Apple really made usb one by not including any other port on the original imac.. USB which had been on pcs for a while and never caught on finally did.
Now for the towers its not a huge issue because of the pci slots but for the notebooks its just annoying.
I know apple is pushing firewire and you can buy firewire hard drives (I have one and it works great). And I've heard even though it has a slightly slower speed firewire actually works ever so slightly faster than usb2, so for speed we'll call it a draw..
But choice is good.. Most digital cameras will probably come with usb2 instead of usb1. Camcorders all are firewire and will probably stay that way.. the post is correct there are bus loads of usb2 stuff out there... Its built into every PC so its not going away.
Sony has those mini-disc. They used to have computer drives for them, but supposedly the music division balked for fear of pirating. When they came out the 120 or so meg per MD at 2$ was very good price/size.
They also released a 1.? Gig version of MD for those MD video camera, which again would have made a good floppy replacement.
Music MDs have a very primitive digital to digital copy protection scheme.
Of course MS is out to make money. But guess what they only make money on Office and Windows (with about 75-85 % profit margin.). They loose much money on everything else MSN/XBox/Other software. Look at there breakdown in there financial statements.
They're also a convicted monopolist. So buying a software company and killing off other platforms is different for them. Also you have to scratch your head when they buy a mainly MAC software development company to make Xbox software. It doesn't make a lot of sense, especially since XBox is supposed to be easy for PC software maker to program for. What could be there motive?
And guess what, Best Buy, EB, Babbages all compete with each other so there markup doesn't approach the 75%-85% that MS can get. MS knows how to run a bussiness very agressively and seem to be doing quite well.
My main problem is with MS claims to be so "Inovative". Thats what they said during they're anti-trust trail "freedom to inovate". Buying another company is not innovative. Copying Nintendo/Sony is not innovative.
MS bought Bungie software. A mac game shop for a long time. Heck HALO was even demoed by Steve Jobs. The MS buys it and Bungie says, oh yeah, we'll still release Halo for the PC and Mac. MS put a stop that real quick.
I guess when you have billions in the bank and can't develop your own titles you buy the talent..
Microsoft was threatened by the java api. You only have to use the Java VM and on that platform your software doesn't have to use the windows api anymore. Takes away the advantage of developing on a operating system with a rubust api.
Apple doesn't like Digital Rights Management. As such they want mp3s to be successful (as opposed to WMA files). Apple demonstrated similar music file sharing before, but never released it. Also they're promoting mpeg4 for video as opposed to Windows Media.
Maybe they just want itunes to stay off the RIAA/MPAA radar.
Then again maybe they added this functionality in itunes 3 upgrade which they are selling.
Regardless that itunes is the best mp3 player/organizer i've ever used.
I mean seriously. Googles very good. But it still is hard to find what you need sometimes. Often the best information doesn't come up when you search. I've been sent links with information from friends of sites I couldn't find when searching.
You can't expect one company to stay on top of anything. There are always companies that want what googles got and are gunning for them. Altavista was once king, as was voodoo and a host of other companies that have fallen from the top.
I say good. Hopefully all search sites get better. Maybe better ai will help? who knows.. These search engines are important to keep the web usefull.
I manipulate very very large photoshop files (100 meg +). A dual g4 1gzh is plenty fast for this.. I usually am playing mp3s when working and its still fing.
And that OSX is realy stable. Plus the built in color matching in OSX is a blessing..Saves so much time when printing, I usually get what I expect out of the printer, which saves time ink and $.
Actually almost all jobs go to "Lowest qualified bidder". Read that as lowest bidder. Reputation has very very little to do with who gets what jobs, especially competetivly bid jobs.
The best union workers are held onto by contractors for as long as they can keep them as they are very very valuable (especially equipment operators). The ones that are ok are let go much sooner by not moving them to the new job. I've seen contractors hold onto some of the best operators even though they didn't have work for them, because when the contract started they wanted that operator..
Construction contractors generally use unions as a "temp agency" type approach. There are rules the union puts into place to protect these employees which are much better than what most contractors would ever get. Contractors hire/layoff people pretty regularly.
