Right, like your boss is going to let you waltz in at 10:30 because your brain-wave monitor didn't deem you rested until after 9. (And if you've had enough rest, don't you wake up naturally? Why use a device to do it for you?)
Your sleep cycle is approximately 4 hours long and during that time you go through 4 states from drowsyness to REM.
If you are woken by your alarm clock during REM (the deepest) then you feel the worst. If you are woken during the lightest, then you feel the best. This is why sometimes you can have 4 hours of sleep and feel better than if you have 10.
I would guess that the band would monitor how "deep" you are and wake you up at the nearest time when you are at the lightest.
If I have to be awake at 7am, I'd rather be woken up at 5 and feel good, than wake up bang on 7 and feel crap all day.
I don't know much about graphics cards (currently have a GeForce 4 - 64 meg) but I'd like to upgrade to one that will ensure that Halflife 2 will be damn good when it comes out.
Any recommendations on what I should get? Especially since I don't want to blow a fortune on a card. Is this one something I should look at, or do you recommend anything else?
I'm not trolling but if Linux is so ready for the desktop (as mentioned by all the comments here) why on earth didn't AOL go with some version of Linux?
Not only could they have made a bigger amount of profit on each one (lets be honest, they wouldn't have passed the cost reduction onto the customer) but they could probably lock it down better too and supply a whole bunch of applications such as OpenOffice to encourage users not to think about reformatting their HD.
Re:The tagline says it all
on
Linux vs. Windows
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Not really, most of the "choir" here are repeating the same FUD over and over, or are basing opinions of linux on their experience with redhat 3.1 or Slackware 2.5 back in the early 90's.
It's worth pointing out that most of the "choir" here still also assume that the world is still using Windows 95 and think that BSOD jokes occur 10 times a day and find them funny.
Actually the two "choir"'s here are just as guilty as each other of ignoring things they don't want to see or hear.
I have my own opinion on which one of the two are the worst.
This is dumb on MS' part on so many levels - people will try it, see that it sucks, and go with $Localized-Government-Sponsored-Linux instead.
Actually, I think that, more realistically, people won't even touch it and stick with their nice pirated version of XP.
Outside of Slashdot, there are a lot of people who are perfectly happy with XP and don't see the need or have the desire to shift to something else which they'll have to expend time and effort learning.
The BSA's favorite method is sending out threat letters to small-mid sized businesses, and warning about the dire consequences of having pirated software.
Which is true. There are rather dire concequences to having pirated software - especially if you don't want to be parted with a lot of money.
The place I work got one, and the boss freaked out- especially since 1 Office 2000 CD had been used for all 6 computers in the office.
So basically the boss freaked out because 1 office 2000 CD was having it's EULA broken multiple times. Now whether the EULA is immoral or not doesn't stray away from the fact that what your company did was wrong and opened you up to the aforementioned monetary punishment. I'm not surprised he freaked.
The letter basically said we had 1 month to take care of any abuses, and if they caught us after that with illegal stuff, there would be hell to pay (since we were on notice).
Which is true too. In fact, be thankful that they sent the warning message out.
So to summarise:
Your company was breaking it's EULA
BSA sends a letter reminding you of the concequences
Your boss (rightly) freaks because he is breaking the EULA
You buy licences to make you legitmate (which is what you should have done in the first place)
Speaking of which, when will we see WML version of Slashdot? Currently I use http://slashdot.org/palm as the homepage in my cellphone, which works fine, but a true WAP page would be better.
Head on over to here and take a look at Avantslash.
Not only does it trim down Slashdot to something that can be read on a PDA but it can also be run through Googles HTML to WML proxy and it works really well (the script will determine if you're coming from a WAP phone and redirect you accordingly).
It also works very well on my Series 60 phone with Opera.
Several TV channels here also put out all there tele-text material on wap, which is nice because it is brief, up to date, and meant to read on a low res screen.
If you're in the UK then my tellyguide application and the aforementioned Google HTML to WML proxy will give you TV listings on the go.
IBM Senior Vice President of Technology and Marketing Nick Donofrio assured the Linux nation his company would not assert its formidable patent portfolio against the Linux kernel and strongly advocated others to promise the same.
I'm sorry but without sounding trollish - big whoops.
This doesn't mean a thing. Just because they say they won't doesn't mean that they actually won't.
