Saying that GIF becoming patent unencumbered is going to reduce use of PNG is like implying that when the original patents ran out on horses & carriages people gave up their cars and reverted.
There's no need to _re_vert, because most people never _con_verted in the first place. Until MSIE on Windows--you know, that browser/OS combination that we all hate but nonetheless is used by over 90% of the web population--supports it (without horrific workarounds), most people won't use it. Those who have converted to PNG will continue to use it, those who can live without alpha-channel transparency and/or want animation will continue to use GIFs. After 6/20, they can do so with a clear conscience and no fear.
Right, especially if there's only 1-3 good songs on the album, which there so often is. There's a popular song out now by a new artist and I went to the iTunes Music Store, sampled the rest of the tracks, and they *all sucked!*
(But damn, either every ISP is caching this, or they have the ballsiest servers ever. I'm not kidding, this stuff is coming down faster than damn near anything else I've ever downloaded.)
Personally, I *love* tablets, I just wish I could afford one. (And I'm sure that's what's killing sales--they cost ~2x a comparable conventional notebook.) As for gaming, I'd love to see a tablet with a built-in gyro-based thingie to tell how much it was tilted and in what direction. I think it'd be awesome for racing games--hold it out like a steering wheel and turn it left and right to steer, tilt forward and backwards to accelerate and brake.
Need for Speed III runs on a P200 w/ 4 MB VRAM and runs fine on a PII/450 w/ an 8 MB card, I'm sure a PIII/850-1 GHz tablet with 16-32 MB VRAM would run it just fine. No, you won't get 295 fps out of Quake 7: The Universe Implodes but c'mon, there is such thing as "enough".
I saw a gyro unit like that at Siggraph in 1998 used in conjunction with monitor glasses and running Quake or some other FPS and it was the best thing since sliced raw toast. Why aren't they everywhere yet?
his last point from part 2: Point four: If there are multiple groups competing to write a standard for the same thing, it is probably a safe bet that the technology being standardized isn't ready for standardization. This is the point I was really trying to make, but didn't state explicitly. But this is the one that I think is important for all of us who are trying to produce and use technology to understand.
One point he misses--as often than not, its due to greed. Companies want to have *the* standard and as close to 100% as possible of the revenue from that product's market. Look how far MS has gotten with.doc. But, more often than not, the exact opposite happens. 56k modem sales stagnated for a *eay* when they were introduced with two standards--x2 and k56flex. Only the richest (relatively speaking) early adopters bought them for the longest time because there was no way to know if you'd be able to use it in the future. Different ISPs supported different standards at different times, and who knew what woudl happen if your ISP changed preferred technologies, or went under, or got bought, or if you switched ISPs yourself for whatever reason? Most people knew that there would eventually be just one standard in the future and had know way to know if that new standard would be backwards-compatible with x2, k56, neither, or both. Then, along came v.90 and everything was great.
The best quote I've ever seen on the subject comes from openh323.org's home page: "The aim is to 'commodotisetheprotocol'. By giving the stack away, maybe we can stop everyone obsessing over how to format the bits on the wire, and get them writing applications instead."
Yeah, but if you work in a large company with a monolithic IT department which has no data storage policy (and wouldn't enforce it if they did) then it's a whole different ball game. Hell, it's a whole different sport. OK, not quite. Same sport, different rules. Like football and futbol. (Yes, that's the point--same in name only.) Besides, the *users* (as much as we hate them) are the ones making the product this company sells. *We* work for *them*. *They* are the boss, *they* run the show, *they* are the ones earning the comany money. Our job is to do for them whatever they need to do their job. Within reason, of course, and yes, it'd be nice to do things the Right Way, but in the real world...
The Matrix Reloaded: Accurate computing, Carre-Anne Moss almost nude. Swordfish: Laughable computing, Halle Berry topless. Winner and still champion: Swordfish
Sometimes you *do* have to poke around. Clueless users put crap *everywhere*--documents folder, desktop, top level of the hard drive, inside application folders, etc etc etc. Where I work (mostly Macs) I've seen applications and the whole 'control panels' folder in the apple menu instead of aliases, the system folder moved into the documents folder (to keep the top level of the HD clean), you name it. (My favorite thing to see on a Mac desktop is a windows installer (.exe) for realplayer.) But if you're the one who has to reimage their drive, it's *your* ass if all their data doesn't make the trip safely. Since you can't read their mind, and they literally _do not know_ where all their important stuff is, you have no choice but to dig. It's no excuse to blame lost data on them not putting it in the right place. You're a tech. You should, and do, know better.
