Oh, come on! This is utter BS... It only happens in a tiny remote place and is a national embarrassment.
As a Swiss, I believe we have a pretty good voting system even though too few of us seem to bother with it. Thing is our system is such that we vote often on various objects. For more practicality, we vote on many objects at once, several times a year, whether they're local, state or federal.
Here in Geneva, we've been voting from home for a long time. It's a simple system: you get an envelope in you mailbox containing:
a card with your name and SS number on which you have to write down your birthdate and which you have to sign.
a booklet containing the texts of the laws being modified/added/canceled and a simplified explanation.
a booklet containing the opinions (explanations + voting recommendation) of the government AND various political parties represented.
the voting bulletins themselves with checkboxes, perfectly straightforward (if you're confused with them, you're either blind or shouldn't be allowed to vote).
an anonymous voting envelope in which you put your voting bulletins and then seal.
You return the card and the voting envelope in the envelope in which it all came in (it's a recyclable thing), drop it in a mailbox (no postage) in time (max 2 days before actual voting day") and that's it.
Now, with such an easy system and all the required information at hand, I wonder why sometimes less than 40% of us express our opinions. Hey, we have the chance to live in a super-democratic society in which we vote on every aspect of what's going on yet most of us don't make any use of it and then dare complaining about the "system" in which we're (supposedly) in control. Yup, we are in control from A to Z, unlike some other so-called "democracies" but this idea seems to be getting quite fuzzy in the general consensus, given that we're surrounded by much less democratic entities. Furthermore, our system isn't EU-compatible ; the people have too much control to allow the application of EU directives by a central government.
E-voting is only a natural evolution of our current system. It will allow instant and accurate results. I can only hope it will motivate people to vote a bit more, some great changes could come from having another 30% of the population casting votes. Regarding the anonymity of the system, I believe such concerns received great consideration given the fact we're far from being amateurs when it comes to anonymous stuff (Swiss private banking anyone?)... The security is similar to the the system used for e-banking, which has a proven record (we've had e-banking for at least 5 years with no known breach). OTOH, one of the companies behind such projects was the same responsible for digital satellite receivers cards, which have been cracked ages ago...
It's a great test-bed for e-voting systems, which are a great opportunity for newly democratic states to cheaply implement a safe voting infrastructure and other states to implement a proven, tested system at a lesser cost (Florida, you listenin'?).
Now as for the women voting status, they only got it on a federal scale in 1970, which is indeed embarrassing in a country so fundamentaly democratic. But it's getting better, we even had a female President the other year (changes each year, hard to follow!). Sure, when you come from countries where your "representatives" are as representative of your opinions than your tax declaration or party donation check, it's quite funny seeing your local shopkeeper vociferating his claims to the higher establishment on the local congress live tv feed:). It's a small country divided and subdivided in tiny entities, with little overhead from the federal government or even the state itself. Makes the whole thing awfuly bureaucratic, but we also got e-government "booths" which makes it easier to accomplish many administrative procedures. This site will link you to most official resources.
So, before dissing our electoral system with an old cliché, please get your facts straight ot you might once more make 7.5 million foes:)
Apt and Synaptic have been ported to Mandrake, and work really well. As a little debian user (through Libranet and Knoppix), I love apt-get and also love Mandrake for its great community support.
You can find apt and synaptic for Mandrake 9.0 here thanks to Texstar.
I'd hate to see Mandrake die, I believe it's the best all-round distro around, easy to install yet powerful, a great learning tool.
Well, I sure hope their keyboard lights work better than their server, because my browser ain't seeing the light of it... Sheesh, after just ONE/. comment!
Hey, this is/. man. If you want to strictly stay on-topic I suggest you head for another forum (K5?). Given how linked the media and the ways to access them are, I believe it isn't more offtopic to talk about this particular issue (DVD access) than it is to rant about how poorly the site renders in Mozilla on a poorly configured box (btw, works fine with me with Konqueror AND Mozilla 1.2.1 in Mandrake 9).