After all, what is to stop IBM getting a new Vice President of Technology and Marketing who decides to take the company in a completely different direction which negates this promise?
Yes, you could argue all day long about how it wouldn't make sense, be very silly, bite the hand that feeds it etc.etc. but it still is a possibility.
By all means be happy that they've said it, but if their stance does change (and if it suddenly turns out that the current strategy isn't good for IBM, then it will change) don't be the least bit surprised.
And if I ever pay for a downloaded song, I DEMAND that I be able to transfer it off the phone to my computer and other listening devices as well, with no degredation in quality from what I originally received, and with no restrictions on how I can use it (or at least extremely easy to circumvent ones ALA Fairplay).
Sorry, not going to happen. Ever.
The reason for this is not so much the phone companies (although they have a hand in it) but the fact that the content suppliers have it written into the contracts that "unsecure" handsets will not and never will be able to get hold of that content.
You will never be given the rights you demand as long as the music industry has the controls it currently enjoys. Want that song but don't want to comply with their demands? Tough. You can't get it from anywhere else but them.
See this comment I made about the subject in another article.
My perception of the success Mozilla/Firefox has beside a breadth of features is its security. I wonder if this bounty is more preemptive in nature to help ensure the positive security piece-of-mind Mozilla/Firefox has rather than the type of bounty Tex has.
Alternativily could it be a bit of PR to deflect from the controvesy surrounding the two recently publicised bugs which had been sat on by the Mozilla team for several years before they got around to being fixed?
But there are two problems with that method. The first is that if MS gets used to this and starts calling people's bluffs, then one of two things will happen. They'll buy MS at MS prices, or they'll go Linux at the cheap price. I wonder which.
Well, if they're trying to use Linux as a means to get cheaper discounts then it would be fairly sensible to suggest that they have absolutely no intention of moving to Linux.
That would be a blow for MS.
Doubtful. If the companies bluff is called then (based on the fact that they didn't have any intention of migrating to something else) they'll bite their lip and pony up the money.
I know Microsoft especially is really touting this as the next greatest thing since sliced bread but how many of us really need desktop search?
Depends how it is implemented. At work our documents are on a network share. During the course of my day I could reference tens of seperate files and need information out of each of them for various other documents and presentations.
It would be really good if I'm doing a presentation about something and all the documents that are related to that appear in a sidebar. Writing about a handset? The technical specifications document, roadmap, format information, marketing plans, IT project plans and possibly even links to documents about the other handsets that use the same software are one click away from being opened. Saves me hunting for them.
For the home user, this would be pretty pointless. However in a corporate environment where you have access to thousands of documents in varying locations, this would be pretty useful.
Runner-up in this category was mobile-phone company Vodafone, which blocks customers from logging onto adult websites through their phone handsets in order, the company says, to protect mobile-phone-toting, porn-seeking children.
This is a tad harse when you consider that the government has basically told all mobile phone service providers in the UK that they should block adult content to all minors "voluntarily" or face laws that force them to do so.
All the other providers are, unsurprisingly, geering up to do the very same thing.
The simple reason was that there simply isn't enough screen real-estate and so I spent the entire time continually scrolling downwards which subtly interrupted the flow of the book.
When I read a book, I want to sink into the story. However continually flipping the page every 50 words means that you can never get that much into the book before you're jolted out of it because you have to hit the "page down" button.
I know there are readers which auto-scroll but that it almost as bad. You're now forced to read in a slightly different way and although I'm sure its possible to train yourself to get used to it - for the time being it feels odd and detracts from the whole point. That is, the story.
The multi-million dollar cell-phone ringer market just SHIT ITS PANTS.
I know this was meant to be a joke but the cell phone ringtone market has been "shitting its pants" for years.
Realtones (that is proper samples of tracks) can only be purchased from the record labels. You can't get them from anywhere out without a licence (which, the record labels won't give). They're so paranoid about ripping that they won't supply content to providers unless the handsets conform to the DRM requirements that they (the music labels) dictate.
Handset doesn't support OMA Forward Locking? Doesn't have it's own propriatory DRM mechanism? Tough, the contract will state that the provider cannot sell to that handset. There is no negotiation because you cannot go and get the content from anywhere else.
Anyone who thinks it is the handset manufacturers and network operators who are the major drivers are wrong (although they are drivers). The content providers dictate the requirements, the network operators want to make money on that content so they drive the requirements and the handset manufacturers want purchases of their handsets so do their bidding.
