Having bought a 900 Mhz G3 iBook just after they came out, I am moved to tears to see the G4 iBooks now. Of course, my g/f has been wanting one, so maybe I'll just buy myself a G4 and give her the G3.
As for the practical, nice to see USB 2.0 and Airport Extreme on the iBook. Still maxes out at only 640 MB of RAM though. Also only 256K L2 cache seems like it will hurt performance. The Powerbooks have 512K. I guess they had to come up with some ways to justify the higher cost of the 12" PB. That and if you want a Superdrive or built in bluetooth, you need to buy a PB.
Guess I'll wait to see some benchmarks on this, but my guess is we'll become a 2 iBook household before too long. (Should probably save up for 2 iPods too.)
Checking the Itunes Music Store, I see that Jewel and Green Day both have individual songs available for download. Radiohead's OK Computer was available the first week or so of ITMS but was pulled. I guess now I know why. Madonna also had some songs on ITMS but they're gone now.
Why all the secrecy about the allegedly infringing code? The cat is already out of the bag if there is infringing code in the Linux kernel. All they'd have to do is post a few snippets of code to bolster their case. Show us a few 10-15 line blocks of code. There's no call for NDA's at this point because if they are right there's no secret left to protect.
The only plausible explanation is that there is no infringing code and this lawsuit is just bluff and bluster designed to either spread FUD or to get paid off by IBM.
I work for a publishing company, and believe me, we all say "izbin" for ISBN all the time. I also go back and forth between ess-que-ell and sequel, depending on my mood.
I probably should have subscribed back when they first started the subscription program, but even then it had the whiff of desperation about it. It was obvious that despite the excellent articles that their business model was doomed. I'm surprised that Salon has stuck around as long as it has.
Obviously 40,000 subscriptions wasn't enough. Which at 30 bucks each comes to 1.2 million dollars from subscription revenue. My 30 dollars isn't going to make much of a dent in the 75 million they've lost. It would just be throwing my money away at this point.
By the way I have contributed to the EFF, the ACLU, Public Citizen and numerous other organizations whose goals I support. But Salon isn't a non-profit (well, in one sense I guess they are). They're a publicly traded for profit corporation that happens to have no concept of how to turn a profit.
I'll miss it, but I won't pay for it
on
Salon in Dire Straits
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I have spent many hours reading Salon. It's one of the sites I check every day. Even after they moved most of their content to the premium service there were enough interesting articles left in the free section to make it worth skimming. Unfortunately if they do go under, the only really interesting news/opinion webzine left will be Slate.
I wanted to support them, and thought about subscribing. But I've always had strong concerns about their financials, and was worried that after I forked over my 30 dollars that they'd go under. This is one of the reasons I'm reluctant to pony up money for any web site. There's no guarantee that even after I subscribe that the site will still be there for the length of my subscription. I know it's not much money, but still if I pay for a year, I want to know that the site will still be there at the end of that year.
Of course I don't know why anyone bought the stock. It was obvious that they had no real strategy for turning a profit. As a business Salon is a disaster. They put out the equivalent of a weekly magazine on a daily basis. It's a shame that quality content just isn't enough.
The article and some posters are assuming that just because I didn't cancel my Yahoo! account that I did nothing. As soon as I heard about the changes to Yahoo's privacy policy I went to the relevant page and switched everything to no. Problem solved. It took about 30 seconds of my time. Am I happy about Yahoo's increasingly desperate attempts to actually make some money? No. But have they gone so far that I feel the need to avoid them totally? Not yet.
At first I thought this was just a power grab by the corporate interests which already dominate ICANN. But then I came across this in the document (note I didn't read the whole thing, just skimmed).
"We propose the At-Large user "community" include institutions, but only individuals may vote. Institutions already play a greater role in the existing Supporting Organizations, so this seems an appropriate balance. We encourage your input on this issue. "
Further down they discuss the issue of multiple domain names and the possibilities of fraud. Since it is relatively inexpensive and easy to register a domain name these days, I don't think that the individual net user is necessarily locked out of the process.
