First off the title of the article is "Wi-Fi phones reviewed" not Skype phones reviewed, not dual mode phones reviewed, not Vonage phones reviewed. None of the models discussed actually support any sort of generic Voip, although I think Google Talk is sorta SIP based so the Sony might qualify if it can be delinked from Google. They ignored the actual standards based WiFi VoIP phones which do exist.
Add in the fact the idiot confused 802.11a and 802.11n(draft) and you really wonder what happened to the editorial standards Dr. Dobbs used to have.
So does anyone have experience with a WiFi SIP phone that isn't a horror story? I have tried a Zyxel and a D-link and hate em both.
> And WTF is the idea of linking to a random gaming forum for this "news"?
Can I get an AMEN?
It needs to be a rule that only primary sources get linked. That means a blog can't be linked unless the primary content of interest to the/. crowd is the actual creative output of the blogger and not some asshole's opinion about a link to a primary source. Commentary from random assholes is what SLASHDOT is for. Lets not get all circular with slashdot posting a link to a forum talking about a blog post that said something interesting about a piece on a newspaper's website about a piece of proposed legislation on some congressman's website. The potential for a huge circlejerk here is massive.
Besides, when the article links to a site with comment posting discussion should be taking place on that site, not slash. So Hey, Taco! Why the hell do you want to drive those valuable comments (pageviews) to another site? Huh?
The same sort of mental disease that infects the Sci-Fi Channel. The kind that called John Edwards (The biggest Douche in the Universe) Sci Fi. The sort of idiots who call Freddy and Jason Sci Fi. Bugger em all.
Harry Potter is FANTASY people, not Sci Fi. If it has 'magic' and elves in it is NOT Sci Fi. Not that I won't be reading this final installment, I will. But it is a pet peeve, especially when the Sci-Fi Channel wastes such a large portion of their day running stuff that is NOT Sci-Fi.
> There seems to be a connection between communism and software piracy...
Not really. There is a connection between poverty and piracy and between rule of law and piracy.
Poor countries can't afford to buy software at western world prices and unless you have a strong rule of law in the copyright area to forbid piracy people will pirate even if they have money. For examples see all of the 3rd world for poor people pirating regardless of their form of government and wealthy regions in Asia which have legal systems that don't put much effort (changing under western pressure) into copyright enforcement.
I think your confusion comes from observing that all communist countries have rampant piracy and didn't associate it with the fact that all are/were poor and you mistook cause and effect. Communism, from what I can observe at least, doesn't require an endorsement of piracy as a matter of policy; however it causes poverty and corruption, both of which tend to lead to rampant piracy.
> Why should we think this is anythign but a scam?
Even better, this quote from the last paragraph:
"...and the Whissons need some initial government funding to get their ideas off the ground."
Sure sign of a scam, when they know even the idiot investors, who will fall for pyramid schemes and MLM scams, won't buy in the scammers ALWAYS demand the government 'invest' in a new tech that will "save the world."
No, if the tech is real and has the potential of being buildable at a cost effective price private investors will be found, if not why should the Austrailian taxpayers be fleeced for yet another white elephant project?
Of course the next sentence gives it away....
"For the price of one of John Howard's crappy nuclear reactors, Max might be able to solve a few problems."
Just another deranged green who has an irrational fear of the N word who would rather see the money pissed away on a pet project instead of actually solving the problem of dependence on non renewable energy sources often from unstable despotic countires.
> I can tell you're an expert on Norwegian constitutional law,
Don't care. The hallmark of socialists everywhere is lies and doublethink. I'm sure there still lots of remnants of a nice system of laws on the books. And lip service is paid to them when it serves the interests of socialism. Reality differs from the printed version. Much like it does in America, only our Republic still has a small chance of being restored to the limited role it should have. The Democratic (Socialist) Party here hasn't yet swept away the last remnants of the Old Republic. Not yet.
Of course were one of the Founding Fathers to be somehow risen from his grave there ain't a Congresscritter, Justice or President who has served in the last generation that said Founder wouldn't have a hankering to shoot dead for breaching his Oath of Office on an almost daily basis. And not many Citizens he wouldn't want to horsewhip for letting the bastards not only live but get reelected. Unless he just said "Screw you guys I'm going back to Hell."
Ok, I'm getting off on a rant. Heading back ontopic.....
No nation of laws based on individual liberty and justice could forbid a willing buyer and willing seller from exchanging things of value in a private transaction that aren't harmful substances, state secrets or something else truly exceptional. It's just SONGS people.
I'll assume you either are not an American or a product of our government schools. If you would haev googled it I wouldn't have to educate you.... but you can find that phrase at Article IV Section 2:
"Section 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."
If you are American and if you possess even a smidgen of curiosity about the country your mighty forebearers gave you, you might want to go read The Federalist Papers, wherein some of the people who designed our form of government explain in language that would be shocking to see in today's political discourse for it's bluntness, express their utter disdain for the idea of democracy.
> no, it's democratic government responding to its citizens.
Which is a perfect example why the US Founding Fathers thought democracy was a a wicked and stupid idea. And why the US has a republican form of government with lots of checks and balances and concepts like Rights that trump the 'will of the People" and being a nation of laws and not men, meaning there are supposed to be a great many things the State should NEVER do; regardless of whether it might be popular at the moment.
Norway on the other hand is a socialist "Worker's Paradise" and lacks any such restraints.
Norway outlaws iTunes? What is a good gay socialist Mac user going to do? What is the right side to be on?
Ok, trolling is fun and all, but seriously.