And yes, the whole realtones vs full length tracks is causing problems. Why pay 4 quid a pop for a 30 second sample when iTunes gives you the whole thing for a quarter of the price?
The problem comes from a crossover of products. The ringtone market is now competing with the downloadable music market with vastly different price points.
Some operators are starting to dictate that handsets that can allow you to upload content via a cable cannot allow that content to be set as a ringtone in an attempt to protect the realtone revenue stream.
here's people out there who don't know, or think they want an mp3 player -- this will get them hooked not only on the idea, but on Apple's intuitive interface.
Maybe within the iTunes application but as someone who has worked with Motorola phones for years, I can tell you that they have no concept of a decent or intuitive user interface on their handsets.
Alternativily give up trying to gouge your eyes out with spoons over the brain-dead linking system which means that offline browsers won't work properly and head on over to:
Where you'll find something that not only cleans up all the cruft to make it PDA friendly but also works just as well on your mobile and WAP browser (via the Google WML browser).
(ob. disclaimer: I wrote it, so I might be slightly biased)
In the (relatively) early days of ATMs a couple of crooks bought a machine, built a nice-looking case around it, and rolled it into a shopping mall. They programmed it to report that "your transaction could not be completed--please try again later." Of course, it wasn't connected to anything--except a recorder that was logging all the ATM card numbers and the customer-entered PINs. The crooks came back, rolled away the ATM, and drained the bank accounts of the poor folks who tried to use the machine.
My favourite story is the one about the crooks that set up a fake machine in the street and did pretty much exactly the same thing you mentioned.
However, the best bit was that they were caught only when the company that sold them the machine went to the police because they didn't get paid the money owed to them.
If they hadn't been so greedy as to not pay for the machine, they probably could have got away with it for much longer.
Printers have been sold w/o a cable forever. And the computer that you would attach them too would also not have one. I also bet that the cassette deck that you bought in 1992 did not come with the necessary patch cord as well. Nor did the CD player that you replaced it with in 1995......
Just because other products have missed out one essential cable doesn't make it any less dumb.
If your product can't be used out of the box because its missing one *standard* cable that only costs $5 (RRP) then it's still a dumb move.
Many people believe (and I know there are a vocal minority on slashdot that don't) that it looks good. That is, it looks good when you take it out of your pocket, it looks good to wear with a suit and it looks as if it really was worth the money you paid for it.
In short, it doesn't look like some cheapo moulded black plastic toy that Fisher Price produce for children.
I know that a lot of slashdotters (and some people) are prepared to put up with something that is clunky, heavy and butt ugly if it has tonnes of neat features - but the rest of the world has shown that it doesn't think in that way.
Whatever it is, it won't be a 7610 [nokia.com]. The keyboard layout is simply insane.
I have a 7610 and the keyboard layout is fine. It's nothing like the 3650 where you had to relearn how to type again.
Granted it does look odd, but everyone in this office who had tried has found that it pretty much exactly the same as a normal keyboard.
Nokia's biggest problem is the stagnation of their software. Series 40 and 60 haven't been seriously updated in years - Nokia pushes out a cool looking new model only to find that it's same old bg standard series 40. Meanwhile the other manufacturers have been improving their OS as well as their hardware.
I am not willing to move north to get a job that pays 40% less than what is available here. I'd rather work outside my field.
Even if the cost of living was 60% cheaper?
(I have no idea of the stats, but moving to a different country that pays less money when directly converted doesn't necessarily mean you'll get a lower standard of life - there are a lot of other factors)
Slashdot Mirror
Your sleep cycle is approximately 4 hours long and during that time you go through 4 states from drowsyness to REM.
If you are woken by your alarm clock during REM (the deepest) then you feel the worst. If you are woken during the lightest, then you feel the best. This is why sometimes you can have 4 hours of sleep and feel better than if you have 10.
I would guess that the band would monitor how "deep" you are and wake you up at the nearest time when you are at the lightest.
If I have to be awake at 7am, I'd rather be woken up at 5 and feel good, than wake up bang on 7 and feel crap all day.
Any recommendations on what I should get? Especially since I don't want to blow a fortune on a card. Is this one something I should look at, or do you recommend anything else?
Not only could they have made a bigger amount of profit on each one (lets be honest, they wouldn't have passed the cost reduction onto the customer) but they could probably lock it down better too and supply a whole bunch of applications such as OpenOffice to encourage users not to think about reformatting their HD.