Maybe this discussion wouldn't irate you so much if indy cartoons websites weren't accessible to North Americans on behalf that they hamper the syndicated cartoonists' business model.
If you want to talk about "New Media", well, you can't really get rid of the accessibility sub-topics, especially here. So stop complaining and post something more interresting than your little lesson-giving stuff you're serving us at the moment.
This is a forum, with threads. If you don't like a particular thread, don't read it.
Perhaps you would have noticed Groening mentioned it in the interview, raising the very issue:
"As somebody who's a glutton for entertainment, I'm amazed that I can listen to Indian pop music on the Internet from New Delhi radio stations. Yet there are whole regions of the world that I can't easily access [when it comes to] DVDs and television shows. I bought myself an all-region DVD player so I can watch British TV shows that aren't broadcast over here. But you can't play them here [without it]. I don't know if that's a phenomenon, but I think it's overlooked."
IMHO it is relevant that this "old rant about DMCA/MPAA/RIAA etc" be discussed here, because a rather important producer is now complaining about how it restricts his viewing of foreign media, hence restricting his exposure to what's being made around the world. As an artist and media "glutton" I can perfectly understand his concerns about this piece of regulation.
Yes, the "rant" is ON TOPIC since, in this case, we're also talking about accessibility to independent cartoons/films/shows/media.
Next time I suggest you read the article before snapping and telling ppl what can be discussed or not, especially when the subject is about new media (cartoons in this case) and the ways to access them.
I bought myself an all-region DVD player so I can watch British TV shows that aren't broadcast over here. But you can't play them here [without it]. I don't know if that's a phenomenon, but I think it's overlooked.
[Jack Valenti mode ON] Well, not only his shows are unamerican but he now admits to being a criminal! Fortunately for us, the MPAA shall remind him about the laws of this country with a copy of the DMCA tattooed on his forehead. Our business model is endangered by such evil communists! [Jack Valenti mode OFF]
Gee, serioulsy, finally someone from the USA complaining about this absurd DVD region coding. It's basically a requirement to have a region-free player if you enjoy films and shows that weren't produced in your region of the world (or don't appeal to the General Audience - foreign stuff mostly). It's easy for big US media corporations to flood the world with their (mostly) crappy productions, but smaller european, asian or wherever-they're-from companies have no way to penetrate the North-American market. Say you're in the USA and wish to watch that great British humour DVD your european cousin sent you for xmas, you have to get a region-free player and thus perform an illegal operation. Mind you, if you can play all 5 regions the MPAA will even consider you got at least 4 illegal players, since that's the MPAA math nowadays. The same problem occurs if you dare travelling with your laptop and wish to watch a DVD you rented locally. Where's the sticker saying "this laptop only for use in USA, Canada and selected nations"?
I've noticed some DVDs have no region coding at all, mostly the ones from small, indie film production companies. I've tried and they play in any player. I hope we'll see more of those, now that ppl really seem to get pissed off by that region coding thing. It's maybe not too much of a problem in North America, but the rest of the planet isn't in Zone One and thus can't access such DVDs, and has to wait for the local copyright owner to allow distribution of said DVDs to your country of residence (you can just forget about it most of the time). C'mon, if I buy a DVD, I want to be able to play it wherever I goddamn want it! Hey, with the actual system I can't even buy a DVD and offer it to my cousins in the USA... How crappy is that? Wait, they want to extend the system to audio now... Next thing will be news, maybe. Given the fascist manners of the actual US government, we ain't too far from it.
Anyway, if you want *real* accelerations, grandiose sensations and top speed and aren't a millionaire, just get a fast motorbike:)
A stock $10.500Suzuki 1000 GSXR has a 160hp engine that redlines at 12.500rpm for a dry weight of 170kg (374lbs), does the 1/4-mile in less than 9 seconds and a top speed of 190+ mph. This thing basically blows any street-legal two and four-wheel vehicle.
The power of this bike is absolutely awesome... and extremely frustrating on the open roads. On the track, though...:) In both cases you need a serious pair of cojones to master the beast!
Whilst I admit to this thing being a monster, both in performances and in sheer cubic space, I don't think the size of the beast will matter much.