I think it's a load. People have the right to be stupid. Without that as Right 0 no other "Right" can be read as anything other than "You have the Right to ____ unless we, the anointed elite, think decide your exercise of it is dumb." It's why the 1st Amendment is safe so long as -both- Noam Chomsky and StormFront were free to rant and rave but didn't survive John McCain & Russ Feingold.
I'd never buy from the iTunes store because I think the deal offered is one sided, shortsighted and stupid. But I'll defend Steve's Right to try to sell it and your Right to freely enter into a license agreement with him.
Typing too fast.... before someone else points out the idiocy in my original post I'll fix a few of em myself.
> Get the losses down where those Maxwell caps are and you lose 15 miles per day to losses.
Since the power loss is not constant, which was the whole point, obviously this part has to be taken in the context of the next (fairly mangled) sentence and assume nightly recharging to 100% to enable the 500 mile advertised range. Which would be the logical course, so an unexpected trip could be undertaken without worrying about charging.
> Large losses mean splitting it into banks and only charging what you plan on needing plus a reserve.
Doh. The obvious method is of course to leave it one big bank and only recharge it to give tomorrow's driving plus a fudge factor if self discharge is a problem. (Explanation left as exercise)
But running the numbers a little more gets some disturbing trends. Assume the loss is only equal to 15 miles of driving per day as I did in the best case above. That means every single car would be wasting enough power to drive a NYC to LA round trip annually. But keep the caps around 25% charge most days would cut the waste in half. Assuming that the real world loss curve looks close to a perfect capacitor discharge.
> Has anyone figured out how much cheaper these computers come than those with OEM Windows?
Well opening a seperate tab on www.dell.com and finding almost the same system with Windows I get a difference of $185 once you make em exactly equal. But they are running a promo hard drive upgrade on the N servies right now and aren't on the normal Dimension I looked at. But it doesn't matter, when the difference is that big it is clear they are actually taking something off the sticker price when you buy an N series. Finally. Guess that makes this a real news item instead of a pathetic dupe.
You are almost there, just put the parts together correctly. You said:
> Maxwell Technologies advertises a 125V output power module which is spec'd to only lose 70% of its charge after 30 days.
and
> they are ultimately bound by the physical laws of capacitors, one law being that their output voltage drops (linearly) as they discharge.
Now do the math. Or you could if enough numbers were available, so lets do it back of the envelope style. It's all about the discharge CURVE. Remember caps won't self discharge like a battery. That voltage is going to be slip sliding away from the small unavoidable losses and the that first 10% of the voltage drop will be seeping out what percentage of the watt-hours? 19% Ouch!
It will be like a car with a leak in the gas tank, the question is will be be a slow leak that can be ignored in most cases or will it feel like losing gallons per day. They are promising a car with a 500 mile range. Get the losses down where those Maxwell caps are and you lose 15 miles per day to losses. If the losses creep up to 5% terminal voltage per day to losses and recharge nightly and that will be paying for a 50 mile drive whether it sits in the driveway or runs all day. Large losses mean splitting it into banks and only charging what you plan on needing plus a reserve. Big lot of bother. Lets hope for low losses, but at the extreme voltages they are talking about I doubt it.
> The Morris worm took out a very large fraction of the net.
It did no lasting damage. I'm talking about something that would brick a few million Dells and Ciscos. The key weakness today is flash memory and the all too common practice of leaving things flashable by default. Getting an executable able to identify and wipe 80-90% of the motherboards in corporate use is an achievable goal for an attacker with resources. Also consider that many optical and hard drives have flashable firmware. The backlog a widespread attack could create at the few facilities with the specialized tools to reflash a totally bricked PC would mean months before all machines were back in service.
> You can take the Internet down, but probably not for very long.
Dunno, we have yet to experience a real widespread outage. If someone managed to take out enough of the net that it couldn't be used to colaborate on the fix or to distribute it the time to repair would be a lot worse.
It is something I wonder about. First the net was attacked by kids looking for thrills. Now it is attacked by spammers looking t make a profit. The scenario I worry about is if a determined foe with resources attacked it with the goal of simply inflicting maximal damage.
The raw materials are out there, just waiting to be weaponized. Imagine a combo punch, a Warhol worm from hell to nuke the Windows boxes, reflashing as many as possible into boat anchors within the first hour. Follow that up with an attack on the backbone routers, again with the goal of bricking as many as possible. If you get enough it makes recovery damn near impossible since you need the net to get the fixes. Sure it would be possible to clean up the mess and bring up enough of the net to get the important things moving in a day or two but a full cleanup would take months. Would enough people would lose confidence in depending on the net for critical commerce to gut the stocks of some major players and set things back to a pre net mindset?
Re:Let it rest in peace!
on
AmigaOS 4
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· Score: 1
> The reason Amiga died was because Commodore was completely inept on just about everything non-technical in nature
No, Commodore died because they were taken over by congenital idiots. The Amiga died because the platform was tied to one company's fate. A problem all closed proprietary solutions eventually face. The Atari line of computers died with Atari, Amiga died with CBM, The TRS-80 line died when Tandy lost interest and stopped refreshing the line, etc.
> Yep, just like Macintosh.
Apple's hardware line is effectively dead because they have decided hardware is a commodity. When they tire of OS X the users will have no choice but to accept whatever Steve gives them next. (nay, they will declare it insanely great before even seeing it, the power of the Kool-Aid)
> And we all know that IBM machines survived because of Microsoft's open operating systems.
Actually, yes. The IBM PC would have been a footnote, widely used in corporate america for some period of years but never taking over the world had not Microsoft made DOS widely available to clones. In a sense DOS was "open" because anyone could buy it for a small part of the cost of a system, more like a RAND patent license used in a standard.
