They probably blank the screen because when I was little we used to watch scrambled spice channel (with fairly clean audio anyway). The scrambled channels now turn blue, the internet came out, and the children are safe.
An example of a large medical product that the US government does efficiently is Medicare.
They have overhead that is about 1/3 that of private insurance while the people that are on it rank it far higher than people rank their private insurance companies.
The USPS is a rather BS example too, being one of the cheapest and most efficient ways to send information in the world (sending more than the internet on a daily basis). The fed-ex service that somewhat copetes with the USPS is a joke (FedEx ground). I have used them 4 times and had 2 packages "disappear" and one destroyed in transit. I know the post office loses stuff too, and I am highly suspect that FedEx ground actually loses 75% of packages, but it certainly isn't the picture of efficiency.
When looking for example of large failures of federal government projects lease in the future keep them credible and use something like SDI, or the Big Dig.
I went to a small private K-8 school with under 100 people when I started and under 200 when I was done.
We had C64s a bunch of Amigas in a large keyboard and a couple that looked like a desktop computer. the best we had was an Amiga 3000.
I am pretty sure it was word perfect we used primarily (to write, sim city may have been the primary app), it was definitely not very graphical. Sometimes our teacher would put together our stories using some page layout program and publish a book.
We also would use Deluxe Paint (4 maybe?) to do pictures and animations. We pretty much would spend hours trying to make the best warp coil animation.
I'm still confused for by the application menu in KDE 4.
stuff scrolls right and left. Sometimes when I go back to it, the same catagory is open, so I have to go button -> left -> scroll up and down for what category I want (defaults to very small) -> click catagory -> click application
Due to it's memory what I am looking at is slightly different every time I do this, and because it scrolls up and down, I can't to it by muscle memory at all. It is a change more jarring than from XP to Vista, though not as bad as XP to 2007 (office).
From what I can tell in KDE4 (someone please correct me if I am wrong, because I hate it and can't find the setting), the desktop is a completely different type of thing than from any OS I have used since Apple Classic (8.x I think).
Drag a file to the desktop, it's a link, well OK, not really a link so much as a widget. Want to drag you file somewhere, well make sure to unlock you widgets, oh, and it won't really act like you are dragging a file.
Don't change KDE to "show icons" on desktop, well then your file in the desktop folder are completely hidden.
It may not be different for differences sake (they may have all been well researched choices), but it is a harsh transition that feels like when gnome went hyper conceptual in design. That does leave me high-hopes, because after a lot of weirdness, gnome ended up much better.
What I want (and probably should make) for KDE 4 is a "traditional desktop" widget. It should allow me to draw a shape (at the very least and arbitrary rectangle) and treat that part of the desktop as a "normal" desktop. This would allow me to separate my files from widgets, create file icon widgets on the rest of my desktop if I pleased, but still be able to dump and play with files on the desktop. I would probably prefer that to a typical dektop even, with the ability to put widgets around the perimeter and files in the center. Until then KDE3 and Gnome it is.
I used an Amiga with Word Perfect at school, and DOS with Word Perfect at home.
Fortunately the skills were useful for Word at a later point, and understanding how directories (now folders) work.
Many people I work with (as customers) don't understand how to download something from the internet (or an email attachment) and find it at a later time. This is a useful skill that is very cross platform. As are typing, google, webmail, and even spreadsheets.
If someone can learn enough to type as quickly as fast handwriting, use the internet, send an e-mail, and save a file for later retrieval they are much better off than one who can't.
Spell check, and spreadsheets are bonuses.
It could also reasonably be argues that the purpose of computers in school is to save money by not needing encyclopedias and other types of expensive books, and to augment the ability to teach certain types of subjects.
I say this as someone who set up a Xubuntu computer at my wife's work for a summer internship for high-school students that had very little computer experience (they could use a mouse and type, and certainly knew how to find myspace instead of work though). They would stay after they could leave to use the computer to type essays and learned how to enter data into a spreadsheet along with basic (very basic) spreadsheet concepts like sorting and dragging down a column to repeat a pattern. These are the types of things that will help them be more qualified in the workforce even though they gained no Windows experience.
Software like the test builder/taker in Edubuntu could be a great bonus to a school poor school and could easily save a school dollars a test (goes somewhat to paying for the computers).
Doesn't the AMD 64 spec drop 16 bit support when running in 64 bit mode?
