesn't have the processing power to decode OGGs. And it's not like Slim don't want to decode OGGs--they've even made on-the-fly transcoding utilities that you can run on your PC, which basically decode an OGG using your PC CPU and re-encode it into a 320 kbps MP3 temp file which the player can read. This is a pretty big hassle, and Slim wouldn't do it if they could get the PIC16F877 microcontroller to just decode OGG. Now, I don't expect a portable player to have anything as fancy as a PIC16F877 microcontroller, and if that thing can't play OGGs, it stands to reason that a portable decoder can't either.
It's not just a matter of firmware. Vorbis decoding is much more resource-intensive than WMA or MP3. It actually requires a chip with a floating point unit. Maybe if Xiph could hire some hard core assmebler hackers they could write a decoder that doesn't use significantly more resources than MP3, but because it would be in assembler, it would not be very portable. So even if the decoder on the Nomad could potentially handle Vorbis files, it's not a trivial matter to get it to do so--and certainly not worth their while for the tiny projected increase in sales.
It is my prediction that we will not see a portable Vorbis player for a while. Anything that could play a Vorbis file will need to have a more expensive and more powerful processor, which will drain the battery much faster. This is a big compromise to make just for having the bragging rights of being able to say users can also play OGG files. Two extra hours of batterly life are worth a lot more to the typical user than the ability to play OGGs.
You're right, this would make a great Onion piece. I'm sure one of their writers could compose an MS commecial that has the overt appearance of somebody trying to talk "street style" while it's totally obvious that they're just reading a marketoid script. Actually, we could probably write such an article.
I propose the protagonist would be Mr. T. Oh, how I miss Mr. T!
Bullshit! It appears to me that MS is flopping about trying to explicitly name a company that they could claim is competing with them. The best they could come up with was Apple. Gimme a break! Apple are MS's bitches. Of course MS are thrilled with opinions like those expressed above: some people really are stupid enough to think that there is still real competition on the desktop, and it's people like that which will get the acquitted.
I can't believe you guys are taking this thing at face value. Are you nuts? Do you really think that MS has a fertile source of new money inside the Mac crowd? I've seen figures (can't attest to their reliability) that an Apple customer pays more money to MS than the average x86 customer. I'm sure this figure isn't far off. I mean, MS Office is on just about every Mac, it's much harder to find pirated copies, and it costs more to buy at the store.
This whole thing is a charade that Apple is a willing participant of. The whole point of the "switch" campaigns is to give the appearance of competition in an industry that effectively has none. Microsoft must be thrilled, because a totally leashed, client company (Apple) is making it look like competition is nipping at Microsoft's heels. Last week they tried the "Windows and Mac users can get along" campaign, which was spooky but not surprising, given the antitrust battles going on now.
Remember that the allegation made against MS is that they don't compete fairly with their real competiton. There are boxes of evidence to support this. On the other hand, there is the supposed couterexample of Apple: A high profile, low danger company that gives MS absolutely nothing to worry about. MS is in fact crying: "see, we are running a fair race! Look at Apple! We're not bullying them at all! We're really, really competing with them using--fair methods like advertising. And oooh, we're soooo scared that they would eat into our market share, so we find it imperative to run ads which prevent this! Our position on the desktop is soooo vulnerable!"
Well, I hoped that at least the slashdot crowd could see through this. I mean, we know that once Microsoft aputates both of your legs, they are perfectly willing to run a fair race against you. Witness that Internet Explorer is now finally uninstallable. However, suddently the Windows Media Player isn't. That's because RealMedia still (sort of) has its legs. Once they're off, the uninstallability problem will suddently disappear. My point is that Apple lies somewhere between Netscape and OS2 in terms of being a threat to Microsoft. However, there is much good PR to be gained by making it appear that the two companies are locked in fierce competition. So MS are milking it. The only surprise is that nobody is calling them on it!
Re:You're comparing a car to an aircraft?
on
The Coming Air Age
·
· Score: 2
Ejection seat in a helicopter? Is that supposed to be a joke?
I don't know. I think a USB hard drive does a whole lot more for you portability-wise. I mean, most computers worth tranferring data from have USB ports. How many of them can send out over Bluetooth? And even if they do, what's the transfer rate?
I understand that this is more for synching portable devices like cell phones and PDAs, but again: why do you need this sychning to be so damn portable? Why not just buy a Bluetooth card for your PC and do all that work at home?
However, here is one cool idea: A bluetooth-broadcasting digital camera! (Do these things exist yet?) You would have the drive in your backpack and the camera will be able to take quite a few pretty huge pictures before it fills up 5 gigs! Still, I wouldn't want to go backpacking with something as fragile as a hard drive in my backpack.
According to the Register, the patent is basically on parallel branch prediction, something which was at the core of the Merced design since... well, the mid 90's. I mean, the thing was on the drawing board a long time, and EPIC really was the only thing we knew about for a while. It's got to be the oldest part of the Merced design. So one has to wonder whether Intergraph didn't realize they held the IP rights to EPIC and other such designs, or (a million times more likely) they waited with their lawsuit until they could milk Intel for the most money.
