I wouldn't worry about that seeing as its velocity is enough to escape our solar system altogether. It's more likely to get closer to Aldebaran, a star currently 68 light years away, than our own Sun... given 2 million years or so that is.
There are different tariffs for different types of storage, the €0.02 tax figure I corrected is for hard disks of 150GB to 1TB, with smaller hard disks being tax exempt and larger hard drives at slightly higher tax (€0.025).
Mobile phones and similar (MP3 players?) would be taxed at €0.50 per GB so yes, a 64GB iPhone would be €32 more expensive.
USB pens and memory cards, €0.06 per GB.
Possibly the most ridiculous of all, photocopiers and multi-function printers will be taxed by how many pages per minute they can copy. Apparently a 70 ppm MFP could cost an additional €227 in tax.
It's easy to knock Slashdot but we all still love it really. Even the few haters that may reply to this negatively, secretly love it. C'mon, admit it!;)
As long as you keep on doing what you do best, we'll all be here to follow and comment. Even if we moan, it's just because we care.
Market share has something to do with it, as does a pretty good track record of security, but the type of users that use Linux is also a significant reason that we don't see widespread malware affecting desktop Linux. Your typical Linux user is generally more nerdy, computer literate and security concious.
If you did a survey of how many users clicked on pop-up banners, opened PDFs from spam email, granted permission to untrusted Java applets, etc, I bet the percentage of Linux users who fell in the traps would be smaller than the other OS users.
How do you pretend to deliver that payload exactly? Heck, every Linux distribution out there is totally different from the others, they have different, ABIs (elibc, glibc, uclibc), different kernel versions which are also patched differently. They run different window managers and different desktops environments. People running Linux are also more educated.
And nearly all will run bash, python and perl scripts. A malicious payload doesn't have to be a compiled binary.
My home theater projector can display 1080p,and so can my cell phone. On the projector's 110inch screen, each pixel is a forth of an inch square... on the phone you can't see them.
110" diagonal at 1080p (presumably 16:9) is 95.9" x 53.88" resulting in a pixel size of 0.05". Still much bigger than your phone's screen, but far cry from quarter of an inch. I would have thought that still looks pretty tasty from a reasonable distance.
I would have thought Nokia have enough of a patent portfolio to be able to defend themselves from the likes of MS, Apple, Samsung, Motorola and the like, without having to go the route they chose to with MS. It's not like they've only just decided to start making phones now; they've been making and selling hardware and operating systems for years.
Option 2. Travel at a constant speed, but spin the craft about it's axis such that the outside shell of the craft has centripetal acceleration of 9.81 m/s/s. Live on the inside using the craft's wall as a floor.
I've always thought this is something we should consider building now, maybe firstly as part of the ISS. The radius of the rotational shell would need to be big enough to alleviate the difference in 'gravity' a human would feel at their head and feet but that should be doable. Sure, it would still be quite an engineering feat to make it, but so is the present ISS.
Doesn't need to be as grand as the one Discovery One has in 2001: A Space Odyssey. A circular corridor with a radius of ~230m, rotating at 2rpm would do the trick. Seems like a necessity to me; if we're ever going to venture into deep space, we're going to need artificial gravity to keep our bodies in check.
I've played with the developer preview and consumer preview and apart from the silly decision to replace the desktop mode start menu with the Metro start page, I don't see anything that makes it any worse than Windows 7 (which from what I gather from Windows users is actually rather good).
The Metro start menu does annoy the hell out of me though. A choice of Metro mode and desktop mode seems like a nice idea, but why bastardise the desktop mode like that? It just doesn't gel.
Yes, there's lots of hype surrounding tablets but that does not mean there are no compelling reasons to use one over a PC. You're just being narrow minded if you think there aren't any.
Tablets will co-exist with PCs, just like phones co-exist with PCs. They all have their uses and do some things better than others. If I'm doing any serious dev / design work, it will be on my laptop so I can type at a decent rate and use a precision pointing device. When I'm on the move or somewhere I can't just pull up a chair and clear some desk space in order to perform a task, it will be with my smart phone or tablet, depending on what screen size / weight serves my purpose better. If I'm lazing at home, browsing the web, replying to email, watching video, etc, it will almost always be via my tablet. Not because of hype, but because after a year of using all these types of devices, I know how one is more suited to something than another.
This of course relies on the software I need to use being available for the relevant platform, but for a significant percentage of my work, that is the case, as it is for many others and increasingly so with the use of web apps and the like.
They're all just internet ready devices running very capable OS's at the end of the day, but with varying ease of mobility.
The only thing that would hinder Windows 8 in this aspect, is if it is buggy as hell, massively more resource hungry, or incompatible with Windows 7 hardware drivers. If it doesn't suffer from any of these issues (which from what I've seen so far, it doesn't) then OEMs will be happy to ship it on new PCs and it will sell just fine. Metro is not obtrusive enough to stop it selling for those who don't like it, and for those who do like it, it will be a good selling point.