It can't be any worse than the system they used in the last election. I never did receive the snail-mail that was supposed to give me my password. I got many e-mails telling me it was coming, but apparently they sent it via the Pony Express.
I initially thought that this was a tremendous waste of time. But I remembered all the misunderstandings which have arisen in email or IM because the words on the screen didn't convey an emotional context. Sarcasm in particular is very tricky. A tag would be a tremendous help.
I'm not sure that anyone would use such a tool for informal communication. It seems like a lot of overhead. But perhaps those developing natural language interfaces could use this to understand the emotional state of the user, and to respond appropriately.
In Dendrite's case, there was no proof of stock manipulation. In fact, the stock went up on 5 of the 8 days in which the allegedly defamatory posts were made. Dendrite was on a fishing expedition. They were hoping to discover whether employees were actively disparaging the company online, and to intimidate them into silence.
Secondly, anyone who invests real money based on anonymous rumors on Internet message boards is a fool and we know what happens to fools and their money.
This is a red herring. The Soyuz is going up anyway and the third seat is empty if Tito doesn't go. The additional propellant required to lift the additional mass of Tito is negligible compared to the amount to get the Soyuz up in the first place.
For those who didn't read the entire article, the last paragraph indicates that the evidence in the trial record points to the anonymous company being Brightpoint Inc. of Indianapolis, IN (ticker symbol CELL). They claim to be "the leading provider of outsourced services in the U.S. wireless telecommunications and data industry."
I am also very frustrated by the fact that I keep getting email from Icann telling me to be patient if I haven't gotten my PIN from them, but the deadline is a mere two days away. The entire voting system is totally fubar as far as I'm concerned. ICANN is deliberately trying to make voting difficult if not impossible. This election is a farce.
I'm using PGP 6.5.3 Freeware in windows and notice that there is a way to see if a key on my keyring or the server has an ADK. Go to the View Menu and click ADK if you don't see the field.
Would checking this field before using someone's public key guarantee that there was no ADK attached to that key or does this vulnerablility mean that the flag won't be set?
I often wonder if members of Congress have ever read the First Amendment. I mean what part of "Congress shall pass no law" don't you understand? Don't they take an oath to support defend and protect the constitution? Shouldn't they have at least read it?
I think there should be some sort of penalty for deliberately voting for legislation that you know to be unconstitutional. It seems that very often Congress will pass laws knowing full well that they will be stricken down by the courts. This way they can say they're against (insert bad thing here) without any consequences. They get a free pass.
The problem with this is that all too often GUI applications pop up useless message boxes. The easiest way for a programmer to get text onto the screen is often a message box. These messages are usually either purely informational messages, or they are confirmation messages "Are you sure?" Both are purely unnecessary in 95% of all cases. The informational messages don't require the entire application to stop and wait for the user acknowledge the message, but the programmer is too lazy to actually communicate the information in a less intrusive way. Confirmation boxes are slightly more justifiable perhaps, but are still way overused. At least 9 times out of 10 the answer to "Do you really want to do what you just did?" is yes and why do I have to click another button to get the program to do what I just told it to do.
Alan Cooper in About Face characterizes the message box as "arguably the most abused part of the graphic user interface." As he states later in the book, confirmation messages "only work when they are unexpected." The answer isn't to make the users do even more work to get past these useless messages, but for programmers to stop forcing the users to click through endless dialog boxes to perform the simplest tasks.
"Authorities detained a Filipino man and two women who are suspected to be behind the virus, according to an Agence France-Presse news wire report citing unidentified National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) officials, Bloomberg News reported." - from CNET News.com
So News.com is reporting that Bloomberg is quoting Agence France-Press who is citing unidentified sources. Talk about getting your information third hand! And they wonder why I don't trust the media.