Also, most games I have tried to run that were 16 bit had trouble running in Win95, and more so in 98, and then even more in XP. I am suprised that there are 16 but games that will run on vists32 but not in DOSbox.
This is somewhat offtopic and probably not the appropriate venuw to ask at this point, but doesn't the graphics chip set act as an accelerator for the decoding?
It never occurred to me to get a TV capture card for the sake of viewing, and if I was going to get one, it was going to be one of the LAN based ones with 2 tuners that I saw.
Does it really make sense to refer to Fire-fox as a "freetard" model with the amount of money that comes in from its use?
the so called freetard model was able to get the publicity and support to make Fire-fox incredibly successful project that would probably of flopped as a closed source product and that sentence really makes the rest of the work by that author very suspect.
Only one upgrade I'd strongly suggest: get a proper TV tuner. If something is on TV I can catch it. I am much more interested in not needing to burn my non-DRM downloaded movie "rentals" to a DVD-R to watch them. Also playing them hi-def would be nice. I can capture all the TV I want off a "rental" service, and with 32GB flash USB drives getting affordable I could probable make something boot off that and stream everything off the "rental server".
Though MAME could be a lot of fun too.
I also think we're talking completely different classes of "low power" though I could be wrong there.
I'd pay good money for a low energy CPU/MB that would match the performance of my midrange 3 year old computer (Socket 939 larger die 3500+) if it had HDMI-OUT (no need for the DRM, simply want to be able to send HD audio and video to my TV).
For a small board with a low power CPU that could do that I'd pay $300-$400, and as soon as VIA gets there I will probably buy one. Though I am constantly temped to screw the low power and go with a shuttle solution. My current shuttle's power supply is too loud though (it is pretty much at peek usage though, and I think the fan is somewhat variable speed).
The profit on an OEM copy is probably quite large (like price - $.50)
MS's entire cost for an OEM copy of windows (to a bulk purchaser) is probably the cost of a sticker (for the computer case), and maybe a pamphlet.
The home upgrade by contrast costs $100, of which they need to package it, burn disks, distribute, and let a reseller take a cut. It wouldn't shock me if they make more per a sale from the "low profit" sales.
What I find most interesting though is the loss of about 7k sales overall. That would be the cost of a more expensive format.
I personally am happy blue ray wins (I want 50GB burnable disks, not 30GB). But I would have been pretty satisfied to see Sony lose to just because I like to see big companies fail when pushing things to hard (I guess Toshiba pushed pretty hard too, but they keep to quite for it to be as enjoyable).
Isn't it not uncommon for businesses to skip entire versions of windows?
With the next version coming quick (allegedly) I don't see any compelling reason to not go XP -> 7 without dealing with Vista at all. It was only recently that new software stopped working with Windows 98.
Article says: <quote>In fact, even Microsoft will tell you that its fortunes peaked several months ago.</quote>
Coward says: <quote>What part of Microsoft's record earnings yesterday did Slashdot seem to overlook? I think the joke is on us.</quote>
The 2 statements are 100% in agreement. If future earnings continue to hit records than it is wrong, but if the record set last quarter is the high point than it is also a peak.
I spent a lot more on music and entertainment as a teenager.
I made a few hundred a month (80 - 150/week), and only had to buy stuff for myself.
After gas and maintenance on my car (low mileage 20 year old car is decent shape that rarely needed anything but oil and gas), I still had hundreds left over for myself. Also, when the biggest check I ever saw was $150 saving for something real big seamed pointless. So I pissed away my money on dinners out, movies out, and CDs at a rate that would look crazy frivolous to me now. I also had more free time than now when I work 40-50 hours a week, and have a house to deal with. As much as it was frowned upon to sleep at school it is more so at work, and at school you could be really tired and noone cared as long as you sat up and looked forward.
I would imagine that teens have way more money for CDs and Movies than adults.
And if Barns and Noble press publishes your book selling it without paying you, or any of the middle men between you and the shelf how does that help more books get printed?
If a book goes Author -> Agent -> publisher -> printer (probably part of publisher) -> Distributer -> store
How will it compete with
publisher -> Printer -> Store ?
All non-functional art is reliant on copyright. Terms could be dropped to something like 10 years and the vast majority of the profits could be kept though (with a few exception, especially stuff aimed at children).
I am not an Apple fanboi, and I dpn't buy their products (though I may buy an iPod soon).
