I am hoping that once the current crazyness of calling ever larger things netbooks is finally over someone will make something revolutionary.
Netbooks are revolutionary in one major respect: price. it used to be that light and compact notebooks were called ultraportables, and they costed twice that of a regular notebook. They usually costed $2000 and up when a regular notebook could be had for $1000. Now, if you want small, you don't have to pay a lot more for it, a little less than a regular notebook. It's not for everyone, but the netbook craze really opened up more markets.
Netbooks also don't have optical drives, typical ultraportables have optical drives, and I think a lot of people do appreciate dropping it. However, I would like to see an optical drive that "docks" to the netbook. I don't need the drive all the time, but would like to have one that becomes part of the machine if I want it, rather than use a drive on a cord for the optical needs.
Not necessarily separate, carbon output is now considered one form of pollution.
Some nasty chemicals might be used in paper production, but my impression is that it's mostly recovered and reused. It's only pollution if it gets out of the system.
Paper production uses a lot of water, but most of it is recovered. Not that water is necessarily a pollutant, just saying that it's another thing that is recovered.
I doubt that the final price is about a device with a 5" OLED screen, I think the final price is about having a collector's item, a rare prototype. As rare as it is, I would think it would fetch a much higher price.
I wouldn't know, I don't have a device with OLED. I don't typically use devices out of the corner of my eye. I'm pretty sure fading issues have been addressed, a screen made today is going to be a lot better than that made even two years ago. I doubt that an OLED and an LED TV would be comparable, because the LED TV you're thinking about is only LED backlit, it would still be LCD based and as such, still be pretty limited in real contrast ratio.
That's the thing, how can the school system consider jamming student's phones when it's an issue that's out of their control? Likewise, I can consider being a unicorn rancher, but that's a little out of my control as well.
Does the extra 15 seconds added by the operator really cost me anything since my phone bill uses 1-minute increments?
I think the time listening to the ringing also counts towards the minute. I have a hard time leaving a message short enough for it to be a less than one minute call.
Sometimes pressing "2" skips that BS and skips to just a beep and let you record a message. I think one carrier uses a different number, I don't know what that is.
I'm not worried about the minutes, I never use enough to cost me more than my basic plan. I'd rather spend my time on other things than listen to a cookie cutter greeting and instructions.
I think the "loyal" fans are a concern, if a disc doesn't go mainstream, at least there's a chance that the more loyal fans are going to keep the base sales up. Without those fans, sales will be more all-or nothing than before.
Also, who says that EMI has to self-distribute? I don't get this story, I thought distributors like Ingram were acting as an optional go-between between stores and the label. EMI doesn't have to worry about the overhead in dealing with the little shops, they can focus on self distributing to the the "big fish" stores and the distributors can handle the rest for them.
Sorry, whatever the whole of their base is, both parties cater to copyright cartels.
Don't tell me that Republicans aren't involved with catering to copyright cartels. Have you heard of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act? Sonny Bono was a Republican and it was named after him. It passed when there was a Republican majority in both houses. The DMCA was passed when by the same Congress, again, when Republicans ran both houses of Congress. If the Republican party didn't want it, they wouldn't have passed it.
I'm not letting the Democratic party off this one (Pres. Clinton signed both bills), otherwise probably the subject of a different post some other day, I just couldn't let you pretend that Republicans have nothing to do with the copyright mess.
People are polarized because the law is in conflict with a belief many (or most) people are taught from childhood: sharing is good. Having candy? Bring enough for everyone, or at least give your friend half.
The problem is that your example of sharing isn't the same as "sharing" what isn't yours. You bought the newspaper, somebody bought the book. Telling someone a joke isn't the same as repeating someone's entire act. Sharing a recipe isn't the same as making copies of someone else's book and just giving copies of the entire book away. Making wholesale copies of those items and "sharing" them with everybody isn't the same thing as letting someone else use your original copy.
Just because it's all in someone's head doesn't mean they aren't suffering from it.
Just because they're suffering from something doesn't mean that we have to hear about it, fat lot of good any of us can do about it except mock the stupid BS.
Not only that, they say "now shipping", but where? They don't even offer the drive for sale on their own web store, and it's not even listed at Newegg.
Personally, I'm wary of keeping anything on a drive much larger than 300GB for long term data storage.
Why the arbitrary figure? On every announcement of a new drive size, people always wonder about the reliability because of the seemingly huge size. I recall this being said about 1GB drives, and now we're at 2k times that size.