But when Microsoft commands a migration, their userbase has no choice but to migrate. In each case the users have no choice but to keep using what they have until it stops working and then doing a very painful migration or accepting the regularly occuring pain of changing platforms when someone else's corporate politics dictate.
It was that realization that made me jump to the penguin the first time I encountered it. Freedom from ever being orphaned by a dead platform again, Freedom from being forced to relearn everything yet again, migrate documents, etc. Vi and emacs are, have been and forever shall be. Learn them once and you need never worry. Redhat can be taken over tomorrow by corporate buttweasels and die. Novell can lie down with Microsoft. Linus, Cox and Morton can all be hit by a meteor at a conference and it won't matter, the platform will live on. Linux can become outdated and be replaced by a successor, or by BSD or Solaris. It doesn't matter, the platform is bigger than the kernel and will live on. Because the platform is more a set of ideas than code. The big idea is the UNIX philosophy/ The second biggest idea is that the core code is portable across any UNIX/Posix like environment.
> Probably more along the lines of "What legislation can I pass that gets me positive PR
Especially when one actually looks at what they have done..... i.e. nothing. It is typical European brinksmanship. You better comply before our deadline.... or we will talk sternly to you and set a new one. Flaunt us for a decade and we might start fining you, but don't worry the fine will be less than the ill gotten gains you are reaping. (See EU vs MIcrosoft)
The problem is talk by itself is useless, talk backed by a credible threat of action can be very effective. Europe lost the ability for taking action on anything twenty years ago. Forget international affairs, they lack the required ferocity to even bully a small corporation like Apple Inc. And they actually wonder why they always fail in diplomatic efforts. Just for example, why would Iran listen to them? There is never the slightest hint of an "or else" even discussed.
Not that the US is much more effective at policing corporations.....;( Just look at DOJ v MSFT. You better behave you convicted monopolist.... or... or... damnifiknow what will happen. How many times have they promised to stop the Windows Tax over teh last fifteen years and is there a single large vendor who will defy their unwritten law and unbundle Windows from their PCs?
Let it rest in peace!
on
AmigaOS 4
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
> I don't get all upset when somebody drives by in a 1950's Studebaker all tricked out.
I think old cars are cool. I think old computers are cool. I think old computer games are cool even. But it is time to stop molesting the poor Amiga's cold dead corpse like this. It's dead people, remember it for what it was but leave it in peace. It belongs to a different time, a difference philosophy.
The Amiga died for one reason. Closed Source on a Closed Platform. No amount of cool could save it when Amiga Inc went kaput. Let it be a lesson unto you, invest not thy emotions, neither thy creative output in platforms which can vanish in the twinkling of an eye. The future belongs to Open Standards, Open Platforms and Open Source. Apple is coming around, albeit kicking and screaming most of the time, even Microsoft will eventually be forced to adapt or die.
Amiga Inc died and the bloody bits have passed from charnel house to charnel house, each run by a rabid fanboi who believed with all his heart that HE could save the Amiga platform, but none of their plans could be realized because no sane person will invest the needed funds to bring a product to market because there isn't a market for it waiting to buy it. Just read the article to see why. How many times do you read phrases like "used to", "was", "once", etc. Most of the software still in use is old 68000 stuff from companies which themseleves are so long in the grave that nobody would even knows where to look for the sourcecode anymore, assuming it exists. Orphaned closed source software. So even if interest could be revived it would be for naught because a new Amiga owner can't (legally) obtain much of the software anymore.
Combine with the tangled ownership history for the IP and you get stuff like the line in the article where the current developers find they don't have the right to port to x86. PPC is pretty much dead these days, no future development is likely that would be useful to a desktop OS so the current roadmap is a deadend. The only PPC platform in production these days is the PS3 but it doesn't allow "other OS" to access the 3D hardware which would be a bummer since Amaga OS 4 just gained 3D support.:(
Ok, announcing SP1 for the second half of 07 is reasonable since all software has bugs. Calling for testers for the first service pack before the turd actually drops from their butts[1] is another thing entirely. If they have known 'high impact issues' they should delay initial release one more time. This is supposed to be a stable commercial product. Fedora would (hell, HAS) hold a release if it had 'high impact issues' and they pitch themselves as more of an early adopter testbed. Vista is going to be forcefed on millions of unsuspecting computer buyers whether they want it or not. Is it really unreasonable to expect the KNOWN bugs to be squished before forcing OEMs to preload it?
[1] No I do not count the corporate edition released in Nov because it was simply a stunt to claim to have shipped in 06. They knew full well no same corporate IT dept would do anything other than begin testing with a version they would consider the 'final beta'.
> Stupid comment of the day, courtesy of the article: In addition, Bainwol said, the ability of consumers > to use legally purchased tunes on different devices is not crippled by DRM systems per se. "We're for > interoperability," he said, "and there's nothing intrinsic to DRM that prevents interoperability."
No it isn't stupid, it is insightful. You are stupid. Look, you can be against DRM without being making yourself look foolish with silly talk. It is perfectly possible to envision a DRM system that would allow for perfect inter device transfer and eliminate 99% of legitimate objections. What isn't possible to envision is the hammer large enough to enforce it on the hardware makers worldwide. Think for a moment, every DVD player has a DRM system and they all interoperate. It would take a little more effort to solve the problems with files moving around portable players but Apple does it. Imagine FairPlay licensed on RAND terms. Or a functional clone.
> Current DRM is mostly useful for locking the consumers into one single vendor for their mp3 players.
Exactly. The music industry, once it stops running in a panic and thinks rationally for a few seconds, will decide it prefers the CD/DVD model where the hardware vendors are weak, making commodity hardware at low margins and the content producers make the serious coin vs what the portable player biz with DRM is turning into: the game console market. A game where the hardware makers are king and dictate terms to the content producers and rake off a thick percentage.
