As much as I like DivX and its fellow MPEG-4 derived brethren, getting videos that use the format to play requires some user smarts, even on Windows.
Consider: 1. Most Windows systems have the.AVI filetype associated with Windows Media Player, and Joe Average doesn't know how to change that 2. WMP can automatically download and install new codecs for files when needed, but the lookup database (intentionally) does not contain the FourCC codes for DivX and DivX-like codecs. Users simply get "a codec cannot be found". Joe Average doesn't know how to identify, download, and install new codecs.
Does the SuperDrive support writing to dual-layer DVD media? Apple's site doesn't say.
This is the problem with Apple's habit of slapping a Happy Fun Name on everything -- in computer hardware, the long chains of numbers in a product specification often MATTER.
But the truth is, Linux has been "coming of age" for about 3 bloody years.
Closer to five, I'd say. And while the desktop managers have certainly made a lot of progress in terms of eye candy, IMO they still aren't much more USABLE.
(I'm SO asking to be modded down here. Still, it's nice to see the Gnome and KDE users united about something -- their anger at ME.)
No one (NO ONE) should be running Win98 on a box that's connected to the Internet anymore. People may think it still "does what they need it to", but it's what they can't see that's the problem -- the OS is so insecure, it makes XP look like NetBSD.
And with no security patches forthcoming for it, it's more dangerous to run than ever. (Linux operators -- would you leave an unpatched RedHat 5.x box online and expect it not to get rooted?)
Win98 users NEED to upgrade. Hey, it happens. No product is exempt from the life cycle.
You want to punch...they gave you the power glove.
Nintendo (that is, Nintendo of America, the corporation) didn't give us the Power Glove. It was designed by Abrams Gentile Entertainment, Inc., and developed and marketed by Mattel.
Would it be too much to speculate that Apple can easily come out with a iGame console similarly sized like a Mac Mini?
Sure, they COULD. But I don't think they will, because Apple has thus far shown less then zero interest in moving into the entertainment market. They are still strictly a home computer and portable music company.
The fact that they've had mixed success in getting third parties to produce even desktop software for their machines does not bode well for their ability to attract game developers to the platform, either.
Re:Maximum Functionality at Minimal Price Point
on
Cell Phone On A Chip
·
· Score: 2, Funny
For $200.00, I bet that we could get an awesome computer, but I doubt that any of the traditional companies like HP, IBM, and Sony would be interested.
Maybe Microsoft would be interested in the idea? They could even try to increase marketshare by modeling this $200 PC after gaming consoles like the ones made by Sony and Nintendo...
How do you propose they make the price lower than "FREE with 12-month contract"? Besides removing the contract requirement, obviously.
There are plenty of low-cost phone models that do little more than place and receive phone calls (MORE than plenty if you hit up eBay and search for models from a couple years ago). It's not like anyone's trying to force everyone to get a Treo 650.
Usenet died not long after Canter and Siegel. The amount of spam and crossposting just made the signal-to-noise ratio too much.
And then the Usenet Cabal (TINC) made all their cancelbots smarter, and most groups outside of the alt.sex.* hierarchy returned to a state of high signal, low noise.
Too bad you missed out, the last twelve years of Usenet have been a lot of fun.
You end up using all the proprietary applications, and freedom will vanish.
No it won't! You'll still have the freedom to use whichever of the proprietary applications you like. Or for that matter, you'll still be able to choose among all the non-proprietary apps which will also remain available, regardless of how grey their legality in terms of licensing.
I must say, your definition of "freedom" is almost as convoluted as the Bush administration's.
(Gosh, I'm just ASKING to be modded "Flamebait", aren't I? I swear I didn't mean to...)
Shouldn't you have read the Wikipedia article you linked to? It states that taikonaut is a term invented by the Western press, and that China itself uses the term "astronaut" in its official English literature.
not some sort of xenophobic constest between mutually distrustful national governments.
Why, if space exploration were privatized, there could even be the potential for some sort of International Space Station, where American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts could live and work side-by-side!
Why won't anyone come out and say that it is *NOT MORAL* to take a chunk of a person's income by force, before they even get a chance to see it, for whatever purpose?
So you don't think people should be compelled to pay taxes?
What, then, would be the point of having a government in the first place? Without taxes, they certainly wouldn't be able to perform any duties at all!
"Exactly" yourself. You have the right to LIFE, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. SocSec is an acceptable step for the government to take in protecting citizens' right to life.
Show me where in the constitution it says that the government should be setting up retirement funds for people. You can't; it's not there.