I really can't say I've seen a reliability difference based on differences newness of the drive or the absolute capacity. If you're not backing up, you're risking the loss of your data, regardless of the size of the hard drive. It doesn't even have to be drive failure. What if you lost power? Do you have battery backup? Even notebook batteries can occasionally cut out before the OS expects the battery to be depleted. What if the software corrupts your data? Or you realize that you deleted the wrong file too late for an undelete?
Thanks to OLPC, the PC/Laptop industry's interpretation of Moore's law has totally been reshaped, every 18month now PC/laptops will be half the price instead of 2x more powerful and with 2x more bloatware.
Halving the price of computers every 18 months is simply a fantasy, it's just not a sustainable rate. Costs do go down, but I don't think it can go down anywhere nearly that quickly for long periods of time.
Moore's "law" was really an observation not on power or software, but just silicon complexity, you can't just take the time period and just randomly apply it to some other technology and assume it will work at the same rate.
I wonder if the netbook idea is approaching the problem from the wrong direction anyway. Instead of somewhat bulky notebooks, why not cell phones? That way you can start cheap and expand the device rather than start expensive and work the price down. Heck, Palm used to sell PDAs for $100.
We can do cloning well enough now. The technology already exists.
It can be done, but I don't recall anything that suggests that it's been made into a reliable process, and I don't recall any resolution to the bizarre or rare illnesses the clones seem to come down with.
Yes. I'm sure people will adjust the same way as not having written by quill and an inkwell: be just dandy without it, thank you very much. I haven't learned how to write with a stone, hammer and chisel either. Somethings just aren't necessary anymore except for occasional artistic reasons.
The problem is that there is momentum. Finding a trustworthy AV program on your own takes some savvy, because there are a lot of shady operators that spam the google index with shady products. They might look legitimate, but a tech savvy person, they might stumble across a trap.
Personally, I thought Avast was kind of annoying. Except for 8.0, I really haven't had much trouble with AVG. It was with 8.0 that I tried some others, AVG 8.5 seems to work just fine now.
[quote]IIRC there are some kinds of PDF Forms which still cause problems in Foxit Reader.[/quote]
The support in the thread claim that it's been mostly fixed, and that is as of two to three months ago.
[quote]Also, because Foxit doesn't have CoolType and Adobe does, PS/OpenType fonts which are not specifically hinted for the screen (and are used by many design shops) look *much* better on Adobe reader than Foxit, making it invaluable for pre-publishing previews.[/quote]
It's a valid point for some users. But given that most people aren't in publishing (it's just one of numerous industries), it's probably not much of a selling point for most people.
I would suspect that most people wouldn't notice much of a difference if their reader was suddenly substituted.
Even if Foxit has as many or as big of vulnerabilities, its relative user base footprint is pretty small, you would have to be somehow specifically targeted for sensitive reasons.
The problem I have with noscript is that it causes more work than it saves. If I have to manually set clearances for nearly every site I visit just so the site works properly, then it's probably just too much work, there has to be a better way.
I've heard that blue is now rated for 30k hours before they hit half brightness. Not so great for continuous lighting, but great for occasional lighting, monitors and TVs. If it is the intensity that hurts, hopefully they'll put in some brightness limiters to stave off premature death from users that just max out the brightness, I don't know why, do most people have glaucoma?
People do seem to like their brightness. Too often, I see them have their TVs, monitors and devices set so bright that it even screws up the color quality.
Really, the solution is not to ban exclusivity arrangements, it is to make it relatively straightforward for third parties to be able to offer a phone that works on a network.
I don't think this is a real hurdle.
For the GSM-based carriers, you just buy phone that's not carrier-locked and insert your card.
Looking around on Google, it turns out that you can get unlocked CDMA phones too, just buy the phone and tie your account to that phone based on its ESN.
But the other problem you point out is a valid one: the subsidy the US carriers offer for buying their chosen phones with their contract makes buying an unlocked phone unpalatable. They don't even offer a way to buy a cheaper monthly rate if you don't get a subsidized phone than if you did.
Slashdot Mirror
I am hoping that once the current crazyness of calling ever larger things netbooks is finally over someone will make something revolutionary.
Netbooks are revolutionary in one major respect: price. it used to be that light and compact notebooks were called ultraportables, and they costed twice that of a regular notebook. They usually costed $2000 and up when a regular notebook could be had for $1000. Now, if you want small, you don't have to pay a lot more for it, a little less than a regular notebook. It's not for everyone, but the netbook craze really opened up more markets.