To make the hardware a commodity requires the content to be delivered in a standardized format. Good luck setting a vendor neutral standard that includes a DRM system that is really secure. Yes the movie industry has had some luck with CSS and the new crypto standards in the hidef formats but that is because they were able to dictate terms to the hardware vendors. For whatever reason the music biz has failed to do that so they are left with accepting mp3 as the only standard with universal hardware support.
> Apple was right not to dwarf any OS X/Mac hardware announcement with the release of the iPhone - which is why Macworld > will be primarily consumer electronics going forward
Hey, moron! Think! There won't BE but one or two more Macworlds. As Apple exits the computer business they will be announcing consumer electronics where everyone else does, CES. Without the cult of Mac there is no Macworld. Without exciting new MAC announcements to look forward to who is going to go?
You can't get people to fly thousands of miles and sit in a hotel to see the new point release of OS X and from now on the new hardware is going to be absolutely predictable, look at Dell's website and Intel's product roadmap. Anything new you see will appear in a new Mac/Macbook in three to six months. For the next couple of years the Apple version will be better designed and look cooler but be defeatured and crippled with a one button pointer on the laptops and other BS. Eventually they will be reduced (by lack of interest and engineering resources if for no other reason) to being just another rebadger of generic kit with the only product differentiation being the keys loaded into the Trusted Computing Module and preloaded with OS X instead of Vista.
> You have forgotten, that is exactly what the iPod entered into as well. A market that was fairly far along, with > a lot of products that offered more features than the iPod.
Your memory has been rewritten by the Reality Distortion Field. Allow me to correct it.
When the iPod first appeared the MP3 player market was filled with half finished devices from a slew of asian third tier houses, Creative and Rio being the only ones with ANY name recognition and their stuff was about as bad as the generic stuff from China. Players came in two flavors, flash based units with too little space to be useful and big bulky players with laptop drives and lithium ion batteries. If you could find any music outside the warez scene it was from pathetic selections with the DRM flavor of the month. So unless you were computer literate enough to rip your own CD collection you had to be a warez trader. Combine all this and the IT crowd and hardcore music freak cap was buying in but it wasn't mainstream.
Then Apple introduced the iPod with the 1.8" drive, polished firmware, iTunes and the iTunes store and a slick marketing campaign and made portable music players a mainstream piece of consumer electronics. Yes others now offer players that work fairly sanely, everyone has a fairly level playing field in available components. Yes the DRM lock between iTunes Store and iPod is a terrible trap but 99% of their customers ain't bright enough to see it. Remember, they are selling to the massmarket consumer electronics market and diehard Mac faithful, neither are known for critical thinking.
The problem is their competitors are still selling mp3 players into a market looking for iPods. By essentially creating the market they defined it. For now. Sandisk looks like they are figuring out how to move units, others will follow. Eventually even Microsoft will figure out how to make a device people might want.:) Five years from now Apple will be a third of unit sales at best, slowily sliding into their traditional Apple is entering into a field just as barren as the MP3 field was, in terms of user interaction with the device and integraton with computers.
No, not quite. There are lots of good smartphones out there, judged by the only metric that counts, market penetration. When iPod appeared mp3 players were in less than a percent of the population's hot little hands, smartphones are already over that mark. And remember Apple isn't going to be able to have it's way with this market, the carriers rule their roost and aren't likely to be dumb enough to hand all of the profit centers over to Steve on a silver platter.
> It doesn't matter what "religion" they represent, millenialists seem to share a lot in common. And > one of the things they share is a desire to silence those voices of reason who would urge caution.
Because they are always preaching about the end of the world as part of a call for "revival" or conversion. You aren't supposed to question the details of the warnings because the message is about the call to faith. It is more of a "stop all this sinning before [deity] smotes yer sorry butts."
The Global Warming crowd is hollering about the world ending because they want to scare people to repent of their wickedness and adopt their religion. Same as any fundamentalist Christian or Muslim. The only difference is what sins the unbelievers are supposed to adstain from. But all three sects seem to agree that the enlightenment was a bad idea and that western civilization and capitalism have to go. Of course I say screw em all.:)
> To the best of my knowledge, no one was contracting Hamilton and Madison to write...
Yo, cornholio. Nobody at the time knew it was Hamilton & Madison, because they were posting as anonymous cowards. Which is the whole point of the origional poster, that anonymous posting isn't compatible with these new laws. Because the only way you can know whether or not a poster is being paid for what they write is if everyone fills out lots of disclosure forms.
So now we have to ask whether Hamilton & Madison's reasons for posting as Publius were valid (I happen to think so) and whether any possible gains from these laws could offset the negative of never having anyone post anonymous again. Sometimes the message and the messenger would only get all tangled up and nobody will listen to the message unless the post is anonymous. So lets look at what we are going to be losing for very dubious gains.
I think Kelo was one of the best rulings the Supremes have written in a decade. They said exactly the truth, that the State laws in effect at the time permitted the taking. Then they went on to mention, almost in passing, that the situation could be quickly fixed by correcting the laws. People did exactly that across the country, which is exactly how the system is supposed to work. Courts aren't supposed to act as super legislatures, they are only supposed to work with the laws as written. If bad (but constituitional) laws are written Judges are supposed to obey them just like the rest of us.
Had certain other controversial cases been handled the same way there would be a lot less political strife in the land today. Letting judges make laws causes no end of problems. It would be great if legislatures and executive branches would grow a pair and start removing judges who overstep their powers.