It's worth pointing out that most of the "choir" here still also assume that the world is still using Windows 95 and think that BSOD jokes occur 10 times a day and find them funny.
Actually the two "choir"'s here are just as guilty as each other of ignoring things they don't want to see or hear.
I have my own opinion on which one of the two are the worst.
Actually, I think that, more realistically, people won't even touch it and stick with their nice pirated version of XP.
Outside of Slashdot, there are a lot of people who are perfectly happy with XP and don't see the need or have the desire to shift to something else which they'll have to expend time and effort learning.
Which is true. There are rather dire concequences to having pirated software - especially if you don't want to be parted with a lot of money.
The place I work got one, and the boss freaked out- especially since 1 Office 2000 CD had been used for all 6 computers in the office.
So basically the boss freaked out because 1 office 2000 CD was having it's EULA broken multiple times. Now whether the EULA is immoral or not doesn't stray away from the fact that what your company did was wrong and opened you up to the aforementioned monetary punishment. I'm not surprised he freaked.
The letter basically said we had 1 month to take care of any abuses, and if they caught us after that with illegal stuff, there would be hell to pay (since we were on notice).
Which is true too. In fact, be thankful that they sent the warning message out.
So to summarise:
- Your company was breaking it's EULA
- BSA sends a letter reminding you of the concequences
- Your boss (rightly) freaks because he is breaking the EULA
- You buy licences to make you legitmate (which is what you should have done in the first place)
- If they do audit you, you're fine.
I completely fail to see what the issue is here.Head on over to here and take a look at Avantslash.
Not only does it trim down Slashdot to something that can be read on a PDA but it can also be run through Googles HTML to WML proxy and it works really well (the script will determine if you're coming from a WAP phone and redirect you accordingly).
It also works very well on my Series 60 phone with Opera.
Several TV channels here also put out all there tele-text material on wap, which is nice because it is brief, up to date, and meant to read on a low res screen.
If you're in the UK then my tellyguide application and the aforementioned Google HTML to WML proxy will give you TV listings on the go.
I'm sorry but without sounding trollish - big whoops.
This doesn't mean a thing. Just because they say they won't doesn't mean that they actually won't.
After all, what is to stop IBM getting a new Vice President of Technology and Marketing who decides to take the company in a completely different direction which negates this promise?
Yes, you could argue all day long about how it wouldn't make sense, be very silly, bite the hand that feeds it etc.etc. but it still is a possibility.
By all means be happy that they've said it, but if their stance does change (and if it suddenly turns out that the current strategy isn't good for IBM, then it will change) don't be the least bit surprised.
Sorry, not going to happen. Ever.
The reason for this is not so much the phone companies (although they have a hand in it) but the fact that the content suppliers have it written into the contracts that "unsecure" handsets will not and never will be able to get hold of that content.
You will never be given the rights you demand as long as the music industry has the controls it currently enjoys. Want that song but don't want to comply with their demands? Tough. You can't get it from anywhere else but them.
See this comment I made about the subject in another article.
Alternativily could it be a bit of PR to deflect from the controvesy surrounding the two recently publicised bugs which had been sat on by the Mozilla team for several years before they got around to being fixed?
Well, if they're trying to use Linux as a means to get cheaper discounts then it would be fairly sensible to suggest that they have absolutely no intention of moving to Linux.
That would be a blow for MS.
Doubtful. If the companies bluff is called then (based on the fact that they didn't have any intention of migrating to something else) they'll bite their lip and pony up the money.
Depends how it is implemented. At work our documents are on a network share. During the course of my day I could reference tens of seperate files and need information out of each of them for various other documents and presentations.
It would be really good if I'm doing a presentation about something and all the documents that are related to that appear in a sidebar. Writing about a handset? The technical specifications document, roadmap, format information, marketing plans, IT project plans and possibly even links to documents about the other handsets that use the same software are one click away from being opened. Saves me hunting for them.
For the home user, this would be pretty pointless. However in a corporate environment where you have access to thousands of documents in varying locations, this would be pretty useful.
This is a tad harse when you consider that the government has basically told all mobile phone service providers in the UK that they should block adult content to all minors "voluntarily" or face laws that force them to do so.
All the other providers are, unsurprisingly, geering up to do the very same thing.