<quote>"Expensive? Depends on your point of comparison."
Yes, and we know how creative fanboys can be with their points of comparison. Outright lying is not beyond them. </quote> Let's compare an iPod classic to any other hard disk player. Apple looks pretty in-expensive to me. Many of their other products tend to hover around the price of similar other brands, except with no low-end (like their notebooks, when compared to mid-range o high-end competitors). No you can't get the ultra cheap 1.5 hour battery-life notebook with a celeron that Dell will sell you for $400.00 less, but a similar fairly light decent battery life notebook will run a similar cost.
You may not be able to get a $1000.00 (or even $2000.00) tower from Apple, but how much is a dual processor tower from Dell?
The flash based iPods are expensive, but not too much extra, and much much smaller than the competition (which I would think matters for an MP3 player, but that's just me).
When I get a computer I spend about $1000.00 (with much wasted on the case (XPC)) and build it; I will never buy a MAC computer, I am not the market. But when you look at the anemic competition in the MP3 player market it is no wonder Apple dominates. I see players that only let you browse your collection buy disk layout, players that cost the same for half the storage, players that try to be effective video players (and are therefore huge). I can't think of any credible hard drive based music player aside from the iPod even close to the price. And in the flash based player market there is not too much either (San Disk has some big but cheap ones, Meizu is nice but has weirdness, Best Buy has some real cheap and compelling players, but the cheap one is real slow to navigate and the expensive one is almost as much as an iPod).
That reminds me of a guy where I work (a small print shop). He was having trouble wil Office not working on his MAC, and asked for a possible solution. I forget what I recommended, but he said (contrary to my recommendation) "I think I'm going to update Office; you know how Apple likes to update things quicker than the other companies can keep up" as if it was a virtue. This guy was a "creative" to the core, except without talent. And he still pisses me off. This incedent did greatly reduce the amount of time I had to work with him, because quite a while later he was still "busy updating" instead of doing work, so in the end all of us working won from the incident.
Slashdot Mirror
It's true.
Even in the nice areas there are stations that have people armed with assault rifles outside keeping watch.
For the record, it didn't make me feel safe.
Wouldn´t the data going to their house in their name count for some evidence?
You mean the digital OTA TV I am watching now will go blank?
I spent some extra money making sure I got a TV that could receive digital OTA. It comes in crisp and in HD, I will miss it.
Or maybe it is just analog broadcast that is going away?
They probably blank the screen because when I was little we used to watch scrambled spice channel (with fairly clean audio anyway). The scrambled channels now turn blue, the internet came out, and the children are safe.
An example of a large medical product that the US government does efficiently is Medicare.
They have overhead that is about 1/3 that of private insurance while the people that are on it rank it far higher than people rank their private insurance companies.
The USPS is a rather BS example too, being one of the cheapest and most efficient ways to send information in the world (sending more than the internet on a daily basis). The fed-ex service that somewhat copetes with the USPS is a joke (FedEx ground). I have used them 4 times and had 2 packages "disappear" and one destroyed in transit. I know the post office loses stuff too, and I am highly suspect that FedEx ground actually loses 75% of packages, but it certainly isn't the picture of efficiency.
When looking for example of large failures of federal government projects lease in the future keep them credible and use something like SDI, or the Big Dig.
I went to a small private K-8 school with under 100 people when I started and under 200 when I was done.
We had C64s a bunch of Amigas in a large keyboard and a couple that looked like a desktop computer. the best we had was an Amiga 3000.
I am pretty sure it was word perfect we used primarily (to write, sim city may have been the primary app), it was definitely not very graphical. Sometimes our teacher would put together our stories using some page layout program and publish a book.
We also would use Deluxe Paint (4 maybe?) to do pictures and animations. We pretty much would spend hours trying to make the best warp coil animation.
I'm still confused for by the application menu in KDE 4.
stuff scrolls right and left. Sometimes when I go back to it, the same catagory is open, so I have to go button -> left -> scroll up and down for what category I want (defaults to very small) -> click catagory -> click application
Due to it's memory what I am looking at is slightly different every time I do this, and because it scrolls up and down, I can't to it by muscle memory at all. It is a change more jarring than from XP to Vista, though not as bad as XP to 2007 (office).
From what I can tell in KDE4 (someone please correct me if I am wrong, because I hate it and can't find the setting), the desktop is a completely different type of thing than from any OS I have used since Apple Classic (8.x I think).