Slashdot Mirror
First off the title of the article is "Wi-Fi phones reviewed" not Skype phones reviewed, not dual mode phones reviewed, not Vonage phones reviewed. None of the models discussed actually support any sort of generic Voip, although I think Google Talk is sorta SIP based so the Sony might qualify if it can be delinked from Google. They ignored the actual standards based WiFi VoIP phones which do exist.
Add in the fact the idiot confused 802.11a and 802.11n(draft) and you really wonder what happened to the editorial standards Dr. Dobbs used to have.
So does anyone have experience with a WiFi SIP phone that isn't a horror story? I have tried a Zyxel and a D-link and hate em both.
> And WTF is the idea of linking to a random gaming forum for this "news"?
/. crowd is the actual creative output of the blogger and not some asshole's opinion about a link to a primary source. Commentary from random assholes is what SLASHDOT is for. Lets not get all circular with slashdot posting a link to a forum talking about a blog post that said something interesting about a piece on a newspaper's website about a piece of proposed legislation on some congressman's website. The potential for a huge circlejerk here is massive.
Can I get an AMEN?
It needs to be a rule that only primary sources get linked. That means a blog can't be linked unless the primary content of interest to the
Besides, when the article links to a site with comment posting discussion should be taking place on that site, not slash. So Hey, Taco! Why the hell do you want to drive those valuable comments (pageviews) to another site? Huh?
The same sort of mental disease that infects the Sci-Fi Channel. The kind that called John Edwards (The biggest Douche in the Universe) Sci Fi. The sort of idiots who call Freddy and Jason Sci Fi. Bugger em all.
Harry Potter is FANTASY people, not Sci Fi. If it has 'magic' and elves in it is NOT Sci Fi. Not that I won't be reading this final installment, I will. But it is a pet peeve, especially when the Sci-Fi Channel wastes such a large portion of their day running stuff that is NOT Sci-Fi.
> There seems to be a connection between communism and software piracy...
Not really. There is a connection between poverty and piracy and between rule of law and piracy.
Poor countries can't afford to buy software at western world prices and unless you have a strong rule of law in the copyright area to forbid piracy people will pirate even if they have money. For examples see all of the 3rd world for poor people pirating regardless of their form of government and wealthy regions in Asia which have legal systems that don't put much effort (changing under western pressure) into copyright enforcement.
I think your confusion comes from observing that all communist countries have rampant piracy and didn't associate it with the fact that all are/were poor and you mistook cause and effect. Communism, from what I can observe at least, doesn't require an endorsement of piracy as a matter of policy; however it causes poverty and corruption, both of which tend to lead to rampant piracy.
> Why should we think this is anythign but a scam?
...and the Whissons need some initial government funding to get their ideas off the ground."
Even better, this quote from the last paragraph:
"
Sure sign of a scam, when they know even the idiot investors, who will fall for pyramid schemes and MLM scams, won't buy in the scammers ALWAYS demand the government 'invest' in a new tech that will "save the world."
No, if the tech is real and has the potential of being buildable at a cost effective price private investors will be found, if not why should the Austrailian taxpayers be fleeced for yet another white elephant project?
Of course the next sentence gives it away....
"For the price of one of John Howard's crappy nuclear reactors, Max might be able to solve a few problems."
Just another deranged green who has an irrational fear of the N word who would rather see the money pissed away on a pet project instead of actually solving the problem of dependence on non renewable energy sources often from unstable despotic countires.
> I can tell you're an expert on Norwegian constitutional law,
Don't care. The hallmark of socialists everywhere is lies and doublethink. I'm sure there still lots of remnants of a nice system of laws on the books. And lip service is paid to them when it serves the interests of socialism. Reality differs from the printed version. Much like it does in America, only our Republic still has a small chance of being restored to the limited role it should have. The Democratic (Socialist) Party here hasn't yet swept away the last remnants of the Old Republic. Not yet.
Of course were one of the Founding Fathers to be somehow risen from his grave there ain't a Congresscritter, Justice or President who has served in the last generation that said Founder wouldn't have a hankering to shoot dead for breaching his Oath of Office on an almost daily basis. And not many Citizens he wouldn't want to horsewhip for letting the bastards not only live but get reelected. Unless he just said "Screw you guys I'm going back to Hell."
Ok, I'm getting off on a rant. Heading back ontopic.....
No nation of laws based on individual liberty and justice could forbid a willing buyer and willing seller from exchanging things of value in a private transaction that aren't harmful substances, state secrets or something else truly exceptional. It's just SONGS people.
> republican form of government
I'll assume you either are not an American or a product of our government schools. If you would haev googled it I wouldn't have to educate you.... but you can find that phrase at Article IV Section 2:
"Section 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."
If you are American and if you possess even a smidgen of curiosity about the country your mighty forebearers gave you, you might want to go read The Federalist Papers, wherein some of the people who designed our form of government explain in language that would be shocking to see in today's political discourse for it's bluntness, express their utter disdain for the idea of democracy.
> no, it's democratic government responding to its citizens.
Which is a perfect example why the US Founding Fathers thought democracy was a a wicked and stupid idea. And why the US has a republican form of government with lots of checks and balances and concepts like Rights that trump the 'will of the People" and being a nation of laws and not men, meaning there are supposed to be a great many things the State should NEVER do; regardless of whether it might be popular at the moment.
Norway on the other hand is a socialist "Worker's Paradise" and lacks any such restraints.
Gaaa!
Norway == socialists == doubleplus good
DRM == doubleplus ungood
iTunes == Apple == doubleplus good
Norway outlaws iTunes? What is a good gay socialist Mac user going to do? What is the right side to be on?
Ok, trolling is fun and all, but seriously.