Having said that, we are entering an era where it's becoming less important for a unified OS across platforms, even for big business. Apple have demonstrated that with iOS devices and Mac, as have Google with Android. If there were more 'polished' alternatives to Windows for PCs, we could finally see the start of MS losing it's dominance.
I've been long time (K)Ubuntu user on the desktop but I'm not liking some of their recent direction with regards to UI and such. I've been playing with Linux Mint in a VM for a while now and really like it. It's Ubuntu but with a clean and polished Gnome / KDE; none of the Unity stuff.
I had been thinking about going back to Fedora or some other distro, but I think I'll be putting Linux Mint on my desktops next time I upgrade, probably in May / June when Linux Mint 13 will be out (new releases follow about a month after new Ubuntu releases).
I'm totally with you on that one. Even if Siri and the relevant APIs or whatever Mercedes are using are still supported in a few years time, who is to say iPhone will still be as popular as it is now?
I'd quite like tighter integration between my smartphone and car stereo for playing music, voice calls, satnav directions, etc, through the car speakers, but if I can actually be bothered to arrange that, I imagine it will be via Bluetooth. It's pretty well supported now on Android (presumably iOS too?) and numerous models of car stereo, and likely will be for quite a few years to come. And If support dies, at least it's just a replacement car stereo featuring whatever new tech is popular at the time.
Same with TVs with built-in web browsers, streaming apps, etc. In a few years time they will be TVs with crippled software that's simply not functional any more.
Ah, ok. I hadn't realised that. Maybe that will make the situation even worse then, people aware they have lights on but not realising they are not on main headlights when transitioning in to night time.
Yeah, I think that's very true. I know personally, I've only forgotten to put my own headlights on when in well-lit areas.
And the fact EU regulations mandate all new cars (since Feb 2011?) in the UK have headlights permanently on now presumably reduces this risk even further.
Slashdot Mirror
Woah, what's with the crazy capitalisation?
I wouldn't worry about that seeing as its velocity is enough to escape our solar system altogether. It's more likely to get closer to Aldebaran, a star currently 68 light years away, than our own Sun... given 2 million years or so that is.
It's €0.02 per GB, not €0.2. Article and summary both get that wrong.
There are different tariffs for different types of storage, the €0.02 tax figure I corrected is for hard disks of 150GB to 1TB, with smaller hard disks being tax exempt and larger hard drives at slightly higher tax (€0.025).
Mobile phones and similar (MP3 players?) would be taxed at €0.50 per GB so yes, a 64GB iPhone would be €32 more expensive.
USB pens and memory cards, €0.06 per GB.
Possibly the most ridiculous of all, photocopiers and multi-function printers will be taxed by how many pages per minute they can copy. Apparently a 70 ppm MFP could cost an additional €227 in tax.
Incorrect in summary and article.
Cheaper than the Monster Thunderbolt cables that'll probably cost $5,000.
"demo scene" requires an extra byte compared to "demoscene" ;)
Hear, hear.
It's easy to knock Slashdot but we all still love it really. Even the few haters that may reply to this negatively, secretly love it. C'mon, admit it! ;)
As long as you keep on doing what you do best, we'll all be here to follow and comment. Even if we moan, it's just because we care.
Market share has something to do with it, as does a pretty good track record of security, but the type of users that use Linux is also a significant reason that we don't see widespread malware affecting desktop Linux. Your typical Linux user is generally more nerdy, computer literate and security concious.
If you did a survey of how many users clicked on pop-up banners, opened PDFs from spam email, granted permission to untrusted Java applets, etc, I bet the percentage of Linux users who fell in the traps would be smaller than the other OS users.
How do you pretend to deliver that payload exactly? Heck, every Linux distribution out there is totally different from the others, they have different, ABIs (elibc, glibc, uclibc), different kernel versions which are also patched differently. They run different window managers and different desktops environments. People running Linux are also more educated.
And nearly all will run bash, python and perl scripts. A malicious payload doesn't have to be a compiled binary.
Ok, to partly answer my own question, it seems Mozilla is not interested in adopting it.
Can't other browsers just adopt the Pepper API?
My home theater projector can display 1080p,and so can my cell phone.
On the projector's 110inch screen, each pixel is a forth of an inch square... on the phone you can't see them.
110" diagonal at 1080p (presumably 16:9) is 95.9" x 53.88" resulting in a pixel size of 0.05". Still much bigger than your phone's screen, but far cry from quarter of an inch. I would have thought that still looks pretty tasty from a reasonable distance.
I would have thought Nokia have enough of a patent portfolio to be able to defend themselves from the likes of MS, Apple, Samsung, Motorola and the like, without having to go the route they chose to with MS. It's not like they've only just decided to start making phones now; they've been making and selling hardware and operating systems for years.
