I like the iMacs, personally, but they weigh 40 pounds - the idea of sticking an airport card in the [sic] is ridiculous if you can't lift the damn thing.
Two things.
It's true that AirPort is more useful in the i/PowerBook. However, AirPort networking offers desktop benefits as well. For example, in the education market; it's nice to not have to run ethernet cables all over the computer lab. (Or any cables at all. Just USB in the keyboard & mouse to each iMac, wire power, and go.)
AirPort cards can talk to each other without help from a Base Station. From the AirPort FAQ:
Q: Can I transfer files between AirPort-enabled computers without using an AirPort Base Station? A: Yes. You can transfer files or play multiplayer games directly between AirPort-enabled computers. To do this, just create a computer-to-computer network. In Mac OS 9, use the AirPort Control Strip module on both computers to switch from using the AirPort Base Station to using computer-to-computer mode. In Mac OS X, use the AirPort system status menu (located on the menu bar) to create a network. Once your wireless network is established, use file sharing to share files as you would on any wired network.
Therefore, if your iMac and iBook both have AirPort cards, you can save $500 or so.
an iMac box would look really weird without the CRT, because it would be mostly empty, and they probably can't just make the box smaller, because they need vent space
I wonder about the vent space. How much of the iMac's heat comes from the CRT? Nearly all, I believe.
What I'd love to see would be an iMac with mounting screws - to be hung on the wall.
my iMac is a semi-portable. it's got a carrying handle on the top. I think all of them do. It's kinda heavy but it's not that bad, I've carried it cross-country on trains before.
the big advantage of going to LCD IMO would be heat. the CRT puts out the vast majority of the heat of the iMac; an LCD screen would run very cool.
a marketing idea: the iceMac. we already have the iceBook, Steve, how about it?;)
The G4 is the G3 with Altivec and SMP. They're the same chip otherwise. The G4 runs Altivec-enabled programs faster than the G3 does. This includes mostly Photoshop.
If you're not running Altivec programs, and you only have the one processor, a 500MHz G3 runs as fast as a G4.
However, FWIW... I have a 400MHz G3. It runs about six times as fast as my P133 on most tasks; that suggests a rough speed equivalent of 800MHz. (For example, it encodes MP3s using BladeEnc at almost precisely six times the speed. Other tasks are similar.)
Working the math, that would suggest a 500MHz G3 should be about a gigahertz or so.
Theoretically, no. Practically, yes: the vast majority of sites running ASP are running IIS, and most of them are programmed in VBScript, a most bletcherous language.
In this particular case, they're running IIS 4: see my other post.
Oh, don't worry. I only get modded up when I post inflammatory yet well-worded posts, or occasionally when I go off the deep end (most of my 5 posts, I look at and wonder - why?) Mods won't touch that one: I was clear, lucid, and somewhat lengthy.:)
This is why you should read at a threshold of 2. Most of the interesting posts have a value of 2. They are the ones posted by people who write well enough to attract moderators' attention fairly often, but who have lost the moderator on this particular post.
There are exceptions, though: mostly karma whores. Sigh. A few trolls too. Bigger sigh.
There was a time when I just wished MS ripped QT's codec and put it in their media player.
QT doesn't have a codec, precisely. It's a framework. The QT format allows for multiple codecs.
For example, QT for the Mac comes standard with the following codecs for video:
Animation
Apple BMP
Apple H.261
Cinepak
Component Video
DV - NTSC
DV - PAL
Graphics
H.261
H.263
Intel Raw
Microsoft RLE
Motion JPEG A
Motion JPEG B
Photo - JPEG
Planar RGB
Sorenson Video
TGA
TIFF
Video
You can also install your own codecs. I seem to have:
Intel Indeo Video 5.0
Intel Indeo Video R3.2
Microsoft Video 1
On2VP3 Video 3.2
There are a comparable array of audio codecs.
Most of the stuff you see on the web these days is Sorenson. But content creators usually don't work in Sorenson; they work in the higher-quality codecs. I'm leaning towards On2VP3 these days, although in the past I was pretty much a straight-up Indeo man.
It also allows you to encode without using a codec, i.e. raw data & Big Files. This is what the really serious editors with the Really Big Drives (Avid and so on) use.
BTW, the DivX;-) player for the Mac uses a QuickTime framework, and can play the DivX inside QT player.