I believe most of these cards will go in new (or very recent) systems which already have lan/sound/USB/1394 on the motherboard, reducing or even eliminating the need for extra PCI cards. Heck, even if the GeForce FX car eats up one PCI slot, you still got at least 4 of them left free, more than enough to host a better soundcard, a scsi controller, a video capture card...
Recent cards like the GF4Ti600 already have huge heatsinks with fans that make it a risky decision to plug a card in the PCI slot next to them, unless you want to cut the air from flowing to your GPU. I haven't heard any complaints about it so far, eh. I guess the gamers who invest in such cards don't fill-up their cases by populating all of their PCI slots...
Anyway, I'm pretty sure we'll see a smaller/cooler version of the card within 6 months or so that will make this whole conversation obsolete...
Cell phones ALREADY HAVE the worst of what we expect Palladium to be. If an app isn't signed and delivered (usually with a FEE) to your cell phone by your cell phone provider, you're not getting it on there.
This is complete FUD! You can also and very easily use a data cable to manage and transfer images, melodies and games if you have a data cable and it won't cost you anything. I do it all the time with my Siemens ME45. Also, I believe network operators aren't so keen on letting viruses/worms running wild on free downloads for freakin' mobile phones! Imagine the mayhem in countries with over 80% of the population having a mobile phone! Tech support hell! Most mobile phone owners aren't control-freak geeks, they just want to follow the instructions and get their game or whatever on their phone and have it running within a minute, period. Since most phones in circulation are under warranty, no wonder operators and manufacturers limit the kind of apps you can get, after all it'll cost *them* if *you* screw it up! If you really need a particular applet (you can even make yours!), use a data cable.
As to the download fee, it costs about the same than a couple of standard SMS to transfer a ringtone, logo or whatever you want and you may download from whatever source you want! As long as they support your phone, there shouldn't be any problem, no matter where they are. And if you want to transfer more, there are chances you'll use HSCSD or GPRS data transfer, in which case you shouldn't worry about the fractional costs of said games/ringtones/etc, given what you're already shelling monthly for all the services. I mean, you're not gonna have Kazaa running on it, right? There aren't *that many* games you can download yet and phones have limited memory.
Is it perhaps that you don't agree with paying for software or even paying for the data transfer? Wait for 3G or WiFi phones to pay a flat fee (hopefully) and stop bitching then!
Next comes the issue of getting data onto your phone... The screen is small and the entry interface (press each button over, and over, and over) is awful. You can't begin to compare it to the Palm or any other PDA at all.
Ever heard of T9? Works in my phone's agenda for data entry, damn quick. Sure it doesn't replace my real agenda (pen and paper, thank you) but is useful for setting alarms to important things. Oh, it also syncs Addressbook (complete Vcards) and agenda with Outlook (yuk) smoothly out of the box. May I suggest you try a better mobile phone before dismissing all of them?
Some cell phones, such as my Siemens, have decent enough PDA fuctionalities so that I don't feel the need for getting a new Palm (my IIIx being dead). The phone and a paper agenda do the trick perfectly and I only need a power outlet once a week to recharge the phone's battery. Also, I have one less worry about breaking the Palm and losing all my stuff, my phone is a ruggerised version which doesn't fear falling on concrete or in water. Try that with your Palm! As to the thin paper agenda, well...:)
You, sir, should open your eyes at what phone manufacturers produce nowadays, rather than basing your opinion on your 3 year-old Nokia. Heck, PDAs have already merged with cell phones, why not the opposite, to a limited level? Some manufacturers do it better than others. I suggest you visit the Siemens mobile phones site, their phones have much geekier functions than Nokia (except Communicator) and Sony/Ericsson ones.
Foreigners are still targets in Algeria (though the killings have basically stopped, since the heyday a few years ago when they were murdered by the dozen).