Absurd argument. There's a lot of things the government does that aren't explicitly described in the Constitution; they're called LAWS. Unless you're going to argue that those laws are unconstitutional (that is, that they actually CONTRADICT what's in the Constitution, not just that they're not covered by it), I don't know why you would make this point.
Sounds like a good way for them to get shot or stabbed in retaliation
Good, then everybody wins!
I must say, your plans for a merciless "kill or be killed society" sound MUCH better than letting the government take a small part of everybody's paychecks so that cripples and old people can have guaranteed homes and food without having to stab anybody for it.
Perhaps liberatarian philosophy allows one to just shoot them?
Better be careful with that. Libertarian philosophy (as well as basic psychology of needs) also allows the homeless people to shoot YOU if that's what it takes to keep themselves alive.
I don't envy the solitary Have in a land of Have-Nots.
and if the government wasnt taking 6.2% of their wages for SS and 1.45% for Medicare they'd have more to live off and save as they see fit.
They WOULDN'T. They'd have to spend all that new money (and then some) on private disability and health insurance to replace the benefits no longer available to them through SS and Medicare, and STILL have no money left for retirement savings.
Private insurers don't provide services out of the goodness of their hearts. They're in it to make money. The same cannot be said of government-sponsored, "socialized" care programs (at least not to the same extent). It's naive to believe that privatization of social programs in the United States would make them more affordable or more effective.
Slashdot Mirror
MPEG-4 (aka mp4) is the standard everybody's running towards.
Be careful with your terminology.
MPEG-4 is a collection of standards for audio and video encoding adopted by the Motion Picture Engineering Group.
One of these specifications, H.264, is the video codec commonly referred to as "MPEG-4".
"MP4" as an acronym and file extension usually refers to a Quicktime file containing an H.264 video stream.
(I may wrong about some of these details myself. Who can tell.)
As much as I like DivX and its fellow MPEG-4 derived brethren, getting videos that use the format to play requires some user smarts, even on Windows.
.AVI filetype associated with Windows Media Player, and Joe Average doesn't know how to change that
Consider:
1. Most Windows systems have the
2. WMP can automatically download and install new codecs for files when needed, but the lookup database (intentionally) does not contain the FourCC codes for DivX and DivX-like codecs. Users simply get "a codec cannot be found". Joe Average doesn't know how to identify, download, and install new codecs.
Does the SuperDrive support writing to dual-layer DVD media? Apple's site doesn't say.
This is the problem with Apple's habit of slapping a Happy Fun Name on everything -- in computer hardware, the long chains of numbers in a product specification often MATTER.
But the truth is, Linux has been "coming of age" for about 3 bloody years.
Closer to five, I'd say. And while the desktop managers have certainly made a lot of progress in terms of eye candy, IMO they still aren't much more USABLE.
(I'm SO asking to be modded down here. Still, it's nice to see the Gnome and KDE users united about something -- their anger at ME.)
No one (NO ONE) should be running Win98 on a box that's connected to the Internet anymore. People may think it still "does what they need it to", but it's what they can't see that's the problem -- the OS is so insecure, it makes XP look like NetBSD.
And with no security patches forthcoming for it, it's more dangerous to run than ever. (Linux operators -- would you leave an unpatched RedHat 5.x box online and expect it not to get rooted?)
Win98 users NEED to upgrade. Hey, it happens. No product is exempt from the life cycle.
You want to punch...they gave you the power glove.
Nintendo (that is, Nintendo of America, the corporation) didn't give us the Power Glove. It was designed by Abrams Gentile Entertainment, Inc., and developed and marketed by Mattel.
Would it be too much to speculate that Apple can easily come out with a iGame console similarly sized like a Mac Mini?
Sure, they COULD. But I don't think they will, because Apple has thus far shown less then zero interest in moving into the entertainment market. They are still strictly a home computer and portable music company.
The fact that they've had mixed success in getting third parties to produce even desktop software for their machines does not bode well for their ability to attract game developers to the platform, either.
For $200.00, I bet that we could get an awesome computer, but I doubt that any of the traditional companies like HP, IBM, and Sony would be interested.
Maybe Microsoft would be interested in the idea? They could even try to increase marketshare by modeling this $200 PC after gaming consoles like the ones made by Sony and Nintendo...
Want to lower the average price of a cell-phone?
How do you propose they make the price lower than "FREE with 12-month contract"? Besides removing the contract requirement, obviously.
There are plenty of low-cost phone models that do little more than place and receive phone calls (MORE than plenty if you hit up eBay and search for models from a couple years ago). It's not like anyone's trying to force everyone to get a Treo 650.