I'm curious to see which parts of the Windows code they'd be willing to open up. I'd also look closely to see when they'd have to release code for a given feature. Would it be when they ship a new release? When the beta goes out? This is the kind of thing that the DOJ decided would be impossible to enforce and prompted them to go for the breakup remedy instead.
"However, television programming is specifically exempted from the new labeling requirements proposed by the bill. If TV had been included in the proposal, it would have rendered obsolete millions of V-chips already in homes. The V-chip is specifically programmed to work with the current TV code, and reprogramming existing sets would be extraordinarily expensive."
Would anyone even notice? I just bought a new television and of course it is V-chip equipped. I looked through the instruction manual to see how to use it (just out of curiosity, personally I want to filter out the shows with too little sex and violence) and it looked way too complicated for the average TV viewer. Anyone know how much more I paid for my set for this useless piece of technology?
Slashdot Mirror
A much better article on this subject can be found at New Scientist. (via digg).
Checking out the new IBook on the Apple site I see some major changes that far outweigh the slight processor speed increase.
Memory now maxes out at 1.25 GB instead of 640MB.
Available Superdrive
Built in Airport Extreme in 1.2Ghz model
Downsides:
Still only Firewire 400
I think this makes these the best IBooks yet. It may just be time to upgrade. These are now the best values in the Apple lineup.
Having bought a 900 Mhz G3 iBook just after they came out, I am moved to tears to see the G4 iBooks now. Of course, my g/f has been wanting one, so maybe I'll just buy myself a G4 and give her the G3.
As for the practical, nice to see USB 2.0 and Airport Extreme on the iBook. Still maxes out at only 640 MB of RAM though. Also only 256K L2 cache seems like it will hurt performance. The Powerbooks have 512K. I guess they had to come up with some ways to justify the higher cost of the 12" PB. That and if you want a Superdrive or built in bluetooth, you need to buy a PB.
Guess I'll wait to see some benchmarks on this, but my guess is we'll become a 2 iBook household before too long. (Should probably save up for 2 iPods too.)
Checking the Itunes Music Store, I see that Jewel and Green Day both have individual songs available for download. Radiohead's OK Computer was available the first week or so of ITMS but was pulled. I guess now I know why. Madonna also had some songs on ITMS but they're gone now.
Why all the secrecy about the allegedly infringing code? The cat is already out of the bag if there is infringing code in the Linux kernel. All they'd have to do is post a few snippets of code to bolster their case. Show us a few 10-15 line blocks of code. There's no call for NDA's at this point because if they are right there's no secret left to protect.
The only plausible explanation is that there is no infringing code and this lawsuit is just bluff and bluster designed to either spread FUD or to get paid off by IBM.
I work for a publishing company, and believe me, we all say "izbin" for ISBN all the time. I also go back and forth between ess-que-ell and sequel, depending on my mood.
I probably should have subscribed back when they first started the subscription program, but even then it had the whiff of desperation about it. It was obvious that despite the excellent articles that their business model was doomed. I'm surprised that Salon has stuck around as long as it has.
Obviously 40,000 subscriptions wasn't enough. Which at 30 bucks each comes to 1.2 million dollars from subscription revenue. My 30 dollars isn't going to make much of a dent in the 75 million they've lost. It would just be throwing my money away at this point.
By the way I have contributed to the EFF, the ACLU, Public Citizen and numerous other organizations whose goals I support. But Salon isn't a non-profit (well, in one sense I guess they are). They're a publicly traded for profit corporation that happens to have no concept of how to turn a profit.
I have spent many hours reading Salon. It's one of the sites I check every day. Even after they moved most of their content to the premium service there were enough interesting articles left in the free section to make it worth skimming. Unfortunately if they do go under, the only really interesting news/opinion webzine left will be Slate.
I wanted to support them, and thought about subscribing. But I've always had strong concerns about their financials, and was worried that after I forked over my 30 dollars that they'd go under. This is one of the reasons I'm reluctant to pony up money for any web site. There's no guarantee that even after I subscribe that the site will still be there for the length of my subscription. I know it's not much money, but still if I pay for a year, I want to know that the site will still be there at the end of that year.