I'm sorry to inform you the killings haven't stopped at all, just the media got tired of it and the Algerian government is pretty information-retentive. I don't have links to give you right now but there's at least a couple of families slaughtered by crazy fundamentalists reported every week. Also don't forget the fact the country is still in relative turmoil after the elections, deemed unfair by many. Sad for such a beautiful country:(
I mean, for $1.3 Million Sun could at least offer some cosmetic options. Not that it's the kind of stuff people keep in their living room (although...), but if I'd shell out that kind of money for a badass server, I'd want it to look awesome!
My personal taste would go towards a single colour for the whole array, all red or all blue.
I used to spend my summers nearby an observatory in the South of France, and they were using a pretty damn visible laser to measure Earth-Moon distance (I think). At night, a similar beam than in the article photo could be visible (can't remember the colour of it though), and that was 20 years ago.
Pretty impressive thing to see when you're a kid in the middle of nowhere in the early 1980's.
I don't have all the dates for everything but found a great timeline of recording history on this page. It doesn't provide the info about filmed TV (kinescope) though.
The very first video recorder (black & white, of course) was demonstrated in 1951: "Ampex team led by Charles Ginsburg began work on a video tape recorder (VTR) in October; Bing Crosby Enterprises demonstrated an experimental 12-head VTR at 100 ips."
In 1956, CBS broadcast the first network television show with videotape Nov. 30, Douglas Edwards and the News, for West Coast delayed broadcast.
Of course, this was before Helical Scan (rotating heads, which we still use) was developed by the Japanese and first demonstrated by Toshiba in 1959. Sony marketed a helical scan VTR, the PV100 in 1961, which was adopted by American Airlines in 1964 for in-flight movies; Ampex sued Sony over it in 1966 (in 1960 Ampex shared VTR patents with Sony and Sony shared transistorized circuitry with Ampex).
It's impressive to see that U-Matic (3/4", composite video), the very first videocassette format, was introduced by Sony in 1969 and is still in use, although it's been superseeded on the institutional market by low-end Beta SP in the last 10 years and now DV.
"If you have multiple users set up on your machine, then each user who wishes to use OpenOffice.org 1.0 will need to install separately. This uses up a lot of disk space. As an alternative, you can use the multi-user option instead, though installation is a little more complicated:
Unzip the downloaded file into its own folder. If you have Compressed Folders installed, the easiest way to do this is to right click on the file and then choose Extract All... Open Command Prompt (if you have Windows NT, 2000 or XP) or MS-DOS prompt (for other versions of Windows). You should find this on the Start Menu somewhere under Programs (on some versions of Windows, it is in the Accessories folder). You should then type the location of the folder followed by "install\setup/net". For example, if you unzipped the files to "C:\OpenOffice Setup\" you would type C:\OpenOffice Setup\install\setup/net followed by Return. Then follow the on screen prompts... make a note of the folder in which OpenOffice.org 1.0 is installed onto your computer.
This will install a shared version of OpenOffice.org 1.0 on your computer. Now each user who wishes to use the program can double click on the program setup.exe that was created in the folder you have made a note of in step 4 above - this will install the files necessary for that user and use only a few additional megabytes of disk space."
I have deployed Mozilla on win2k platforms in a small firm I work for (along with OpenOffice.org). They all love the tabbed browsing, the popup blocker, the stability, etc.
However, the big culprit is the e-mail client. It chokes on badly formatted mails, is slow and lacks tons of options. For instance, it doesn't put the attachment list when you print the mail and also you can't tell it to delete e-mails from the server after n days, a handy feature when ppl want to share a mailbox. The address book is crappy too.
For home use, I't's perfect... But when you get 400 mails/day, Mozilla isn't the right thing to use.
Does anyone know of a robust and safe e-mail client on windoze? The Bat! seems nice, despite its crappy name...
Slashdot Mirror
As a Swiss, I believe we have a pretty good voting system even though too few of us seem to bother with it. Thing is our system is such that we vote often on various objects. For more practicality, we vote on many objects at once, several times a year, whether they're local, state or federal.