This is different from some other union structures and it seems to work pretty well.
The problem the world faces is that cheap often trumps good. Employeer especially medium->large employees will take cheap work over good work anyday.
And cheap labor is becoming more and more prevelent as globalization hits. Ask any US textile worker about globalization. Most of us on slashdot are hoping programming doesn't go the same way as these unskilled labor jobs..
I was a civil engineer and construction inspector. I've been on both Union and non-union jobs. Not only was the union work better, I felt much safer (having heavy equipment flip a couple times on some non-union sites makes one generally nervous.)
Sure some stuff unions do protects workers who aren't as good, but they're better paid but they get training to do good work. Yeah its more expensive, but ask yourself do you want someone with training putting up buildings?
The zoo was our name of one defunct companies server room.. The machines were beasts and a mix of os (linux/ms/sun). The machines were also given animal names.. It was nice and not too geeky.
Even when you print negatives with a standard darkroom enlarger, you adjust contrast/ exposure / color. You can highlight details, darken/lighten areas etc. You can do alot with standard darkroom equipment.. (waterfalls down escalators etc.) Even printing slide film involves adjustments.
With the computer and photoshop its even easier to "adjust" photos.
Digital watermarking of images already exists. I don't know how effective it. If images by cameras are watermarked this may image authenticity. But will watermarks those survive jpeg converstion, they can be faked too. Many jpegs from digital cameras already have information about camera/time/exposure imbeded in them.
I don't think there is any way to trust photographs. Look at the fakes with analog (ufo shots / Loc ness monster etc..) With digital it just gets harder to believe.
I think the decision weighed whether it was better to leave the PCBs there or to remove them. They decided in the long run it was better to remove them as PCBs don't break down naturally and have a nasty habit of moving up the food chain.
I was extrapolating to the "AI Future" of much more complex algorithms being evaluated (evolved) in more fundamental ways then just changing parameters.
My frame of mind is has changed. Right now is I'm working on very time constrained real time stuff, and when I have to do it in X seconds I like to know what the worse case is, not best average case.
The genetic algorithm sounds like and iterative test to try and find the optimum increments for shell sort. Really nothing revolutionary.
I couldn't recall from the test description, but it doesn't seem that different arrays to sort were used to evolve the parameters of the sort (increment list). If this is the case the solution is just a sort optimized for a particular dataset and of little use.
I would be interested to see how well the algorithm would work elvolved against different random data sets (almost in order, always reverse order, random).
And then compared with others Standard increments.
They could have a competion like they have to come up with good prisoners delima algorithms, but instead come up with the best shell sort increments...
I installed fink a while back. I love it. It basically allows users to install/keep uptodate opensourece software.
The install was a little confusing but well worth it. It really shows off the power of unix and Free software. I love having all the tools I use at work at home.
Prior to fink I updated my perl install by hand. With fink one app-get command and its there.
I also installed X too (for xemacs). The X is cludgy, but works well enough.
Genetic algorithms are interesting in that they can become more efficient and modify themselves. I don't mean to sound like a ludite but is this a good way to develop algorithms?
Is the efficiency gained worth the difficulty in proving the new genetical enhanced algorithm works?
Its hard enough with vigorous testing to prove simple programs work without fail without introducing some random "Genetic" changes that may break the algorithm for some input cases.
One of the problems with AI and self modifing algorithms is that as it learns/evolves you don't get the same output from the same input.. I guess thats the point, but I don't want my programs running like that.
I have a good friend who is now 30 and whos mother was a special ed teacher. He was one of the earliest to be diagnostic with what was called "hyperactivity" but is now called ADD or ADHT if it even exists. (I have a hard time focusing but force myself without medication when I need to, music help me for some strange reason)
He was given a lot of medicine to help him focus and not much else. It did. So much that he's very very poorly socialized right now. Its kinda of sad to watch him, because he a great guy but he just says strange things sometimes and frightens people. He can't communicate because he doesn't talk to you so much is talk at you.