When this first came out a few months ago, I did a few tests, copying an 850 MB.img between two OS X G4s in various ways: (times are min:sec) (original thread over here)
TCP/IP over 10/100 LAN: 1:30
IP over FireWire: 1:50
FireWire with 1 Mac in target disk mode: 1:25
TCP/IP over 1000bT (straignt cable): 0:27
My conclusion at the time was "Slow, but potentially useful." Well, I have since found a use. I have a G4 here at work and recently bought an iBook. I put the (old) IP-FW driver on both Macs, gave them similar IPs, turned on Internet connection sharing on the G4, and poof! my iBook can access the servers and Internet without my having to request an additional network drop in my cube. I just leave a 6p-6p FW cable plugged into my G4 and draped over my desk.
efficiency does not come from minimal materials used, it comes from ease of use. who in the world is going to be able to do math with 18, 29, and 83-cent coins?
If you were moving, would you a) take the time to measure in 3 dimensions and record the size of every object in your house, then order custom-built boxes to exactly fit everything with no extra room, thus using the absolute least amount of cardboard possible, or b) go to MailBoxes Etc and buy twenty 18x18x24 boxes and be done with it? Which is more "efficient"?
As long as I get blank stares for handing the cashier $22 for a $16.85 purchase, this guy's coin scheme is *never* going to fly.
Hell, if they're going to do anything, make a dollar worth $1.28 and use 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64-cent coins. Sure, it might result in more coins being used, but the cashier could just go left to right and pick one or zero coins from each slot in the tray.:-)
holy $#!+!!! either it has been cached somewhere along the way, or this is gonna be a lot harder than we expect--that report took maaaaaybe 5 seconds to come in, accelerating all the time, and hit 317k/s right as it was done. I'm not kidding, that's the highest rate I've ever seen in 7 years of working at a company with two T3s (capped at 12MB each, but still.)
My friend refers to them as "Post Office Money" (jokingly, almost like "Monopoly Money") because you get them in change from stamp machines at the post office. That's the only place I see them anymore.
Another way this can work: stores make a certain profit off of each disc. Some of that profit goes to pay for all the counter employees' time. Waste enough of that, the stores start seeing their profits decrease, then they start segregating copy-protected music on their own.
1) I like the way it started--no credits or anything, just the TW & Roadhouse logos (green & fuzzy, of course), the name of the movie, and right into the action. good way to start.
2) I personally felt that the love scene between Neo and Trinity was a little overboard, and that a lot more could have been said with a much more subtle approach.
No way. I was hoping for Titanic-quality nudity, at least. >:-> So close, yet so far...
It's always interesting to see the different ages of slashdot users. If you were five years older, your post would have been the same except the second paragraph would have been the first and "Then along came the NES, which" would have been replaced with "The Atari 2600..."
sweet! I got a 1250 (exactly) in 1990. nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah... seriously though, when I first saw it, I thought it was like getting a C, since 1250/1600=78%. I heard it was enough to get into mensa but never tried--just 'cause I'm smart doesn't mean I'm not lazy.:-)
Great idea, except that everyone who reads the manual (ahem) will set the root user to 'gobo' and the password to 'gobo'.:-)
Re:Strictly a bundled concept
on
TiVo Basic
·
· Score: 1
It is possible to manually specify when to record something. My wife watches two shows in a row on the same channel so she has it set to start at 9:58am and end at 12:02pm. But I agree, the conflict-catching software should recognize if the 'conflict' is of two shows on the same channel. OTOH, a DirecTiVo with a dual-LNB dish can record two shows at once--kind of an ugly way around the problem, but hey, it works.
Slashdot Mirror
Saying that GIF becoming patent unencumbered is going to reduce use of PNG is like implying that when the original patents ran out on horses & carriages people gave up their cars and reverted.
There's no need to _re_vert, because most people never _con_verted in the first place. Until MSIE on Windows--you know, that browser/OS combination that we all hate but nonetheless is used by over 90% of the web population--supports it (without horrific workarounds), most people won't use it. Those who have converted to PNG will continue to use it, those who can live without alpha-channel transparency and/or want animation will continue to use GIFs. After 6/20, they can do so with a clear conscience and no fear.