Here in Geneva, we've been voting from home for a long time. It's a simple system: you get an envelope in you mailbox containing:
a card with your name and SS number on which you have to write down your birthdate and which you have to sign.
a booklet containing the texts of the laws being modified/added/canceled and a simplified explanation.
a booklet containing the opinions (explanations + voting recommendation) of the government AND various political parties represented.
the voting bulletins themselves with checkboxes, perfectly straightforward (if you're confused with them, you're either blind or shouldn't be allowed to vote).
an anonymous voting envelope in which you put your voting bulletins and then seal.
:). It's a small country divided and subdivided in tiny entities, with little overhead from the federal government or even the state itself. Makes the whole thing awfuly bureaucratic, but we also got e-government "booths" which makes it easier to accomplish many administrative procedures. This site will link you to most official resources.
:)
You return the card and the voting envelope in the envelope in which it all came in (it's a recyclable thing), drop it in a mailbox (no postage) in time (max 2 days before actual voting day") and that's it.
Now, with such an easy system and all the required information at hand, I wonder why sometimes less than 40% of us express our opinions. Hey, we have the chance to live in a super-democratic society in which we vote on every aspect of what's going on yet most of us don't make any use of it and then dare complaining about the "system" in which we're (supposedly) in control. Yup, we are in control from A to Z, unlike some other so-called "democracies" but this idea seems to be getting quite fuzzy in the general consensus, given that we're surrounded by much less democratic entities. Furthermore, our system isn't EU-compatible ; the people have too much control to allow the application of EU directives by a central government.
E-voting is only a natural evolution of our current system. It will allow instant and accurate results. I can only hope it will motivate people to vote a bit more, some great changes could come from having another 30% of the population casting votes. Regarding the anonymity of the system, I believe such concerns received great consideration given the fact we're far from being amateurs when it comes to anonymous stuff (Swiss private banking anyone?)... The security is similar to the the system used for e-banking, which has a proven record (we've had e-banking for at least 5 years with no known breach). OTOH, one of the companies behind such projects was the same responsible for digital satellite receivers cards, which have been cracked ages ago...
It's a great test-bed for e-voting systems, which are a great opportunity for newly democratic states to cheaply implement a safe voting infrastructure and other states to implement a proven, tested system at a lesser cost (Florida, you listenin'?).
Now as for the women voting status, they only got it on a federal scale in 1970, which is indeed embarrassing in a country so fundamentaly democratic. But it's getting better, we even had a female President the other year (changes each year, hard to follow!). Sure, when you come from countries where your "representatives" are as representative of your opinions than your tax declaration or party donation check, it's quite funny seeing your local shopkeeper vociferating his claims to the higher establishment on the local congress live tv feed
So, before dissing our electoral system with an old cliché, please get your facts straight ot you might once more make 7.5 million foes
Cheers,
max
Apt and Synaptic have been ported to Mandrake, and work really well. As a little debian user (through Libranet and Knoppix), I love apt-get and also love Mandrake for its great community support.
You can find apt and synaptic for Mandrake 9.0 here thanks to Texstar.
I'd hate to see Mandrake die, I believe it's the best all-round distro around, easy to install yet powerful, a great learning tool.
Cheer,
max
Well, I sure hope their keyboard lights work better than their server, because my browser ain't seeing the light of it... Sheesh, after just ONE /. comment!
Cheers,
max
I was talking about region-free DVD *discs*, movies that you can play in any player, whether it's code-free or not.
Cheers,
max
Hey, this is /. man. If you want to strictly stay on-topic I suggest you head for another forum (K5?). Given how linked the media and the ways to access them are, I believe it isn't more offtopic to talk about this particular issue (DVD access) than it is to rant about how poorly the site renders in Mozilla on a poorly configured box (btw, works fine with me with Konqueror AND Mozilla 1.2.1 in Mandrake 9).
Maybe this discussion wouldn't irate you so much if indy cartoons websites weren't accessible to North Americans on behalf that they hamper the syndicated cartoonists' business model.
If you want to talk about "New Media", well, you can't really get rid of the accessibility sub-topics, especially here. So stop complaining and post something more interresting than your little lesson-giving stuff you're serving us at the moment.
This is a forum, with threads. If you don't like a particular thread, don't read it.