More over [sic] the US government is probably the biggest target for those cracking into computers, Microsoft is probably number two
No.
The biggest targets for those cracking computers are banks and telcos. Increasing your bank account and getting free long distance/cellphones, that's what phreakers and other crackers want.
Fighter pilots that go off mission on a whim? Can you say serious lack of discipline?
Yes, I can.:)
During the Persian Gulf War, one senior US military officer stole an attack helicopter (I believe it was an Apache) because he was frustrated with the way the war was being conducted, and flew off to attack the Iraqis by himself.
The British did the right thing, of course, and shot him down. IIRC, he was a Major in the Army.
Now, you can certainly complain that this movie is unrealistic. I would probably agree with you there. But to base your claim on how it portrays the American military as lacking discipline is, well, unwise.;)
D&D (the original) goes back, way back, before my time.
AD&D originally consisted of three hardcover books: the Player's Handbook, the Dungeonmaster's Guide, and the Monster Manual. The theory was that players could buy the PH and get everything they needed from it, while DMs would buy the DMG and MM for the rest. In actual fact, most everyone bought all three.
Slightly later, after the MM, the Fiend Folio was released. This was mostly a compilation of monsters from White Dwarf magazine. These four books made up AD&D as it was played in the early '80s.
Some people also used a book called Deities & Demigods. It sucked (more than D&D generally did) though so even people who had a copy didn't make much use of it.
In the mid-'80s, TSR started putting out more supplements. One of these supplements was Oriental Adventures. Another was Unearthed Arcana, which introduced a lot of rules changes; there were numerous others, like the Monster Manual II and plenty more I've forgotten (happily).
Second edition AD&D wasn't released until right around the end of the '80s. I've never played it but from what I've seen of it, it's based on Unearthed Arcana, only more so. But by the time it was released, Oriental Adventures (probably the best D&D book ever published) had gone out of print.
I'm not sure when SpellJammer came out precisely; I think it did come out around the same time as 2nd ed. More goofy stuff.
BTW, Wizards of the Coast is a division of Hasbro now. WotC bought TSR with the fortune they made from Magic: The Gathering, and then Hasbro swallowed them up.
Trek IV was the most commercially successful of the entire series. It's still the movie with the most mainstream popularity.
Watching it now... it's so eighties, yes. It's like a cross between Ferris Bueller and Star Trek.:)
All the trekkies whined when Trek III came out, because Trek II's ending was Poignant and III ruined it, or something.:) (I disliked II, mostly because of its horrendously contrived storyline. Drunks in space. That's all I can say.)
Fortunately (perhaps), directors don't have that much power on a Trek movie set. The big-name actors are the real stars, know it, and throw their weight around accordingly.
The real powers are the writers and the actors. Oh yeah, and Rick Berman.:)
Simple. Quit trying to push nuclear families on to people.
Our whole family law system is based around the idea of the nuclear family. We make it very difficult for children to be passed around between caregivers that they're related to, unless they happen to be direct parents.
For an example, look at the Elian Gonzalez case. This case was hyped up by the American media as a battle between Cuban exiles and Cuban communism, but I think that's a misperception.
Elian was taken away from his father by his mother to be placed in the care of his extended family. Unfortunately, his mother died, and his father turned up to get custody back.
Elian's extended family couldn't even get a hearing to determine if they were more suited to take care of the young boy. The nuclear rights of the sole living parent were so strong as to completely override even the wishes of the dead mother, simply because she was dead.
Perhaps the right thing was done in the end: I don't know. But it does bother me - a lot - that Elian's family in Miami couldn't get a hearing. And the reason is because it's saying that the extended family doesn't exist.
I guess the crux of this whole issue for me is that parents have, in many ways, given up their authority to raise their kids to government (or pseudo-government) agencies. How can we expect a governmental agency to respond except with a governmental process like a national database for kids who back talk.
The problem, I think, is the nuclear family. Two people just aren't enough. Most civilizations in history have used some form of extended family to raise children.
We've gone to this nuclear family model, and it's insufficient. Unfortunately, instead of going back to the extended family model, we're trying to artificially prop up the nuclear family and make it work.
On a personal note, I too put foreign objects into wall sockets as a young child. I wonder if that has any reflection on the fact that we both read slashdot?