I think it's a load. People have the right to be stupid. Without that as Right 0 no other "Right" can be read as anything other than "You have the Right to ____ unless we, the anointed elite, think decide your exercise of it is dumb." It's why the 1st Amendment is safe so long as -both- Noam Chomsky and StormFront were free to rant and rave but didn't survive John McCain & Russ Feingold.
I'd never buy from the iTunes store because I think the deal offered is one sided, shortsighted and stupid. But I'll defend Steve's Right to try to sell it and your Right to freely enter into a license agreement with him.
Typing too fast.... before someone else points out the idiocy in my original post I'll fix a few of em myself.
> Get the losses down where those Maxwell caps are and you lose 15 miles per day to losses.
Since the power loss is not constant, which was the whole point, obviously this part has to be taken in the context of the next (fairly mangled) sentence and assume nightly recharging to 100% to enable the 500 mile advertised range. Which would be the logical course, so an unexpected trip could be undertaken without worrying about charging.
> Large losses mean splitting it into banks and only charging what you plan on needing plus a reserve.
Doh. The obvious method is of course to leave it one big bank and only recharge it to give tomorrow's driving plus a fudge factor if self discharge is a problem. (Explanation left as exercise)
But running the numbers a little more gets some disturbing trends. Assume the loss is only equal to 15 miles of driving per day as I did in the best case above. That means every single car would be wasting enough power to drive a NYC to LA round trip annually. But keep the caps around 25% charge most days would cut the waste in half. Assuming that the real world loss curve looks close to a perfect capacitor discharge.
> Has anyone figured out how much cheaper these computers come than those with OEM Windows?
Well opening a seperate tab on www.dell.com and finding almost the same system with Windows I get a difference of $185 once you make em exactly equal. But they are running a promo hard drive upgrade on the N servies right now and aren't on the normal Dimension I looked at. But it doesn't matter, when the difference is that big it is clear they are actually taking something off the sticker price when you buy an N series. Finally. Guess that makes this a real news item instead of a pathetic dupe.
You are almost there, just put the parts together correctly. You said:
> Maxwell Technologies advertises a 125V output power module which is spec'd to only lose 70% of its charge after 30 days.
and
> they are ultimately bound by the physical laws of capacitors, one law being that their output voltage drops (linearly) as they discharge.
Now do the math. Or you could if enough numbers were available, so lets do it back of the envelope style. It's all about the discharge CURVE. Remember caps won't self discharge like a battery. That voltage is going to be slip sliding away from the small unavoidable losses and the that first 10% of the voltage drop will be seeping out what percentage of the watt-hours? 19% Ouch!
It will be like a car with a leak in the gas tank, the question is will be be a slow leak that can be ignored in most cases or will it feel like losing gallons per day. They are promising a car with a 500 mile range. Get the losses down where those Maxwell caps are and you lose 15 miles per day to losses. If the losses creep up to 5% terminal voltage per day to losses and recharge nightly and that will be paying for a 50 mile drive whether it sits in the driveway or runs all day. Large losses mean splitting it into banks and only charging what you plan on needing plus a reserve. Big lot of bother. Lets hope for low losses, but at the extreme voltages they are talking about I doubt it.
> The Morris worm took out a very large fraction of the net.
It did no lasting damage. I'm talking about something that would brick a few million Dells and Ciscos. The key weakness today is flash memory and the all too common practice of leaving things flashable by default. Getting an executable able to identify and wipe 80-90% of the motherboards in corporate use is an achievable goal for an attacker with resources. Also consider that many optical and hard drives have flashable firmware. The backlog a widespread attack could create at the few facilities with the specialized tools to reflash a totally bricked PC would mean months before all machines were back in service.
> You can take the Internet down, but probably not for very long.
Dunno, we have yet to experience a real widespread outage. If someone managed to take out enough of the net that it couldn't be used to colaborate on the fix or to distribute it the time to repair would be a lot worse.
It is something I wonder about. First the net was attacked by kids looking for thrills. Now it is attacked by spammers looking t make a profit. The scenario I worry about is if a determined foe with resources attacked it with the goal of simply inflicting maximal damage.
The raw materials are out there, just waiting to be weaponized. Imagine a combo punch, a Warhol worm from hell to nuke the Windows boxes, reflashing as many as possible into boat anchors within the first hour. Follow that up with an attack on the backbone routers, again with the goal of bricking as many as possible. If you get enough it makes recovery damn near impossible since you need the net to get the fixes. Sure it would be possible to clean up the mess and bring up enough of the net to get the important things moving in a day or two but a full cleanup would take months. Would enough people would lose confidence in depending on the net for critical commerce to gut the stocks of some major players and set things back to a pre net mindset?
> The reason Amiga died was because Commodore was completely inept on just about everything non-technical in nature
No, Commodore died because they were taken over by congenital idiots. The Amiga died because the platform was tied to one company's fate. A problem all closed proprietary solutions eventually face. The Atari line of computers died with Atari, Amiga died with CBM, The TRS-80 line died when Tandy lost interest and stopped refreshing the line, etc.
> Yep, just like Macintosh.
Apple's hardware line is effectively dead because they have decided hardware is a commodity. When they tire of OS X the users will have no choice but to accept whatever Steve gives them next. (nay, they will declare it insanely great before even seeing it, the power of the Kool-Aid)
> And we all know that IBM machines survived because of Microsoft's open operating systems.
Actually, yes. The IBM PC would have been a footnote, widely used in corporate america for some period of years but never taking over the world had not Microsoft made DOS widely available to clones. In a sense DOS was "open" because anyone could buy it for a small part of the cost of a system, more like a RAND patent license used in a standard.