I understand why you don't want to let just anybody build products on the back of the research done by a company's scientists. But this sounds to me like Intergraph were not honestly trying to prevent Intel from using their IP. In fact, I think they might structure their buisiness model around this sort of deal: Patent something you know a big company is going to need soon, wait until they've completely commited to it, and beat a few million out of them in court. Would anybody call this a legitimate revenue model?
One might even feel bad for Intel, as they seem to attract some pretty slimy parasites recently (none worse than Rambus). However, one must remind oneself about all the frivolous IP infringement suits they filed against AMD and VIA. Then, this looks like cumupets (sp?).
More than that--nobody has invaded more countries or killed more people with weapons of mass destruction than the United States. Our policy is so hypocritical that I feel ashamed every time I am forced to admit that I actually am an American.
You know, today is the day we Americans hear another "big" moronic speech about some dark-skinned guy who would one day like to build modern weapons, and about how he should die just for wanting to, along with thousands of innocent people who happen to be nearby.
If a pretext like this is really enough to get a war off the ground, I wonder how long it will be before a US president makes speeches about how we must use force to break up cells of renegade programmers who are writing modern network protocols which result in programs that are "in confict with the interests of America." Or, maybe we will start bombing servers "suspected of sending illegal data to Freenet."
You don't think this could happen in your lifetime? Ha!
No, I insulted you only alongside my making a cognet (if obvious) argument. Your "insightful" comment consisted of nothing but the observation that the piracy described in the article was illegal, and leaped from there to the conclusion that it's bad.
I hope even you have enough sense to recognize that as a foolish argument, and so do most readers here, but it's worth repeating anyway. The comment moderation is making me think you are not alone in being fooled by that line, and that what's obvious to most people is not too obvious to be repeated on Slashdot.
I'm afraid everyone needs a new reason for thinking that what the VCD counterfitters do is wrong. It's illegality is totally beside the point; unjust laws are not that unusual.
Slashdot Mirror
Fair enough... again, I knew that the decoding was actually offloaded to a separate chip. No matter. The point stands that this chip simply cannot decode OGG even though it has no trouble with MPEG audio.
If somebody figures out a non-biological process by which that gas is produced, the scales tip in the favor of that explanation. The fact nobody has figured out how this would happen, despite the fact we have tried, is some evidence that it is not happening, and that instead, life is producing the gas.
And for all we know, terrestrial life might have been "seeded" from some other place--maybe Mars, because it cooled off faster so life there might have had a head start. So it's not so safe to assume that all the life in the solar system has Earth as its origin.
Jesus, though, didn't all of you read about the planets in the 6th grade? Who's moderating here?
Alright, I will correct you when you're wrong. Sailors are well aware that with tacking it is possible to sail against the wind. What's more, in order to "fall" towards the sun, all you need to do is decrease your orbital velocity. Basically, you use the solar wind as a break and your orbit will decay until you are in synch with Venus.
What I think you favor is a skeptical humility, and this story encourages exactly that: we (dogmatically) thought that there is no way anything can live on Venus. But it seems that when we critically examine that assumption, it is no longer so clear. Great! I say this is an excellent example of sound reasoning. The whole point of the research seems to be that we must check our assumptions... and that is a valuable lesson indeed for the credulous public.
I think this could be the beginning of something great. India already has thousands of talented coders, and once they get used to hacking Linux, some awesome things will start happening. After all, people who do good work in adding to Linux really get noticed, and their code winds up in millions of machines all over the world. It seems like a perfect opportunity for an Indian programmer to "lift herself up by the bootstraps." (North American and European coders of similar talent tend to get snatched up by companies faster, so there is less need to prove oneself.) Actually, there is nothing special India except maybe that the population really is so well educated in computer science. Brazil and China are in a similar position--and we are already seeing some awesome Linux hacking coming out of Brazil. I can only imagine how much cool code will come from India and (eventually) China. This sort of news really makes you think that Linux might be unstoppable after all.
How could Microsoft so shitty that they can't find a real MS-using freelance writer to take a picture of? They should be pretty damn embarassed by this. I mean, this is a real low! Sure, they pulled the "freelance writer" page now, but these other pages are still up. What an egg in the face!
If all Apple users switched to Windows, MS would hardly notice. Again--remember how much Apple users already pay for Microsoft products. Would they really pay that much more if they also ran Windows? So I'm saying that there is no way that Microsoft's real intention could be to draw users away from Apple. It's just not worth it! Their real intention is to give the appearance of competition, to look like fair players. Apple is a good patsy for this purpose, because everybody knows them, they still have vivid memories of the old "competitive" days, but the Apple of today poses no threat at all. They are (as I tried to write earlier but but made a typo) an amputated company, one that marches as MS whistles (they exist by permission of Microsoft). Still, it's very much in MS's interest to project the appearance that Apple is a threat to them, and making "competition" commecials is a perfect vehicle for this. We know who the real audience is! They wear robes to work.