I think the medicine might help but look at it as a last resort. If you child is not focusing is s/he bored with the class? Find out what is going on and find a good doctor.
Salon.com had some interesting articles on ADHT. Go there and search on it
If you want a mixer for audio, check out pro-tools free version from digi design. Its limited in the number of tracks you can mix, but works really well. My old housemate mixed books on tape with it as well as his band. Came out really professional. Did his recording analog and dumped them into the computer.
There is one other device that is just fun. I don't know who makes it (steinberg?) but I have the demo at home. Its a roland drum machine emulator. The wierd thing is that they didn't make the interface intutive for computer users, they made it just like the actual device. Its interesting to try and use a knob with a mouse and see the effort required to program one of those drum machines. The sounds are 80's fat though.
This is good for mainframe OS development, because if you crash your OS you don't take down the whole machine, just a "virtual restart" from continuing. I think thats why they started using the virtual machine in the first place..
Its not new for IBM either. Its been around at least 10 years.
I used a VM system a while back for simple things. Worked as if it was a single machine. Interesting to see its making a comeback.
Its a pulitzer prize winning book called soul of a new machine by Tracy Kidder. It is unlikely that you can download it off the internet..but you never know....
Its really quite interesting and it describes computer culture and management and how Data General came to survive and its quest to make a computer to compete with Digital. Great mushroom engineering management quotes (keep then in the dark, feed them Sh!t, watch them grow). Really a great addition to any collection of computer lore.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple really made usb one by not including any other port on the original imac.. USB which had been on pcs for a while and never caught on finally did.
Now for the towers its not a huge issue because of the pci slots but for the notebooks its just annoying.
I know apple is pushing firewire and you can buy firewire hard drives (I have one and it works great). And I've heard even though it has a slightly slower speed firewire actually works ever so slightly faster than usb2, so for speed we'll call it a draw..
But choice is good.. Most digital cameras will probably come with usb2 instead of usb1. Camcorders all are firewire and will probably stay that way.. the post is correct there are bus loads of usb2 stuff out there... Its built into every PC so its not going away.
Sony has those mini-disc. They used to have computer drives for them, but supposedly the music division balked for fear of pirating. When they came out the 120 or so meg per MD at 2$ was very good price/size.
They also released a 1.? Gig version of MD for those MD video camera, which again would have made a good floppy replacement.
Music MDs have a very primitive digital to digital copy protection scheme.
Of course MS is out to make money. But guess what they only make money on Office and Windows (with about 75-85 % profit margin.). They loose much money on everything else MSN/XBox/Other software. Look at there breakdown in there financial statements.
They're also a convicted monopolist. So buying a software company and killing off other platforms is different for them. Also you have to scratch your head when they buy a mainly MAC software development company to make Xbox software. It doesn't make a lot of sense, especially since XBox is supposed to be easy for PC software maker to program for. What could be there motive?
And guess what, Best Buy, EB, Babbages all compete with each other so there markup doesn't approach the 75%-85% that MS can get. MS knows how to run a bussiness very agressively and seem to be doing quite well.
My main problem is with MS claims to be so "Inovative". Thats what they said during they're anti-trust trail "freedom to inovate". Buying another company is not innovative. Copying Nintendo/Sony is not innovative.
National Geographic has some good big pictures / illustrations of it.
MS bought Bungie software. A mac game shop for a long time. Heck HALO was even demoed by Steve Jobs. The MS buys it and Bungie says, oh yeah, we'll still release Halo for the PC and Mac. MS put a stop that real quick.
I guess when you have billions in the bank and can't develop your own titles you buy the talent..
sigh....
Remember dataplay, quarter sized disks holding huge amounts. Going to replace minidiscs/ had music companies signed up etc..etc..
What happened? While technically feasable the implimentation was too difficult. Delays and out of cash.
Joins a long list of failed media. MD-Data, Jazz, SyQuest, Digital Compact Casset..
While the technology is neat, I'll beleive it when I see it.