UEFI Secure Boot.
Option 2. Travel at a constant speed, but spin the craft about it's axis such that the outside shell of the craft has centripetal acceleration of 9.81 m/s/s. Live on the inside using the craft's wall as a floor.
I've always thought this is something we should consider building now, maybe firstly as part of the ISS. The radius of the rotational shell would need to be big enough to alleviate the difference in 'gravity' a human would feel at their head and feet but that should be doable. Sure, it would still be quite an engineering feat to make it, but so is the present ISS.
Doesn't need to be as grand as the one Discovery One has in 2001: A Space Odyssey. A circular corridor with a radius of ~230m, rotating at 2rpm would do the trick. Seems like a necessity to me; if we're ever going to venture into deep space, we're going to need artificial gravity to keep our bodies in check.
I've played with the developer preview and consumer preview and apart from the silly decision to replace the desktop mode start menu with the Metro start page, I don't see anything that makes it any worse than Windows 7 (which from what I gather from Windows users is actually rather good).
The Metro start menu does annoy the hell out of me though. A choice of Metro mode and desktop mode seems like a nice idea, but why bastardise the desktop mode like that? It just doesn't gel.
Yes, there's lots of hype surrounding tablets but that does not mean there are no compelling reasons to use one over a PC. You're just being narrow minded if you think there aren't any.
Tablets will co-exist with PCs, just like phones co-exist with PCs. They all have their uses and do some things better than others. If I'm doing any serious dev / design work, it will be on my laptop so I can type at a decent rate and use a precision pointing device. When I'm on the move or somewhere I can't just pull up a chair and clear some desk space in order to perform a task, it will be with my smart phone or tablet, depending on what screen size / weight serves my purpose better. If I'm lazing at home, browsing the web, replying to email, watching video, etc, it will almost always be via my tablet. Not because of hype, but because after a year of using all these types of devices, I know how one is more suited to something than another.
This of course relies on the software I need to use being available for the relevant platform, but for a significant percentage of my work, that is the case, as it is for many others and increasingly so with the use of web apps and the like.
They're all just internet ready devices running very capable OS's at the end of the day, but with varying ease of mobility.
I'd mod you up if I had mod points.
The only thing that would hinder Windows 8 in this aspect, is if it is buggy as hell, massively more resource hungry, or incompatible with Windows 7 hardware drivers. If it doesn't suffer from any of these issues (which from what I've seen so far, it doesn't) then OEMs will be happy to ship it on new PCs and it will sell just fine. Metro is not obtrusive enough to stop it selling for those who don't like it, and for those who do like it, it will be a good selling point.
Having said that, we are entering an era where it's becoming less important for a unified OS across platforms, even for big business. Apple have demonstrated that with iOS devices and Mac, as have Google with Android. If there were more 'polished' alternatives to Windows for PCs, we could finally see the start of MS losing it's dominance.
Google Translate does speech translation on Android and actually does it rather well, although the UI could be much improved.
Security fixes are a pretty good reason to upgrade.
HTML5, CSS3, Javascript optimisation, sandboxing and hardware acceleration are a few other reasons that spring to mind.
Breaking extension compatibility is a less desirable side-effect though.
Linux Mint.
I've been long time (K)Ubuntu user on the desktop but I'm not liking some of their recent direction with regards to UI and such. I've been playing with Linux Mint in a VM for a while now and really like it. It's Ubuntu but with a clean and polished Gnome / KDE; none of the Unity stuff.
I had been thinking about going back to Fedora or some other distro, but I think I'll be putting Linux Mint on my desktops next time I upgrade, probably in May / June when Linux Mint 13 will be out (new releases follow about a month after new Ubuntu releases).
I'm totally with you on that one. Even if Siri and the relevant APIs or whatever Mercedes are using are still supported in a few years time, who is to say iPhone will still be as popular as it is now?
I'd quite like tighter integration between my smartphone and car stereo for playing music, voice calls, satnav directions, etc, through the car speakers, but if I can actually be bothered to arrange that, I imagine it will be via Bluetooth. It's pretty well supported now on Android (presumably iOS too?) and numerous models of car stereo, and likely will be for quite a few years to come. And If support dies, at least it's just a replacement car stereo featuring whatever new tech is popular at the time.
Same with TVs with built-in web browsers, streaming apps, etc. In a few years time they will be TVs with crippled software that's simply not functional any more.
Ah, ok. I hadn't realised that. Maybe that will make the situation even worse then, people aware they have lights on but not realising they are not on main headlights when transitioning in to night time.
Yeah, I think that's very true. I know personally, I've only forgotten to put my own headlights on when in well-lit areas.
And the fact EU regulations mandate all new cars (since Feb 2011?) in the UK have headlights permanently on now presumably reduces this risk even further.