But when Microsoft commands a migration, their userbase has no choice but to migrate. In each case the users have no choice but to keep using what they have until it stops working and then doing a very painful migration or accepting the regularly occuring pain of changing platforms when someone else's corporate politics dictate.
It was that realization that made me jump to the penguin the first time I encountered it. Freedom from ever being orphaned by a dead platform again, Freedom from being forced to relearn everything yet again, migrate documents, etc. Vi and emacs are, have been and forever shall be. Learn them once and you need never worry. Redhat can be taken over tomorrow by corporate buttweasels and die. Novell can lie down with Microsoft. Linus, Cox and Morton can all be hit by a meteor at a conference and it won't matter, the platform will live on. Linux can become outdated and be replaced by a successor, or by BSD or Solaris. It doesn't matter, the platform is bigger than the kernel and will live on. Because the platform is more a set of ideas than code. The big idea is the UNIX philosophy/ The second biggest idea is that the core code is portable across any UNIX/Posix like environment.
> Probably more along the lines of "What legislation can I pass that gets me positive PR
;( Just look at DOJ v MSFT. You better behave you convicted monopolist.... or... or... damnifiknow what will happen. How many times have they promised to stop the Windows Tax over teh last fifteen years and is there a single large vendor who will defy their unwritten law and unbundle Windows from their PCs?
Especially when one actually looks at what they have done..... i.e. nothing. It is typical European brinksmanship. You better comply before our deadline.... or we will talk sternly to you and set a new one. Flaunt us for a decade and we might start fining you, but don't worry the fine will be less than the ill gotten gains you are reaping. (See EU vs MIcrosoft)
The problem is talk by itself is useless, talk backed by a credible threat of action can be very effective. Europe lost the ability for taking action on anything twenty years ago. Forget international affairs, they lack the required ferocity to even bully a small corporation like Apple Inc. And they actually wonder why they always fail in diplomatic efforts. Just for example, why would Iran listen to them? There is never the slightest hint of an "or else" even discussed.
Not that the US is much more effective at policing corporations.....
> I don't get all upset when somebody drives by in a 1950's Studebaker all tricked out.
:(
I think old cars are cool. I think old computers are cool. I think old computer games are cool even. But it is time to stop molesting the poor Amiga's cold dead corpse like this. It's dead people, remember it for what it was but leave it in peace. It belongs to a different time, a difference philosophy.
The Amiga died for one reason. Closed Source on a Closed Platform. No amount of cool could save it when Amiga Inc went kaput. Let it be a lesson unto you, invest not thy emotions, neither thy creative output in platforms which can vanish in the twinkling of an eye. The future belongs to Open Standards, Open Platforms and Open Source. Apple is coming around, albeit kicking and screaming most of the time, even Microsoft will eventually be forced to adapt or die.
Amiga Inc died and the bloody bits have passed from charnel house to charnel house, each run by a rabid fanboi who believed with all his heart that HE could save the Amiga platform, but none of their plans could be realized because no sane person will invest the needed funds to bring a product to market because there isn't a market for it waiting to buy it. Just read the article to see why. How many times do you read phrases like "used to", "was", "once", etc. Most of the software still in use is old 68000 stuff from companies which themseleves are so long in the grave that nobody would even knows where to look for the sourcecode anymore, assuming it exists. Orphaned closed source software. So even if interest could be revived it would be for naught because a new Amiga owner can't (legally) obtain much of the software anymore.
Combine with the tangled ownership history for the IP and you get stuff like the line in the article where the current developers find they don't have the right to port to x86. PPC is pretty much dead these days, no future development is likely that would be useful to a desktop OS so the current roadmap is a deadend. The only PPC platform in production these days is the PS3 but it doesn't allow "other OS" to access the 3D hardware which would be a bummer since Amaga OS 4 just gained 3D support.
Ok, announcing SP1 for the second half of 07 is reasonable since all software has bugs. Calling for testers for the first service pack before the turd actually drops from their butts[1] is another thing entirely. If they have known 'high impact issues' they should delay initial release one more time. This is supposed to be a stable commercial product. Fedora would (hell, HAS) hold a release if it had 'high impact issues' and they pitch themselves as more of an early adopter testbed. Vista is going to be forcefed on millions of unsuspecting computer buyers whether they want it or not. Is it really unreasonable to expect the KNOWN bugs to be squished before forcing OEMs to preload it?
[1] No I do not count the corporate edition released in Nov because it was simply a stunt to claim to have shipped in 06. They knew full well no same corporate IT dept would do anything other than begin testing with a version they would consider the 'final beta'.
> Stupid comment of the day, courtesy of the article: In addition, Bainwol said, the ability of consumers
> to use legally purchased tunes on different devices is not crippled by DRM systems per se. "We're for
> interoperability," he said, "and there's nothing intrinsic to DRM that prevents interoperability."
No it isn't stupid, it is insightful. You are stupid. Look, you can be against DRM without being making yourself look foolish with silly talk. It is perfectly possible to envision a DRM system that would allow for perfect inter device transfer and eliminate 99% of legitimate objections. What isn't possible to envision is the hammer large enough to enforce it on the hardware makers worldwide. Think for a moment, every DVD player has a DRM system and they all interoperate. It would take a little more effort to solve the problems with files moving around portable players but Apple does it. Imagine FairPlay licensed on RAND terms. Or a functional clone.
> Current DRM is mostly useful for locking the consumers into one single vendor for their mp3 players.
Exactly. The music industry, once it stops running in a panic and thinks rationally for a few seconds, will decide it prefers the CD/DVD model where the hardware vendors are weak, making commodity hardware at low margins and the content producers make the serious coin vs what the portable player biz with DRM is turning into: the game console market. A game where the hardware makers are king and dictate terms to the content producers and rake off a thick percentage.