Drag a file to the desktop, it's a link, well OK, not really a link so much as a widget. Want to drag you file somewhere, well make sure to unlock you widgets, oh, and it won't really act like you are dragging a file.
Don't change KDE to "show icons" on desktop, well then your file in the desktop folder are completely hidden.
It may not be different for differences sake (they may have all been well researched choices), but it is a harsh transition that feels like when gnome went hyper conceptual in design. That does leave me high-hopes, because after a lot of weirdness, gnome ended up much better.
What I want (and probably should make) for KDE 4 is a "traditional desktop" widget. It should allow me to draw a shape (at the very least and arbitrary rectangle) and treat that part of the desktop as a "normal" desktop. This would allow me to separate my files from widgets, create file icon widgets on the rest of my desktop if I pleased, but still be able to dump and play with files on the desktop. I would probably prefer that to a typical dektop even, with the ability to put widgets around the perimeter and files in the center. Until then KDE3 and Gnome it is.
I used an Amiga with Word Perfect at school, and DOS with Word Perfect at home.
Fortunately the skills were useful for Word at a later point, and understanding how directories (now folders) work.
Many people I work with (as customers) don't understand how to download something from the internet (or an email attachment) and find it at a later time. This is a useful skill that is very cross platform. As are typing, google, webmail, and even spreadsheets.
If someone can learn enough to type as quickly as fast handwriting, use the internet, send an e-mail, and save a file for later retrieval they are much better off than one who can't.
Spell check, and spreadsheets are bonuses.
It could also reasonably be argues that the purpose of computers in school is to save money by not needing encyclopedias and other types of expensive books, and to augment the ability to teach certain types of subjects.
I say this as someone who set up a Xubuntu computer at my wife's work for a summer internship for high-school students that had very little computer experience (they could use a mouse and type, and certainly knew how to find myspace instead of work though). They would stay after they could leave to use the computer to type essays and learned how to enter data into a spreadsheet along with basic (very basic) spreadsheet concepts like sorting and dragging down a column to repeat a pattern. These are the types of things that will help them be more qualified in the workforce even though they gained no Windows experience.
Software like the test builder/taker in Edubuntu could be a great bonus to a school poor school and could easily save a school dollars a test (goes somewhat to paying for the computers).
Doesn't the AMD 64 spec drop 16 bit support when running in 64 bit mode?
Also, most games I have tried to run that were 16 bit had trouble running in Win95, and more so in 98, and then even more in XP. I am suprised that there are 16 but games that will run on vists32 but not in DOSbox.
http://www.willitblend.com
I would think that at least the "flash" part of a drive will blend (maybe not the case).
This is somewhat offtopic and probably not the appropriate venuw to ask at this point, but doesn't the graphics chip set act as an accelerator for the decoding?
It never occurred to me to get a TV capture card for the sake of viewing, and if I was going to get one, it was going to be one of the LAN based ones with 2 tuners that I saw.
Does it really make sense to refer to Fire-fox as a "freetard" model with the amount of money that comes in from its use?
the so called freetard model was able to get the publicity and support to make Fire-fox incredibly successful project that would probably of flopped as a closed source product and that sentence really makes the rest of the work by that author very suspect.
Though MAME could be a lot of fun too.
I also think we're talking completely different classes of "low power" though I could be wrong there.
I'd pay good money for a low energy CPU/MB that would match the performance of my midrange 3 year old computer (Socket 939 larger die 3500+) if it had HDMI-OUT (no need for the DRM, simply want to be able to send HD audio and video to my TV).
For a small board with a low power CPU that could do that I'd pay $300-$400, and as soon as VIA gets there I will probably buy one. Though I am constantly temped to screw the low power and go with a shuttle solution. My current shuttle's power supply is too loud though (it is pretty much at peek usage though, and I think the fan is somewhat variable speed).
Easy enough to do, put a really small battery in it.
The profit on an OEM copy is probably quite large (like price - $.50)
MS's entire cost for an OEM copy of windows (to a bulk purchaser) is probably the cost of a sticker (for the computer case), and maybe a pamphlet.
The home upgrade by contrast costs $100, of which they need to package it, burn disks, distribute, and let a reseller take a cut. It wouldn't shock me if they make more per a sale from the "low profit" sales.
PS3 has been more than doubling that number
So no, it does not include the PS3.