Right, especially if there's only 1-3 good songs on the album, which there so often is. There's a popular song out now by a new artist and I went to the iTunes Music Store, sampled the rest of the tracks, and they *all sucked!*
Childish? Yes. Immature? Definately. Fun? Oh yeah.
(But damn, either every ISP is caching this, or they have the ballsiest servers ever. I'm not kidding, this stuff is coming down faster than damn near anything else I've ever downloaded.)
All it needs to be is N lines and country at the end. Because what about:
...
John Smith
c/o Some Huge Company
123 Happy St.
Suite and Floor
City, state
Zip/Universal
Or
Whatever Office
Whatever Company
Whatever Department
Address
Address
when you don't even put the person's name on?
Another problem in general is that not everyone is just filling out the blank sheet of paper that is a #10 envelope. Ever fill out a FedEx form?
TiVo is a gift from God. ('specially wih a 120gb hd, aaaggghhhh) They can have my soul if they want it. :-)
What to take notes with, pencil and paper? Laptop? Palm pilot? Tape recorder? Or just too cool to take notes like in high school?
I ditch class all the time, you insensitive clod!
It's not Spiderman, it's Spider-man. And it's not Geckoman, it's Gecko-man. :-)
Personally, I *love* tablets, I just wish I could afford one. (And I'm sure that's what's killing sales--they cost ~2x a comparable conventional notebook.) As for gaming, I'd love to see a tablet with a built-in gyro-based thingie to tell how much it was tilted and in what direction. I think it'd be awesome for racing games--hold it out like a steering wheel and turn it left and right to steer, tilt forward and backwards to accelerate and brake.
Need for Speed III runs on a P200 w/ 4 MB VRAM and runs fine on a PII/450 w/ an 8 MB card, I'm sure a PIII/850-1 GHz tablet with 16-32 MB VRAM would run it just fine. No, you won't get 295 fps out of Quake 7: The Universe Implodes but c'mon, there is such thing as "enough".
I saw a gyro unit like that at Siggraph in 1998 used in conjunction with monitor glasses and running Quake or some other FPS and it was the best thing since sliced raw toast. Why aren't they everywhere yet?
Sounds good, but... what exactly does a dome *over* the US do for the country when it *sinks*? (presumably downward.)
his last point from part 2:
.doc. But, more often than not, the exact opposite happens. 56k modem sales stagnated for a *eay* when they were introduced with two standards--x2 and k56flex. Only the richest (relatively speaking) early adopters bought them for the longest time because there was no way to know if you'd be able to use it in the future. Different ISPs supported different standards at different times, and who knew what woudl happen if your ISP changed preferred technologies, or went under, or got bought, or if you switched ISPs yourself for whatever reason? Most people knew that there would eventually be just one standard in the future and had know way to know if that new standard would be backwards-compatible with x2, k56, neither, or both. Then, along came v.90 and everything was great.
Point four: If there are multiple groups competing to write a standard for the same thing, it is probably a safe bet that the technology being standardized isn't ready for standardization. This is the point I was really trying to make, but didn't state explicitly. But this is the one that I think is important for all of us who are trying to produce and use technology to understand.
One point he misses--as often than not, its due to greed. Companies want to have *the* standard and as close to 100% as possible of the revenue from that product's market. Look how far MS has gotten with
The best quote I've ever seen on the subject comes from openh323.org's home page: "The aim is to 'commodotisetheprotocol'. By giving the stack away, maybe we can stop everyone obsessing over how to format the bits on the wire, and get them writing applications instead."
...posting links to a sit with high-res pics of a hot virtual babe, and the server got slashdotted? I'm a-fucking-stounded. Didn't see that coming.
Yeah, but if you work in a large company with a monolithic IT department which has no data storage policy (and wouldn't enforce it if they did) then it's a whole different ball game. Hell, it's a whole different sport. OK, not quite. Same sport, different rules. Like football and futbol. (Yes, that's the point--same in name only.)
Besides, the *users* (as much as we hate them) are the ones making the product this company sells. *We* work for *them*. *They* are the boss, *they* run the show, *they* are the ones earning the comany money. Our job is to do for them whatever they need to do their job. Within reason, of course, and yes, it'd be nice to do things the Right Way, but in the real world...
The Matrix Reloaded: Accurate computing, Carre-Anne Moss almost nude.
Swordfish: Laughable computing, Halle Berry topless.