To make the hardware a commodity requires the content to be delivered in a standardized format. Good luck setting a vendor neutral standard that includes a DRM system that is really secure. Yes the movie industry has had some luck with CSS and the new crypto standards in the hidef formats but that is because they were able to dictate terms to the hardware vendors. For whatever reason the music biz has failed to do that so they are left with accepting mp3 as the only standard with universal hardware support.
> Apple was right not to dwarf any OS X/Mac hardware announcement with the release of the iPhone - which is why Macworld
> will be primarily consumer electronics going forward
Hey, moron! Think! There won't BE but one or two more Macworlds. As Apple exits the computer business they will be announcing consumer electronics where everyone else does, CES. Without the cult of Mac there is no Macworld. Without exciting new MAC announcements to look forward to who is going to go?
You can't get people to fly thousands of miles and sit in a hotel to see the new point release of OS X and from now on the new hardware is going to be absolutely predictable, look at Dell's website and Intel's product roadmap. Anything new you see will appear in a new Mac/Macbook in three to six months. For the next couple of years the Apple version will be better designed and look cooler but be defeatured and crippled with a one button pointer on the laptops and other BS. Eventually they will be reduced (by lack of interest and engineering resources if for no other reason) to being just another rebadger of generic kit with the only product differentiation being the keys loaded into the Trusted Computing Module and preloaded with OS X instead of Vista.
> You have forgotten, that is exactly what the iPod entered into as well. A market that was fairly far along, with
:) Five years from now Apple will be a third of unit sales at best, slowily sliding into their traditional Apple is entering into a field just as barren as the MP3 field was, in terms of user interaction with the device and integraton with computers.
> a lot of products that offered more features than the iPod.
Your memory has been rewritten by the Reality Distortion Field. Allow me to correct it.
When the iPod first appeared the MP3 player market was filled with half finished devices from a slew of asian third tier houses, Creative and Rio being the only ones with ANY name recognition and their stuff was about as bad as the generic stuff from China. Players came in two flavors, flash based units with too little space to be useful and big bulky players with laptop drives and lithium ion batteries. If you could find any music outside the warez scene it was from pathetic selections with the DRM flavor of the month. So unless you were computer literate enough to rip your own CD collection you had to be a warez trader. Combine all this and the IT crowd and hardcore music freak cap was buying in but it wasn't mainstream.
Then Apple introduced the iPod with the 1.8" drive, polished firmware, iTunes and the iTunes store and a slick marketing campaign and made portable music players a mainstream piece of consumer electronics. Yes others now offer players that work fairly sanely, everyone has a fairly level playing field in available components. Yes the DRM lock between iTunes Store and iPod is a terrible trap but 99% of their customers ain't bright enough to see it. Remember, they are selling to the massmarket consumer electronics market and diehard Mac faithful, neither are known for critical thinking.
The problem is their competitors are still selling mp3 players into a market looking for iPods. By essentially creating the market they defined it. For now. Sandisk looks like they are figuring out how to move units, others will follow. Eventually even Microsoft will figure out how to make a device people might want.
No, not quite. There are lots of good smartphones out there, judged by the only metric that counts, market penetration. When iPod appeared mp3 players were in less than a percent of the population's hot little hands, smartphones are already over that mark. And remember Apple isn't going to be able to have it's way with this market, the carriers rule their roost and aren't likely to be dumb enough to hand all of the profit centers over to Steve on a silver platter.
> It doesn't matter what "religion" they represent, millenialists seem to share a lot in common. And
:)
> one of the things they share is a desire to silence those voices of reason who would urge caution.
Because they are always preaching about the end of the world as part of a call for "revival" or conversion. You aren't supposed to question the details of the warnings because the message is about the call to faith. It is more of a "stop all this sinning before [deity] smotes yer sorry butts."
The Global Warming crowd is hollering about the world ending because they want to scare people to repent of their wickedness and adopt their religion. Same as any fundamentalist Christian or Muslim. The only difference is what sins the unbelievers are supposed to adstain from. But all three sects seem to agree that the enlightenment was a bad idea and that western civilization and capitalism have to go. Of course I say screw em all.
> To the best of my knowledge, no one was contracting Hamilton and Madison to write...
Yo, cornholio. Nobody at the time knew it was Hamilton & Madison, because they were posting as anonymous cowards. Which is the whole point of the origional poster, that anonymous posting isn't compatible with these new laws. Because the only way you can know whether or not a poster is being paid for what they write is if everyone fills out lots of disclosure forms.
So now we have to ask whether Hamilton & Madison's reasons for posting as Publius were valid (I happen to think so) and whether any possible gains from these laws could offset the negative of never having anyone post anonymous again. Sometimes the message and the messenger would only get all tangled up and nobody will listen to the message unless the post is anonymous. So lets look at what we are going to be losing for very dubious gains.
> Kelo vs. City of New London...
I think Kelo was one of the best rulings the Supremes have written in a decade. They said exactly the truth, that the State laws in effect at the time permitted the taking. Then they went on to mention, almost in passing, that the situation could be quickly fixed by correcting the laws. People did exactly that across the country, which is exactly how the system is supposed to work. Courts aren't supposed to act as super legislatures, they are only supposed to work with the laws as written. If bad (but constituitional) laws are written Judges are supposed to obey them just like the rest of us.
Had certain other controversial cases been handled the same way there would be a lot less political strife in the land today. Letting judges make laws causes no end of problems. It would be great if legislatures and executive branches would grow a pair and start removing judges who overstep their powers.