Perhaps. I didn't start programming until after the first wall-socket experience. (Although not right after... that would just be too funky:)
Use FreeBSD 3.x for old boxes, 4.x for new boxes. (Especially use 3.x if you have old, weird, cranky proprietary CD-ROMs and other hardware from that era.)
Here's the breakdown:
FreeBSD - Easy to setup, fast, well-supported; x86 and Alpha only
OpenBSD - Security paranoid; doesn't have as many packages as FreeBSD, nearly as fast, much more secure, also more architectures than FreeBSD
NetBSD - Runs on everything - want to put a *nix on your fridge? This is the most likely candidate:)
The problem with them is that they make basic assumptions about your hardware.
Every Intel box in the universe is capable of putting up characters on the screen. Anything past that, you're making assumptions.
The *BSD installers can be setup on a box with a Hercules graphics card.
And you wonder why you'd want to do that? Well, let's say you're setting up a server. The normal way I have of getting a server going is to plug in a video card - any video card, junk is great - get FreeBSD going on it, get a telnet or ssh daemon running, and then compile a custom kernel with no video card driver & rip that sucker out of there. Because there's no GUI, I can do that.
Re:Not willing to go to jail to prove a point?
on
DMCA 2, Freedom 0
·
· Score: 2
I'm a he, not a they, as a careful examination of my email addy would probably show.:)
Kinda. I was thinking of the latter, though. How much of the media remains free from the direct control of the MPAA or RIAA, and how much of the rest agrees with them on the DMCA? I would suggest, nearly all.
Which is partly why I pay for Salon, and run my own website. I think this state of things is wrong: we've lost our free press to corporate consolidation rather than government censorship. However, it's still the state of things as they are.
Re:Not willing to go to jail to prove a point?
on
DMCA 2, Freedom 0
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Why didn't the scientists involved just present their research pulicly, [sic] and make it a media event?
No, I've managed to dodge the kids bullet so far. However, I don't see how that's relevant: like everybody else who's once been 14, I remember what it's like. (Or at least that's what you would think.)
Toddlers are a different issue. We've restricted what toddlers can do for a very long time, probably since before recorded history.
My argument is that we're drawing the line too high. And yes, you're right in a sense: the police are suffering from the same illusions as the parents are. (At least in some cases. I still remember the 15-year-old boy I once knew who was drunk out of his mind one night and walked past a group of police officers bellowing that he was god. He was in a public park that was closed because it was after hours, and remarkably obviously underage: he looked about 12. Thus, he was guilty of three offenses: trespassing, underage drinking and disturbing the peace. Yet, they didn't arrest him. I'll never know the real reason why, but the best theory I've heard is that they were at a checkpoint checking for people without driver's licenses, and if they'd busted him, they might have missed their quota. It probably helped that he was white and had obviously middle-class clothes on, too.)
Maybe I shouldn't complain too much, though. I used to stick my thumb in wall sockets when I was a preteen because it felt neat. I suspect you'd disapprove of that too:)
look at the lengths that Hughes has gone to to shut down all 12 of the DirectTV hackers who are "pirating" the satellite signal that Hughes is shining through their houses
Which universe do you live in? Hell, I know more than 12 DirecTV hackers myself. There are thousands of 'em.
Some commentators would characterize the last 25 years or so as a conflict between patent holders (the manufacturers of consumer technology) and copyright holders (the producers of consumer culture). The landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Sony v. Universal, was set up as typifying this conflict.
However, it would seem that, many years after the movie studios lost their attempt to prevent consumer VCRs from being sold, the VCR has, if anything, benefitted the motion picture industry.
Similarly, in the recent Napster case, it is worthwhile noting that after the RIAA successfully shut down Napster, their sales started to immediately decline, and have continued to decline. Many have argued that Napster provided a vastly superior method of music promotion, especially for older records, than radio, and its shutdown has resulted in music fans not finding out about records they might otherwise buy.
Do you think that this conflict is more imagined than real? In other words, is it more likely to the benefit of the cultural industries to work with technological development, rather than fight it?
I'm sure even insane rollerbladers coast for 20 seconds out of every 400, that should be plenty for the device to refill its buffer.
Actually, even insane rollerbladers coast a lot more than that.