Cheers,
max
IMHO it is relevant that this "old rant about DMCA/MPAA/RIAA etc" be discussed here, because a rather important producer is now complaining about how it restricts his viewing of foreign media, hence restricting his exposure to what's being made around the world. As an artist and media "glutton" I can perfectly understand his concerns about this piece of regulation.
Yes, the "rant" is ON TOPIC since, in this case, we're also talking about accessibility to independent cartoons/films/shows/media.
Next time I suggest you read the article before snapping and telling ppl what can be discussed or not, especially when the subject is about new media (cartoons in this case) and the ways to access them.
Cheers,
max
Er, who's the nuthead who moderated me 'offtopic'? I actualy read the article and quoted it in my comment. How much more on-topic should I get?
:( Off to K5 now.
Slashdot has really become rotten in some ways...
max
I bought myself an all-region DVD player so I can watch British TV shows that aren't broadcast over here. But you can't play them here [without it]. I don't know if that's a phenomenon, but I think it's overlooked.
[Jack Valenti mode ON]
Well, not only his shows are unamerican but he now admits to being a criminal! Fortunately for us, the MPAA shall remind him about the laws of this country with a copy of the DMCA tattooed on his forehead. Our business model is endangered by such evil communists!
[Jack Valenti mode OFF]
Gee, serioulsy, finally someone from the USA complaining about this absurd DVD region coding. It's basically a requirement to have a region-free player if you enjoy films and shows that weren't produced in your region of the world (or don't appeal to the General Audience - foreign stuff mostly). It's easy for big US media corporations to flood the world with their (mostly) crappy productions, but smaller european, asian or wherever-they're-from companies have no way to penetrate the North-American market. Say you're in the USA and wish to watch that great British humour DVD your european cousin sent you for xmas, you have to get a region-free player and thus perform an illegal operation. Mind you, if you can play all 5 regions the MPAA will even consider you got at least 4 illegal players, since that's the MPAA math nowadays. The same problem occurs if you dare travelling with your laptop and wish to watch a DVD you rented locally. Where's the sticker saying "this laptop only for use in USA, Canada and selected nations"?
I've noticed some DVDs have no region coding at all, mostly the ones from small, indie film production companies. I've tried and they play in any player. I hope we'll see more of those, now that ppl really seem to get pissed off by that region coding thing. It's maybe not too much of a problem in North America, but the rest of the planet isn't in Zone One and thus can't access such DVDs, and has to wait for the local copyright owner to allow distribution of said DVDs to your country of residence (you can just forget about it most of the time). C'mon, if I buy a DVD, I want to be able to play it wherever I goddamn want it! Hey, with the actual system I can't even buy a DVD and offer it to my cousins in the USA... How crappy is that? Wait, they want to extend the system to audio now... Next thing will be news, maybe. Given the fascist manners of the actual US government, we ain't too far from it.
Time to practice civil disobedience again, eh...
Cheers,
max
I'm using apt and synaptic in Mandrake 9.0 as we speak. Works flawlessly!
Cheers,
max
Anyway, if you want *real* accelerations, grandiose sensations and top speed and aren't a millionaire, just get a fast motorbike :)
:) In both cases you need a serious pair of cojones to master the beast!
A stock $10.500Suzuki 1000 GSXR has a 160hp engine that redlines at 12.500rpm for a dry weight of 170kg (374lbs), does the 1/4-mile in less than 9 seconds and a top speed of 190+ mph. This thing basically blows any street-legal two and four-wheel vehicle.
The power of this bike is absolutely awesome... and extremely frustrating on the open roads. On the track, though...
Cheers,
max
Whilst I admit to this thing being a monster, both in performances and in sheer cubic space, I don't think the size of the beast will matter much.
I believe most of these cards will go in new (or very recent) systems which already have lan/sound/USB/1394 on the motherboard, reducing or even eliminating the need for extra PCI cards. Heck, even if the GeForce FX car eats up one PCI slot, you still got at least 4 of them left free, more than enough to host a better soundcard, a scsi controller, a video capture card...