Netbooks also don't have optical drives, typical ultraportables have optical drives, and I think a lot of people do appreciate dropping it. However, I would like to see an optical drive that "docks" to the netbook. I don't need the drive all the time, but would like to have one that becomes part of the machine if I want it, rather than use a drive on a cord for the optical needs.
Just because it doesn't tickle your sense of humor doesn't mean it's not funny to others.
Not necessarily separate, carbon output is now considered one form of pollution.
Some nasty chemicals might be used in paper production, but my impression is that it's mostly recovered and reused. It's only pollution if it gets out of the system.
Paper production uses a lot of water, but most of it is recovered. Not that water is necessarily a pollutant, just saying that it's another thing that is recovered.
I doubt that the final price is about a device with a 5" OLED screen, I think the final price is about having a collector's item, a rare prototype. As rare as it is, I would think it would fetch a much higher price.
I wouldn't know, I don't have a device with OLED. I don't typically use devices out of the corner of my eye. I'm pretty sure fading issues have been addressed, a screen made today is going to be a lot better than that made even two years ago. I doubt that an OLED and an LED TV would be comparable, because the LED TV you're thinking about is only LED backlit, it would still be LCD based and as such, still be pretty limited in real contrast ratio.
That's the thing, how can the school system consider jamming student's phones when it's an issue that's out of their control? Likewise, I can consider being a unicorn rancher, but that's a little out of my control as well.
Does the extra 15 seconds added by the operator really cost me anything since my phone bill uses 1-minute increments?
I think the time listening to the ringing also counts towards the minute. I have a hard time leaving a message short enough for it to be a less than one minute call.
Sometimes pressing "2" skips that BS and skips to just a beep and let you record a message. I think one carrier uses a different number, I don't know what that is.
I'm not worried about the minutes, I never use enough to cost me more than my basic plan. I'd rather spend my time on other things than listen to a cookie cutter greeting and instructions.
I think the "loyal" fans are a concern, if a disc doesn't go mainstream, at least there's a chance that the more loyal fans are going to keep the base sales up. Without those fans, sales will be more all-or nothing than before.
Also, who says that EMI has to self-distribute? I don't get this story, I thought distributors like Ingram were acting as an optional go-between between stores and the label. EMI doesn't have to worry about the overhead in dealing with the little shops, they can focus on self distributing to the the "big fish" stores and the distributors can handle the rest for them.
Sorry, whatever the whole of their base is, both parties cater to copyright cartels.
Don't tell me that Republicans aren't involved with catering to copyright cartels. Have you heard of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act? Sonny Bono was a Republican and it was named after him. It passed when there was a Republican majority in both houses. The DMCA was passed when by the same Congress, again, when Republicans ran both houses of Congress. If the Republican party didn't want it, they wouldn't have passed it.
I'm not letting the Democratic party off this one (Pres. Clinton signed both bills), otherwise probably the subject of a different post some other day, I just couldn't let you pretend that Republicans have nothing to do with the copyright mess.
People are polarized because the law is in conflict with a belief many (or most) people are taught from childhood: sharing is good. Having candy? Bring enough for everyone, or at least give your friend half.
The problem is that your example of sharing isn't the same as "sharing" what isn't yours. You bought the newspaper, somebody bought the book. Telling someone a joke isn't the same as repeating someone's entire act. Sharing a recipe isn't the same as making copies of someone else's book and just giving copies of the entire book away. Making wholesale copies of those items and "sharing" them with everybody isn't the same thing as letting someone else use your original copy.
Just because it's all in someone's head doesn't mean they aren't suffering from it.
Just because they're suffering from something doesn't mean that we have to hear about it, fat lot of good any of us can do about it except mock the stupid BS.
Not only that, they say "now shipping", but where? They don't even offer the drive for sale on their own web store, and it's not even listed at Newegg.
Personally, I'm wary of keeping anything on a drive much larger than 300GB for long term data storage.
Why the arbitrary figure? On every announcement of a new drive size, people always wonder about the reliability because of the seemingly huge size. I recall this being said about 1GB drives, and now we're at 2k times that size.
I really can't say I've seen a reliability difference based on differences newness of the drive or the absolute capacity. If you're not backing up, you're risking the loss of your data, regardless of the size of the hard drive. It doesn't even have to be drive failure. What if you lost power? Do you have battery backup? Even notebook batteries can occasionally cut out before the OS expects the battery to be depleted. What if the software corrupts your data? Or you realize that you deleted the wrong file too late for an undelete?