Microsoft was threatened by the java api. You only have to use the Java VM and on that platform your software doesn't have to use the windows api anymore. Takes away the advantage of developing on a operating system with a rubust api.
Apple doesn't like Digital Rights Management. As such they want mp3s to be successful (as opposed to WMA files). Apple demonstrated similar music file sharing before, but never released it. Also they're promoting mpeg4 for video as opposed to Windows Media.
Maybe they just want itunes to stay off the RIAA/MPAA radar.
Then again maybe they added this functionality in itunes 3 upgrade which they are selling.
Regardless that itunes is the best mp3 player/organizer i've ever used.
I mean seriously. Googles very good. But it still is hard to find what you need sometimes. Often the best information doesn't come up when you search. I've been sent links with information from friends of sites I couldn't find when searching.
You can't expect one company to stay on top of anything. There are always companies that want what googles got and are gunning for them. Altavista was once king, as was voodoo and a host of other companies that have fallen from the top.
I say good. Hopefully all search sites get better. Maybe better ai will help? who knows.. These search engines are important to keep the web usefull.
I manipulate very very large photoshop files (100 meg +). A dual g4 1gzh is plenty fast for this..
I usually am playing mp3s when working and its still fing.
And that OSX is realy stable. Plus the built in color matching in OSX is a blessing..Saves so much time when printing, I usually get what I expect out of the printer, which saves time ink and $.
Its basically the same thing as in mozilla, but ie just lists the sites you've visited, and doesn't put the sites into folders.
.
I like the ie implementation of history better
That being said, I like the tabbed browsing of mozilla. I guess if I had a spare week I could rewrite part of mozilla.
Sigh.. Why does software never work beautifully..
Actually almost all jobs go to "Lowest qualified bidder". Read that as lowest bidder. Reputation has very very little to do with who gets what jobs, especially competetivly bid jobs.
The best union workers are held onto by contractors for as long as they can keep them as they are very very valuable (especially equipment operators). The ones that are ok are let go much sooner by not moving them to the new job. I've seen contractors hold onto some of the best operators even though they didn't have work for them, because when the contract started they wanted that operator..
Construction contractors generally use unions as a "temp agency" type approach. There are rules the union puts into place to protect these employees which are much better than what most contractors would ever get. Contractors hire/layoff people pretty regularly.
This is different from some other union structures and it seems to work pretty well.
The problem the world faces is that cheap often trumps good. Employeer especially medium->large employees will take cheap work over good work anyday.
And cheap labor is becoming more and more prevelent as globalization hits. Ask any US textile worker about globalization. Most of us on slashdot are hoping programming doesn't go the same way as these unskilled labor jobs..
I was a civil engineer and construction inspector. I've been on both Union and non-union jobs. Not only was the union work better, I felt much safer (having heavy equipment flip a couple times on some non-union sites makes one generally nervous.)
Sure some stuff unions do protects workers who aren't as good, but they're better paid but they get training to do good work. Yeah its more expensive, but ask yourself do you want someone with training putting up buildings?
Your assertion is patently wrong.
The zoo was our name of one defunct companies server room.. The machines were beasts and a mix of os (linux/ms/sun). The machines were also given animal names.. It was nice and not too geeky.
By this logic jpegs damage your eyes.. You'll go BLIND... BLIND...BLIND I sez..
Maybe only because what your doing while veiwing those jpegs..
Even when you print negatives with a standard darkroom enlarger, you adjust contrast/ exposure / color. You can highlight details, darken/lighten areas etc. You can do alot with standard darkroom equipment.. (waterfalls down escalators etc.)
Even printing slide film involves adjustments.
With the computer and photoshop its even easier to "adjust" photos.
Digital watermarking of images already exists. I don't know how effective it. If images by cameras are watermarked this may image authenticity. But will watermarks those survive jpeg converstion, they can be faked too. Many jpegs from digital cameras already have information about camera/time/exposure imbeded in them.
I don't think there is any way to trust photographs. Look at the fakes with analog (ufo shots / Loc ness monster etc..) With digital it just gets harder to believe.