Winner and still champion: Swordfish
Sometimes you *do* have to poke around. Clueless users put crap *everywhere*--documents folder, desktop, top level of the hard drive, inside application folders, etc etc etc. Where I work (mostly Macs) I've seen applications and the whole 'control panels' folder in the apple menu instead of aliases, the system folder moved into the documents folder (to keep the top level of the HD clean), you name it. (My favorite thing to see on a Mac desktop is a windows installer (.exe) for realplayer.) But if you're the one who has to reimage their drive, it's *your* ass if all their data doesn't make the trip safely. Since you can't read their mind, and they literally _do not know_ where all their important stuff is, you have no choice but to dig. It's no excuse to blame lost data on them not putting it in the right place. You're a tech. You should, and do, know better.
When this first came out a few months ago, I did a few tests, copying an 850 MB .img between two OS X G4s in various ways: (times are min:sec) (original thread over here)
TCP/IP over 10/100 LAN: 1:30
IP over FireWire: 1:50
FireWire with 1 Mac in target disk mode: 1:25
TCP/IP over 1000bT (straignt cable): 0:27
My conclusion at the time was "Slow, but potentially useful." Well, I have since found a use. I have a G4 here at work and recently bought an iBook. I put the (old) IP-FW driver on both Macs, gave them similar IPs, turned on Internet connection sharing on the G4, and poof! my iBook can access the servers and Internet without my having to request an additional network drop in my cube. I just leave a 6p-6p FW cable plugged into my G4 and draped over my desk.
efficiency does not come from minimal materials used, it comes from ease of use. who in the world is going to be able to do math with 18, 29, and 83-cent coins?
:-)
If you were moving, would you a) take the time to measure in 3 dimensions and record the size of every object in your house, then order custom-built boxes to exactly fit everything with no extra room, thus using the absolute least amount of cardboard possible, or b) go to MailBoxes Etc and buy twenty 18x18x24 boxes and be done with it? Which is more "efficient"?
As long as I get blank stares for handing the cashier $22 for a $16.85 purchase, this guy's coin scheme is *never* going to fly.
Hell, if they're going to do anything, make a dollar worth $1.28 and use 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64-cent coins. Sure, it might result in more coins being used, but the cashier could just go left to right and pick one or zero coins from each slot in the tray.
holy $#!+!!! either it has been cached somewhere along the way, or this is gonna be a lot harder than we expect--that report took maaaaaybe 5 seconds to come in, accelerating all the time, and hit 317k/s right as it was done. I'm not kidding, that's the highest rate I've ever seen in 7 years of working at a company with two T3s (capped at 12MB each, but still.)
My friend refers to them as "Post Office Money" (jokingly, almost like "Monopoly Money") because you get them in change from stamp machines at the post office. That's the only place I see them anymore.
Another way this can work: stores make a certain profit off of each disc. Some of that profit goes to pay for all the counter employees' time. Waste enough of that, the stores start seeing their profits decrease, then they start segregating copy-protected music on their own.
1) I like the way it started--no credits or anything, just the TW & Roadhouse logos (green & fuzzy, of course), the name of the movie, and right into the action. good way to start.
2) I personally felt that the love scene between Neo and Trinity was a little overboard, and that a lot more could have been said with a much more subtle approach.
No way. I was hoping for Titanic-quality nudity, at least. >:-> So close, yet so far...
...most official artist sites have lyricks and track listings...
Not to mention Amazon.com and everyone else on the planet who sells CDs.
It's always interesting to see the different ages of slashdot users. If you were five years older, your post would have been the same except the second paragraph would have been the first and "Then along came the NES, which" would have been replaced with "The Atari 2600..."
sweet! I got a 1250 (exactly) in 1990. nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah... seriously though, when I first saw it, I thought it was like getting a C, since 1250/1600=78%. I heard it was enough to get into mensa but never tried--just 'cause I'm smart doesn't mean I'm not lazy. :-)
Great idea, except that everyone who reads the manual (ahem) will set the root user to 'gobo' and the password to 'gobo'. :-)
It is possible to manually specify when to record something. My wife watches two shows in a row on the same channel so she has it set to start at 9:58am and end at 12:02pm. But I agree, the conflict-catching software should recognize if the 'conflict' is of two shows on the same channel. OTOH, a DirecTiVo with a dual-LNB dish can record two shows at once--kind of an ugly way around the problem, but hey, it works.