Thanks to OLPC, the PC/Laptop industry's interpretation of Moore's law has totally been reshaped, every 18month now PC/laptops will be half the price instead of 2x more powerful and with 2x more bloatware.
Halving the price of computers every 18 months is simply a fantasy, it's just not a sustainable rate. Costs do go down, but I don't think it can go down anywhere nearly that quickly for long periods of time.
Moore's "law" was really an observation not on power or software, but just silicon complexity, you can't just take the time period and just randomly apply it to some other technology and assume it will work at the same rate.
I wonder if the netbook idea is approaching the problem from the wrong direction anyway. Instead of somewhat bulky notebooks, why not cell phones? That way you can start cheap and expand the device rather than start expensive and work the price down. Heck, Palm used to sell PDAs for $100.
We can do cloning well enough now. The technology already exists.
It can be done, but I don't recall anything that suggests that it's been made into a reliable process, and I don't recall any resolution to the bizarre or rare illnesses the clones seem to come down with.
Yes. I'm sure people will adjust the same way as not having written by quill and an inkwell: be just dandy without it, thank you very much. I haven't learned how to write with a stone, hammer and chisel either. Somethings just aren't necessary anymore except for occasional artistic reasons.
The problem is that there is momentum. Finding a trustworthy AV program on your own takes some savvy, because there are a lot of shady operators that spam the google index with shady products. They might look legitimate, but a tech savvy person, they might stumble across a trap.
Personally, I thought Avast was kind of annoying. Except for 8.0, I really haven't had much trouble with AVG. It was with 8.0 that I tried some others, AVG 8.5 seems to work just fine now.
It's not just stickers, stickers don't cast shadows like this:
Badge:
http://www.autoblog.com/photos/2010-chevrolet-camaro-transformers-special-edition/2159531/
Also, the sill plate doesn't look like it could be made on the cheap:
http://www.autoblog.com/photos/2010-chevrolet-camaro-transformers-special-edition/2159534/
I didn't see any mention of interior changes.
Stickers could probably be made privately by a vinyl graphics cutter for less than $100, I don't know about that emblem or sill plate.
In other words: The Universe is out to kill you. iPods, not so much.
[quote]IIRC there are some kinds of PDF Forms which still cause problems in Foxit Reader.[/quote]
The support in the thread claim that it's been mostly fixed, and that is as of two to three months ago.
[quote]Also, because Foxit doesn't have CoolType and Adobe does, PS/OpenType fonts which are not specifically hinted for the screen (and are used by many design shops) look *much* better on Adobe reader than Foxit, making it invaluable for pre-publishing previews.[/quote]
It's a valid point for some users. But given that most people aren't in publishing (it's just one of numerous industries), it's probably not much of a selling point for most people.
I would suspect that most people wouldn't notice much of a difference if their reader was suddenly substituted.
Even if Foxit has as many or as big of vulnerabilities, its relative user base footprint is pretty small, you would have to be somehow specifically targeted for sensitive reasons.
Like the guy a couple posts up, I prefer it be gasoline rather than just another dead zone that kill fish and plants.
"Better" is not the same as "cheaper".
True, but seems to be equivalent for an astonishing number of people. I dare say, most people.
The problem I have with noscript is that it causes more work than it saves. If I have to manually set clearances for nearly every site I visit just so the site works properly, then it's probably just too much work, there has to be a better way.
I've heard that blue is now rated for 30k hours before they hit half brightness. Not so great for continuous lighting, but great for occasional lighting, monitors and TVs. If it is the intensity that hurts, hopefully they'll put in some brightness limiters to stave off premature death from users that just max out the brightness, I don't know why, do most people have glaucoma?
People do seem to like their brightness. Too often, I see them have their TVs, monitors and devices set so bright that it even screws up the color quality.
Really, the solution is not to ban exclusivity arrangements, it is to make it relatively straightforward for third parties to be able to offer a phone that works on a network.
I don't think this is a real hurdle.
For the GSM-based carriers, you just buy phone that's not carrier-locked and insert your card.
Looking around on Google, it turns out that you can get unlocked CDMA phones too, just buy the phone and tie your account to that phone based on its ESN.
But the other problem you point out is a valid one: the subsidy the US carriers offer for buying their chosen phones with their contract makes buying an unlocked phone unpalatable. They don't even offer a way to buy a cheaper monthly rate if you don't get a subsidized phone than if you did.