The simple reason was that there simply isn't enough screen real-estate and so I spent the entire time continually scrolling downwards which subtly interrupted the flow of the book.
When I read a book, I want to sink into the story. However continually flipping the page every 50 words means that you can never get that much into the book before you're jolted out of it because you have to hit the "page down" button.
I know there are readers which auto-scroll but that it almost as bad. You're now forced to read in a slightly different way and although I'm sure its possible to train yourself to get used to it - for the time being it feels odd and detracts from the whole point. That is, the story.
The poster claims its an XML compliant universal remote - although I couldn't find the information on the website (admitidally I only looked briefly).
One downside is that it's very expensive ($299) but one cool thing is that it has support for TV channel guides built into the remote.
I know this was meant to be a joke but the cell phone ringtone market has been "shitting its pants" for years.
Realtones (that is proper samples of tracks) can only be purchased from the record labels. You can't get them from anywhere out without a licence (which, the record labels won't give). They're so paranoid about ripping that they won't supply content to providers unless the handsets conform to the DRM requirements that they (the music labels) dictate.
Handset doesn't support OMA Forward Locking? Doesn't have it's own propriatory DRM mechanism? Tough, the contract will state that the provider cannot sell to that handset. There is no negotiation because you cannot go and get the content from anywhere else.
Anyone who thinks it is the handset manufacturers and network operators who are the major drivers are wrong (although they are drivers). The content providers dictate the requirements, the network operators want to make money on that content so they drive the requirements and the handset manufacturers want purchases of their handsets so do their bidding.
And yes, the whole realtones vs full length tracks is causing problems. Why pay 4 quid a pop for a 30 second sample when iTunes gives you the whole thing for a quarter of the price?
The problem comes from a crossover of products. The ringtone market is now competing with the downloadable music market with vastly different price points.
Some operators are starting to dictate that handsets that can allow you to upload content via a cable cannot allow that content to be set as a ringtone in an attempt to protect the realtone revenue stream.
Maybe within the iTunes application but as someone who has worked with Motorola phones for years, I can tell you that they have no concept of a decent or intuitive user interface on their handsets.
http://slashdot.org/palm/
Alternativily give up trying to gouge your eyes out with spoons over the brain-dead linking system which means that offline browsers won't work properly and head on over to:
http://www.fourteenminutes.com/code/avantslash/
Where you'll find something that not only cleans up all the cruft to make it PDA friendly but also works just as well on your mobile and WAP browser (via the Google WML browser).
(ob. disclaimer: I wrote it, so I might be slightly biased)
My favourite story is the one about the crooks that set up a fake machine in the street and did pretty much exactly the same thing you mentioned.
However, the best bit was that they were caught only when the company that sold them the machine went to the police because they didn't get paid the money owed to them.
If they hadn't been so greedy as to not pay for the machine, they probably could have got away with it for much longer.
Just because other products have missed out one essential cable doesn't make it any less dumb.
If your product can't be used out of the box because its missing one *standard* cable that only costs $5 (RRP) then it's still a dumb move.
Many people believe (and I know there are a vocal minority on slashdot that don't) that it looks good. That is, it looks good when you take it out of your pocket, it looks good to wear with a suit and it looks as if it really was worth the money you paid for it.
In short, it doesn't look like some cheapo moulded black plastic toy that Fisher Price produce for children.
I know that a lot of slashdotters (and some people) are prepared to put up with something that is clunky, heavy and butt ugly if it has tonnes of neat features - but the rest of the world has shown that it doesn't think in that way.
Don't think of it that way, but in Flash applications.
An excellent example is (German only I'm afriad) T-Mobile's News Express application.
I have a 7610 and the keyboard layout is fine. It's nothing like the 3650 where you had to relearn how to type again.
Granted it does look odd, but everyone in this office who had tried has found that it pretty much exactly the same as a normal keyboard.
Nokia's biggest problem is the stagnation of their software. Series 40 and 60 haven't been seriously updated in years - Nokia pushes out a cool looking new model only to find that it's same old bg standard series 40. Meanwhile the other manufacturers have been improving their OS as well as their hardware.
Even if the cost of living was 60% cheaper?
(I have no idea of the stats, but moving to a different country that pays less money when directly converted doesn't necessarily mean you'll get a lower standard of life - there are a lot of other factors)
<obligatory British joke> ;)
So they pronouce English slightly better then?
</obligatory British joke>