What I find most interesting though is the loss of about 7k sales overall. That would be the cost of a more expensive format.
I personally am happy blue ray wins (I want 50GB burnable disks, not 30GB). But I would have been pretty satisfied to see Sony lose to just because I like to see big companies fail when pushing things to hard (I guess Toshiba pushed pretty hard too, but they keep to quite for it to be as enjoyable).
Isn't it not uncommon for businesses to skip entire versions of windows?
With the next version coming quick (allegedly) I don't see any compelling reason to not go XP -> 7 without dealing with Vista at all. It was only recently that new software stopped working with Windows 98.
fuckin' extrans
Article says:
<quote>In fact, even Microsoft will tell you that its fortunes peaked several months ago.</quote>
Coward says:
<quote>What part of Microsoft's record earnings yesterday did Slashdot seem to overlook? I think the joke is on us.</quote>
The 2 statements are 100% in agreement. If future earnings continue to hit records than it is wrong, but if the record set last quarter is the high point than it is also a peak.
I spent a lot more on music and entertainment as a teenager.
I made a few hundred a month (80 - 150/week), and only had to buy stuff for myself.
After gas and maintenance on my car (low mileage 20 year old car is decent shape that rarely needed anything but oil and gas), I still had hundreds left over for myself. Also, when the biggest check I ever saw was $150 saving for something real big seamed pointless. So I pissed away my money on dinners out, movies out, and CDs at a rate that would look crazy frivolous to me now. I also had more free time than now when I work 40-50 hours a week, and have a house to deal with. As much as it was frowned upon to sleep at school it is more so at work, and at school you could be really tired and noone cared as long as you sat up and looked forward.
I would imagine that teens have way more money for CDs and Movies than adults.
Will people really pay lots for a competitive advantage of 6 months to a year (for a play) or weeks to months (for a song)?
And if Barns and Noble press publishes your book selling it without paying you, or any of the middle men between you and the shelf how does that help more books get printed?
If a book goes
Author -> Agent -> publisher -> printer (probably part of publisher) -> Distributer -> store
How will it compete with
publisher -> Printer -> Store ?
All non-functional art is reliant on copyright. Terms could be dropped to something like 10 years and the vast majority of the profits could be kept though (with a few exception, especially stuff aimed at children).
I am not an Apple fanboi, and I dpn't buy their products (though I may buy an iPod soon).
<quote>"Expensive? Depends on your point of comparison."
Yes, and we know how creative fanboys can be with their points of comparison. Outright lying is not beyond them.
</quote>
Let's compare an iPod classic to any other hard disk player. Apple looks pretty in-expensive to me. Many of their other products tend to hover around the price of similar other brands, except with no low-end (like their notebooks, when compared to mid-range o high-end competitors). No you can't get the ultra cheap 1.5 hour battery-life notebook with a celeron that Dell will sell you for $400.00 less, but a similar fairly light decent battery life notebook will run a similar cost.
You may not be able to get a $1000.00 (or even $2000.00) tower from Apple, but how much is a dual processor tower from Dell?
The flash based iPods are expensive, but not too much extra, and much much smaller than the competition (which I would think matters for an MP3 player, but that's just me).
When I get a computer I spend about $1000.00 (with much wasted on the case (XPC)) and build it; I will never buy a MAC computer, I am not the market. But when you look at the anemic competition in the MP3 player market it is no wonder Apple dominates. I see players that only let you browse your collection buy disk layout, players that cost the same for half the storage, players that try to be effective video players (and are therefore huge). I can't think of any credible hard drive based music player aside from the iPod even close to the price. And in the flash based player market there is not too much either (San Disk has some big but cheap ones, Meizu is nice but has weirdness, Best Buy has some real cheap and compelling players, but the cheap one is real slow to navigate and the expensive one is almost as much as an iPod).
Wow,
That reminds me of a guy where I work (a small print shop). He was having trouble wil Office not working on his MAC, and asked for a possible solution. I forget what I recommended, but he said (contrary to my recommendation) "I think I'm going to update Office; you know how Apple likes to update things quicker than the other companies can keep up" as if it was a virtue. This guy was a "creative" to the core, except without talent. And he still pisses me off. This incedent did greatly reduce the amount of time I had to work with him, because quite a while later he was still "busy updating" instead of doing work, so in the end all of us working won from the incident.