Recent cards like the GF4Ti600 already have huge heatsinks with fans that make it a risky decision to plug a card in the PCI slot next to them, unless you want to cut the air from flowing to your GPU. I haven't heard any complaints about it so far, eh. I guess the gamers who invest in such cards don't fill-up their cases by populating all of their PCI slots...
Anyway, I'm pretty sure we'll see a smaller/cooler version of the card within 6 months or so that will make this whole conversation obsolete...
Cheers,
max
This is complete FUD! You can also and very easily use a data cable to manage and transfer images, melodies and games if you have a data cable and it won't cost you anything. I do it all the time with my Siemens ME45. Also, I believe network operators aren't so keen on letting viruses/worms running wild on free downloads for freakin' mobile phones! Imagine the mayhem in countries with over 80% of the population having a mobile phone! Tech support hell! Most mobile phone owners aren't control-freak geeks, they just want to follow the instructions and get their game or whatever on their phone and have it running within a minute, period. Since most phones in circulation are under warranty, no wonder operators and manufacturers limit the kind of apps you can get, after all it'll cost *them* if *you* screw it up! If you really need a particular applet (you can even make yours!), use a data cable.
As to the download fee, it costs about the same than a couple of standard SMS to transfer a ringtone, logo or whatever you want and you may download from whatever source you want! As long as they support your phone, there shouldn't be any problem, no matter where they are. And if you want to transfer more, there are chances you'll use HSCSD or GPRS data transfer, in which case you shouldn't worry about the fractional costs of said games/ringtones/etc, given what you're already shelling monthly for all the services. I mean, you're not gonna have Kazaa running on it, right? There aren't *that many* games you can download yet and phones have limited memory.
Is it perhaps that you don't agree with paying for software or even paying for the data transfer? Wait for 3G or WiFi phones to pay a flat fee (hopefully) and stop bitching then!
Ever heard of T9? Works in my phone's agenda for data entry, damn quick. Sure it doesn't replace my real agenda (pen and paper, thank you) but is useful for setting alarms to important things. Oh, it also syncs Addressbook (complete Vcards) and agenda with Outlook (yuk) smoothly out of the box. May I suggest you try a better mobile phone before dismissing all of them?
Some cell phones, such as my Siemens, have decent enough PDA fuctionalities so that I don't feel the need for getting a new Palm (my IIIx being dead). The phone and a paper agenda do the trick perfectly and I only need a power outlet once a week to recharge the phone's battery. Also, I have one less worry about breaking the Palm and losing all my stuff, my phone is a ruggerised version which doesn't fear falling on concrete or in water. Try that with your Palm! As to the thin paper agenda, well...
You, sir, should open your eyes at what phone manufacturers produce nowadays, rather than basing your opinion on your 3 year-old Nokia. Heck, PDAs have already merged with cell phones, why not the opposite, to a limited level? Some manufacturers do it better than others. I suggest you visit the Siemens mobile phones site, their phones have much geekier functions than Nokia (except Communicator) and Sony/Ericsson ones.
Cheers,
max
The article mentions the Z80-on-glass is already being produced for cell phones and PDAs.
So what's with the "call me back in 3-5 years when it's ready for production"?
Cheers,
max
the electoral collage elects people
I guess you are referring to Florida here....
I'm sorry to inform you the killings haven't stopped at all, just the media got tired of it and the Algerian government is pretty information-retentive. I don't have links to give you right now but there's at least a couple of families slaughtered by crazy fundamentalists reported every week. Also don't forget the fact the country is still in relative turmoil after the elections, deemed unfair by many. Sad for such a beautiful country
Cheers,
max
No, it's more like /. stopped listening for a moment.
:)
You gotta empty the trash once in awhile, ya'know
That would explain the sudden death of /. for the past couple of hours...
I mean, for $1.3 Million Sun could at least offer some cosmetic options. Not that it's the kind of stuff people keep in their living room (although...), but if I'd shell out that kind of money for a badass server, I'd want it to look awesome!
My personal taste would go towards a single colour for the whole array, all red or all blue.