The EPA forcing GE to pay to dredge up part of the hudson because of PCB's.
I think the decision weighed whether it was better to leave the PCBs there or to remove them. They decided in the long run it was better to remove them as PCBs don't break down naturally and have a nasty habit of moving up the food chain.
I was extrapolating to the "AI Future" of much more complex algorithms being evaluated (evolved) in more fundamental ways then just changing parameters.
My frame of mind is has changed. Right now is I'm working on very time constrained real time stuff, and when I have to do it in X seconds I like to know what the worse case is, not best average case.
The genetic algorithm sounds like and iterative test to try and find the optimum increments for shell sort. Really nothing revolutionary.
I couldn't recall from the test description, but it doesn't seem that different arrays to sort were used to evolve the parameters of the sort (increment list). If this is the case the solution is just a sort optimized for a particular dataset and of little use.
I would be interested to see how well the algorithm would work elvolved against different random data sets (almost in order, always reverse order, random).
And then compared with others Standard increments.
They could have a competion like they have to come up with good prisoners delima algorithms, but instead come up with the best shell sort increments...
I installed fink a while back. I love it. It basically allows users to install/keep uptodate opensourece software.
The install was a little confusing but well worth it. It really shows off the power of unix and Free software. I love having all the tools I use at work at home.
Prior to fink I updated my perl install by hand. With fink one app-get command and its there.
I also installed X too (for xemacs). The X is cludgy, but works well enough.
It makes the mac so much more powerful..
Genetic algorithms are interesting in that they can become more efficient and modify themselves. I don't mean to sound like a ludite but is this a good way to develop algorithms?
/evolves you don't get the same output from the same input.. I guess thats the point, but I don't want my programs running like that.
Is the efficiency gained worth the difficulty in proving the new genetical enhanced algorithm works?
Its hard enough with vigorous testing to prove simple programs work without fail without introducing some random "Genetic" changes that may break the algorithm for some input cases.
One of the problems with AI and self modifing algorithms is that as it learns
I have a good friend who is now 30 and whos mother was a special ed teacher. He was one of the earliest to be diagnostic with what was called "hyperactivity" but is now called ADD or ADHT if it even exists. (I have a hard time focusing but force myself without medication when I need to, music help me for some strange reason)
He was given a lot of medicine to help him focus and not much else. It did. So much that he's very very poorly socialized right now. Its kinda of sad to watch him, because he a great guy but he just says strange things sometimes and frightens people. He can't communicate because he doesn't talk to you so much is talk at you.
I think the medicine might help but look at it as a last resort. If you child is not focusing is s/he bored with the class? Find out what is going on and find a good doctor.
Salon.com had some interesting articles on ADHT. Go there and search on it
If you want a mixer for audio, check out pro-tools free version from digi design. Its limited in the number of tracks you can mix, but works really well. My old housemate mixed books on tape with it as well as his band. Came out really professional. Did his recording analog and dumped them into the computer.
There is one other device that is just fun. I don't know who makes it (steinberg?) but I have the demo at home. Its a roland drum machine emulator. The wierd thing is that they didn't make the interface intutive for computer users, they made it just like the actual device. Its interesting to try and use a knob with a mouse and see the effort required to program one of those drum machines. The sounds are 80's fat though.
This is good for mainframe OS development, because if you crash your OS you don't take down the whole machine, just a "virtual restart" from continuing. I think thats why they started using the virtual machine in the first place..
Its not new for IBM either. Its been around at least 10 years.
I used a VM system a while back for simple things. Worked as if it was a single machine. Interesting to see its making a comeback.
Those keychain usb drives. They sell them with company logos on them too..
Great for taking home work, files you download in the office etc..
Its a pulitzer prize winning book called soul of a new machine by Tracy Kidder. It is unlikely that you can download it off the internet..but you never know....
Its really quite interesting and it describes computer culture and management and how Data General came to survive and its quest to make a computer to compete with Digital. Great mushroom engineering management quotes (keep then in the dark, feed them Sh!t, watch them grow). Really a great addition to any collection of computer lore.