All I know is that the SliMP3 player, which is a living room plug-in component, doesn't have the processing power to decode OGGs. And it's not like Slim don't want to decode OGGs--they've even made on-the-fly transcoding utilities that you can run on your PC, which basically decode an OGG using your PC CPU and re-encode it into a 320 kbps MP3 temp file which the player can read. This is a pretty big hassle, and Slim wouldn't do it if they could get the PIC16F877 microcontroller to just decode OGG. Now, I don't expect a portable player to have anything as fancy as a PIC16F877 microcontroller, and if that thing can't play OGGs, it stands to reason that a portable decoder can't either.
No, because it sounds like shit. And DRM.
It is my prediction that we will not see a portable Vorbis player for a while. Anything that could play a Vorbis file will need to have a more expensive and more powerful processor, which will drain the battery much faster. This is a big compromise to make just for having the bragging rights of being able to say users can also play OGG files. Two extra hours of batterly life are worth a lot more to the typical user than the ability to play OGGs.
I propose the protagonist would be Mr. T. Oh, how I miss Mr. T!
Bullshit! It appears to me that MS is flopping about trying to explicitly name a company that they could claim is competing with them. The best they could come up with was Apple. Gimme a break! Apple are MS's bitches. Of course MS are thrilled with opinions like those expressed above: some people really are stupid enough to think that there is still real competition on the desktop, and it's people like that which will get the acquitted.
This whole thing is a charade that Apple is a willing participant of. The whole point of the "switch" campaigns is to give the appearance of competition in an industry that effectively has none. Microsoft must be thrilled, because a totally leashed, client company (Apple) is making it look like competition is nipping at Microsoft's heels. Last week they tried the "Windows and Mac users can get along" campaign, which was spooky but not surprising, given the antitrust battles going on now.
Remember that the allegation made against MS is that they don't compete fairly with their real competiton. There are boxes of evidence to support this. On the other hand, there is the supposed couterexample of Apple: A high profile, low danger company that gives MS absolutely nothing to worry about. MS is in fact crying: "see, we are running a fair race! Look at Apple! We're not bullying them at all! We're really, really competing with them using--fair methods like advertising. And oooh, we're soooo scared that they would eat into our market share, so we find it imperative to run ads which prevent this! Our position on the desktop is soooo vulnerable!"
Well, I hoped that at least the slashdot crowd could see through this. I mean, we know that once Microsoft aputates both of your legs, they are perfectly willing to run a fair race against you. Witness that Internet Explorer is now finally uninstallable. However, suddently the Windows Media Player isn't. That's because RealMedia still (sort of) has its legs. Once they're off, the uninstallability problem will suddently disappear. My point is that Apple lies somewhere between Netscape and OS2 in terms of being a threat to Microsoft. However, there is much good PR to be gained by making it appear that the two companies are locked in fierce competition. So MS are milking it. The only surprise is that nobody is calling them on it!
Ejection seat in a helicopter? Is that supposed to be a joke?
America could say "Listen... Our way or the Mainland way!" These are the advantages of being a super-empire.
I understand that this is more for synching portable devices like cell phones and PDAs, but again: why do you need this sychning to be so damn portable? Why not just buy a Bluetooth card for your PC and do all that work at home?
However, here is one cool idea: A bluetooth-broadcasting digital camera! (Do these things exist yet?) You would have the drive in your backpack and the camera will be able to take quite a few pretty huge pictures before it fills up 5 gigs! Still, I wouldn't want to go backpacking with something as fragile as a hard drive in my backpack.
I understand why you don't want to let just anybody build products on the back of the research done by a company's scientists. But this sounds to me like Intergraph were not honestly trying to prevent Intel from using their IP. In fact, I think they might structure their buisiness model around this sort of deal: Patent something you know a big company is going to need soon, wait until they've completely commited to it, and beat a few million out of them in court. Would anybody call this a legitimate revenue model?
One might even feel bad for Intel, as they seem to attract some pretty slimy parasites recently (none worse than Rambus). However, one must remind oneself about all the frivolous IP infringement suits they filed against AMD and VIA. Then, this looks like cumupets (sp?).
OK, who here remembers being an oversexed immature teenage boy?
More than that--nobody has invaded more countries or killed more people with weapons of mass destruction than the United States. Our policy is so hypocritical that I feel ashamed every time I am forced to admit that I actually am an American.
No, it's the Judean Popular Front! (Or is it *People's* Front?...)
If a pretext like this is really enough to get a war off the ground, I wonder how long it will be before a US president makes speeches about how we must use force to break up cells of renegade programmers who are writing modern network protocols which result in programs that are "in confict with the interests of America." Or, maybe we will start bombing servers "suspected of sending illegal data to Freenet."
You don't think this could happen in your lifetime? Ha!
I hope even you have enough sense to recognize that as a foolish argument, and so do most readers here, but it's worth repeating anyway. The comment moderation is making me think you are not alone in being fooled by that line, and that what's obvious to most people is not too obvious to be repeated on Slashdot.
I'm afraid everyone needs a new reason for thinking that what the VCD counterfitters do is wrong. It's illegality is totally beside the point; unjust laws are not that unusual.
So what do these guys do with those huge chests of burned cds? Bury them and make a map?