Usenet died not long after Canter and Siegel. The amount of spam and crossposting just made the signal-to-noise ratio too much.
And then the Usenet Cabal (TINC) made all their cancelbots smarter, and most groups outside of the alt.sex.* hierarchy returned to a state of high signal, low noise.
Too bad you missed out, the last twelve years of Usenet have been a lot of fun.
IBM PC unit?
Frankly, I don't see how a 25-year-old 8088-based computer would present much of a threat of industrial espionage.
Well, if they added the second 5 1/4" drive and 110 baud acoustic-coupler modem, maybe.
You end up using all the proprietary applications, and freedom will vanish.
No it won't! You'll still have the freedom to use whichever of the proprietary applications you like. Or for that matter, you'll still be able to choose among all the non-proprietary apps which will also remain available, regardless of how grey their legality in terms of licensing.
I must say, your definition of "freedom" is almost as convoluted as the Bush administration's.
(Gosh, I'm just ASKING to be modded "Flamebait", aren't I? I swear I didn't mean to...)
Shouldn't the corrent term be Taikonaut?
Shouldn't you have read the Wikipedia article you linked to? It states that taikonaut is a term invented by the Western press, and that China itself uses the term "astronaut" in its official English literature.
not some sort of xenophobic constest between mutually distrustful national governments.
Why, if space exploration were privatized, there could even be the potential for some sort of International Space Station, where American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts could live and work side-by-side!
What a marvelous day that would be!
when I was transferring music digitally on and off the discs
How were you managing that? All the Sony-produced consumer MiniDisc gear I ever saw had digital input, but analog-only output...
"with any luck future devices won't be crippled with silly formats no one uses."
CowboyNeal, why do you hate Ogg Vorbis?
Yes, makes sense that they're using a 2.5" laptop hard drive inside the Mac mini.
That's why the largest capacity they offer is a mere 80 GB, rather than the 200+ GB that's now becoming common in 3.5" desktop drives.
Most people that have lived (read: thrived) throughout history, did it without social security.
Most people throughout history had more grueling working conditions and shorter lifespans. They would literally work themselves to death.
I'd like to think that we as a society have progressed beyond those times, no?
Why won't anyone come out and say that it is *NOT MORAL* to take a chunk of a person's income by force, before they even get a chance to see it, for whatever purpose?
So you don't think people should be compelled to pay taxes?
What, then, would be the point of having a government in the first place? Without taxes, they certainly wouldn't be able to perform any duties at all!
"Exactly" yourself. You have the right to LIFE, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. SocSec is an acceptable step for the government to take in protecting citizens' right to life.
Show me where in the constitution it says that the government should be setting up retirement funds for people. You can't; it's not there.
Absurd argument. There's a lot of things the government does that aren't explicitly described in the Constitution; they're called LAWS. Unless you're going to argue that those laws are unconstitutional (that is, that they actually CONTRADICT what's in the Constitution, not just that they're not covered by it), I don't know why you would make this point.
Perhaps if you didn't have 6.2% (or 15.4% if you're self-employed) of your money taken away from you, you could afford to retire.
"Perhaps if the government didn't force you to plan for retirement, you could plan for retirement."
Um, OK...
Sounds like a good way for them to get shot or stabbed in retaliation
Good, then everybody wins!
I must say, your plans for a merciless "kill or be killed society" sound MUCH better than letting the government take a small part of everybody's paychecks so that cripples and old people can have guaranteed homes and food without having to stab anybody for it.
Perhaps liberatarian philosophy allows one to just shoot them?
Better be careful with that. Libertarian philosophy (as well as basic psychology of needs) also allows the homeless people to shoot YOU if that's what it takes to keep themselves alive.
I don't envy the solitary Have in a land of Have-Nots.
and if the government wasnt taking 6.2% of their wages for SS and 1.45% for Medicare they'd have more to live off and save as they see fit.
They WOULDN'T. They'd have to spend all that new money (and then some) on private disability and health insurance to replace the benefits no longer available to them through SS and Medicare, and STILL have no money left for retirement savings.
Private insurers don't provide services out of the goodness of their hearts. They're in it to make money. The same cannot be said of government-sponsored, "socialized" care programs (at least not to the same extent). It's naive to believe that privatization of social programs in the United States would make them more affordable or more effective.
At least with WIC, you don't get cash, you get stamps only valid for certain food items and cheap diapers.
So you're in FAVOR of the government imposing a narrow set of guidelines on how its citizens can spend?
Hey, looks like continuing to mandate contributions into a social security fund is okay by you after all.