Of course I don't know why anyone bought the stock. It was obvious that they had no real strategy for turning a profit. As a business Salon is a disaster. They put out the equivalent of a weekly magazine on a daily basis. It's a shame that quality content just isn't enough.
The article and some posters are assuming that just because I didn't cancel my Yahoo! account that I did nothing. As soon as I heard about the changes to Yahoo's privacy policy I went to the relevant page and switched everything to no. Problem solved. It took about 30 seconds of my time. Am I happy about Yahoo's increasingly desperate attempts to actually make some money? No. But have they gone so far that I feel the need to avoid them totally? Not yet.
At first I thought this was just a power grab by the corporate interests which already dominate ICANN. But then I came across this in the document (note I didn't read the whole thing, just skimmed).
"We propose the At-Large user "community" include institutions, but only individuals may vote. Institutions already play a greater role in the existing Supporting Organizations, so this seems an appropriate balance. We encourage your input on this issue. "
Further down they discuss the issue of multiple domain names and the possibilities of fraud. Since it is relatively inexpensive and easy to register a domain name these days, I don't think that the individual net user is necessarily locked out of the process.
It can't be any worse than the system they used in the last election. I never did receive the snail-mail that was supposed to give me my password. I got many e-mails telling me it was coming, but apparently they sent it via the Pony Express.
--
I initially thought that this was a tremendous waste of time. But I remembered all the misunderstandings which have arisen in email or IM because the words on the screen didn't convey an emotional context. Sarcasm in particular is very tricky. A tag would be a tremendous help.
I'm not sure that anyone would use such a tool for informal communication. It seems like a lot of overhead. But perhaps those developing natural language interfaces could use this to understand the emotional state of the user, and to respond appropriately.
Secondly, anyone who invests real money based on anonymous rumors on Internet message boards is a fool and we know what happens to fools and their money.
Actually the median salary for H1-B applicants is $45,000. From a GAO report entitled "H1-B Foreign Workers - Better Controls Needed to Help Employers and Protect Workers" (PDF format)
Would checking this field before using someone's public key guarantee that there was no ADK attached to that key or does this vulnerablility mean that the flag won't be set?
June 29th and still waiting for my PIN. I'm wondering if ICANN is competent to run anything.
I often wonder if members of Congress have ever read the First Amendment. I mean what part of "Congress shall pass no law" don't you understand? Don't they take an oath to support defend and protect the constitution? Shouldn't they have at least read it?
I think there should be some sort of penalty for deliberately voting for legislation that you know to be unconstitutional. It seems that very often Congress will pass laws knowing full well that they will be stricken down by the courts. This way they can say they're against (insert bad thing here) without any consequences. They get a free pass.
Alan Cooper in About Face characterizes the message box as "arguably the most abused part of the graphic user interface." As he states later in the book, confirmation messages "only work when they are unexpected." The answer isn't to make the users do even more work to get past these useless messages, but for programmers to stop forcing the users to click through endless dialog boxes to perform the simplest tasks.
So News.com is reporting that Bloomberg is quoting Agence France-Press who is citing unidentified sources. Talk about getting your information third hand! And they wonder why I don't trust the media.
I'm curious to see which parts of the Windows code they'd be willing to open up. I'd also look closely to see when they'd have to release code for a given feature. Would it be when they ship a new release? When the beta goes out? This is the kind of thing that the DOJ decided would be impossible to enforce and prompted them to go for the breakup remedy instead.
Would anyone even notice? I just bought a new television and of course it is V-chip equipped. I looked through the instruction manual to see how to use it (just out of curiosity, personally I want to filter out the shows with too little sex and violence) and it looked way too complicated for the average TV viewer. Anyone know how much more I paid for my set for this useless piece of technology?