Cheers,
max
I used to spend my summers nearby an observatory in the South of France, and they were using a pretty damn visible laser to measure Earth-Moon distance (I think). At night, a similar beam than in the article photo could be visible (can't remember the colour of it though), and that was 20 years ago.
Pretty impressive thing to see when you're a kid in the middle of nowhere in the early 1980's.
Cheers,
max
That would be 726,750,000 Indian Rupees (INR). But US$15 Million is more understandable by the international community than the rupee amount.
cheers,
max
I don't have all the dates for everything but found a great timeline of recording history on this page. It doesn't provide the info about filmed TV (kinescope) though.
The very first video recorder (black & white, of course) was demonstrated in 1951: "Ampex team led by Charles Ginsburg began work on a video tape recorder (VTR) in October; Bing Crosby Enterprises demonstrated an experimental 12-head VTR at 100 ips."
In 1956, CBS broadcast the first network television show with videotape Nov. 30, Douglas Edwards and the News, for West Coast delayed broadcast.
Of course, this was before Helical Scan (rotating heads, which we still use) was developed by the Japanese and first demonstrated by Toshiba in 1959. Sony marketed a helical scan VTR, the PV100 in 1961, which was adopted by American Airlines in 1964 for in-flight movies; Ampex sued Sony over it in 1966 (in 1960 Ampex shared VTR patents with Sony and Sony shared transistorized circuitry with Ampex).
It's impressive to see that U-Matic (3/4", composite video), the very first videocassette format, was introduced by Sony in 1969 and is still in use, although it's been superseeded on the institutional market by low-end Beta SP in the last 10 years and now DV.
Cheers,
-max
You, Sir, are an idiot.
"Come stai" is Italian and "Como estas" is Spanish.
They both mean "How are you?".
Or did I miss a sarcasm?
-max
Yeah, I admit it can be a bugger. I hope it'll be corrected in the next release.
Since I'm the one installing software on the boxen, it's not much of a hassle: I'm paid by the hour...
OO still is a relief from MS, and after a brief learning curve is just top-notch. My clients like the price tag too!
Cheers,
-max
From the official "Instructions for Installing and Setting Up OpenOffice.org 1.0"
/net". For example, if you unzipped the files to "C:\OpenOffice Setup\" you would type C:\OpenOffice Setup\install\setup /net followed by Return. ... make a note of the folder in which OpenOffice.org 1.0 is installed onto your computer.
"If you have multiple users set up on your machine, then each user who wishes to use OpenOffice.org 1.0 will need to install separately. This uses up a lot of disk space. As an alternative, you can use the multi-user option instead, though installation is a little more complicated:
Unzip the downloaded file into its own folder. If you have Compressed Folders installed, the easiest way to do this is to right click on the file and then choose Extract All...
Open Command Prompt (if you have Windows NT, 2000 or XP) or MS-DOS prompt (for other versions of Windows). You should find this on the Start Menu somewhere under Programs (on some versions of Windows, it is in the Accessories folder).
You should then type the location of the folder followed by "install\setup
Then follow the on screen prompts
This will install a shared version of OpenOffice.org 1.0 on your computer. Now each user who wishes to use the program can double click on the program setup.exe that was created in the folder you have made a note of in step 4 above - this will install the files necessary for that user and use only a few additional megabytes of disk space."
Wasn't that hard, was it?
Cheers,
-max
I have deployed Mozilla on win2k platforms in a small firm I work for (along with OpenOffice.org). They all love the tabbed browsing, the popup blocker, the stability, etc.
However, the big culprit is the e-mail client. It chokes on badly formatted mails, is slow and lacks tons of options. For instance, it doesn't put the attachment list when you print the mail and also you can't tell it to delete e-mails from the server after n days, a handy feature when ppl want to share a mailbox. The address book is crappy too.
For home use, I't's perfect... But when you get 400 mails/day, Mozilla isn't the right thing to use.
Does anyone know of a robust and safe e-mail client on windoze? The Bat! seems nice, despite its crappy name...
Cheers,
-max