The trouble is when you get on bumpy surfaces, like sidewalks. If you only rollerblade on paved areas, then it's really smooth and actually if your CD player is properly centered in a backpack or something, it'll skip less than it would if you were running at the same speed.
But on a sidewalk... if you get up any decent speed at all, you're facing bumps. Every time you hit one of those edges, it jostles the player. You bounce, but your player doesn't like it so much.
That means that if you speed down the sidewalk for, say, 400 seconds, your CD player's buffer is now empty, and is not being refilled.
In most cities, it's not safe to blade on the roads, and therefore we get this problem.
One: Patent law makes nobody a criminal. Copyright is the only form of intellectual property protection that intersects with the criminal law. Patent and trademark are purely civil matters. This is one of the big reasons why I'm against copyright on binaries; copyright in some respects is stronger than patent.
Two: I'm not sure what you mean by "overly broad." Patent law in some respects is narrower than copyright; the main one is the term.
Slashdot Mirror
Two things.
I wonder about the vent space. How much of the iMac's heat comes from the CRT? Nearly all, I believe.
What I'd love to see would be an iMac with mounting screws - to be hung on the wall.
Now, that would exceed cool.
my iMac is a semi-portable. it's got a carrying handle on the top. I think all of them do. It's kinda heavy but it's not that bad, I've carried it cross-country on trains before.
the big advantage of going to LCD IMO would be heat. the CRT puts out the vast majority of the heat of the iMac; an LCD screen would run very cool.
a marketing idea: the iceMac. we already have the iceBook, Steve, how about it? ;)
It evidently needs to be said again.
The G4 is the G3 with Altivec and SMP. They're the same chip otherwise. The G4 runs Altivec-enabled programs faster than the G3 does. This includes mostly Photoshop.
If you're not running Altivec programs, and you only have the one processor, a 500MHz G3 runs as fast as a G4.
However, FWIW... I have a 400MHz G3. It runs about six times as fast as my P133 on most tasks; that suggests a rough speed equivalent of 800MHz. (For example, it encodes MP3s using BladeEnc at almost precisely six times the speed. Other tasks are similar.)
Working the math, that would suggest a 500MHz G3 should be about a gigahertz or so.
Theoretically, no. Practically, yes: the vast majority of sites running ASP are running IIS, and most of them are programmed in VBScript, a most bletcherous language.
In this particular case, they're running IIS 4: see my other post.
Oh, don't worry. I only get modded up when I post inflammatory yet well-worded posts, or occasionally when I go off the deep end (most of my 5 posts, I look at and wonder - why?) Mods won't touch that one: I was clear, lucid, and somewhat lengthy. :)
This is why you should read at a threshold of 2. Most of the interesting posts have a value of 2. They are the ones posted by people who write well enough to attract moderators' attention fairly often, but who have lost the moderator on this particular post.
There are exceptions, though: mostly karma whores. Sigh. A few trolls too. Bigger sigh.
I thought it was ironic too.
From the server headers:
Server: Microsoft-IIS/4.0
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDGGQGGQDS=IBPCOIMCAGJLEOMDGOFPMCIJ; path=/
Couple that with the godawful CSS code in the source... I dunno. Scary stuff. Like this:
Man, guys. If you're going to use CSS, use it how it was meant to be used. Get a CSS file editor.
It could be worse. At least they haven't gone to 2K.
QT doesn't have a codec, precisely. It's a framework. The QT format allows for multiple codecs.
For example, QT for the Mac comes standard with the following codecs for video:
You can also install your own codecs. I seem to have:
There are a comparable array of audio codecs.
Most of the stuff you see on the web these days is Sorenson. But content creators usually don't work in Sorenson; they work in the higher-quality codecs. I'm leaning towards On2VP3 these days, although in the past I was pretty much a straight-up Indeo man.
It also allows you to encode without using a codec, i.e. raw data & Big Files. This is what the really serious editors with the Really Big Drives (Avid and so on) use.
BTW, the DivX ;-) player for the Mac uses a QuickTime framework, and can play the DivX inside QT player.
No.
The biggest targets for those cracking computers are banks and telcos. Increasing your bank account and getting free long distance/cellphones, that's what phreakers and other crackers want.
Yes, I can. :)
During the Persian Gulf War, one senior US military officer stole an attack helicopter (I believe it was an Apache) because he was frustrated with the way the war was being conducted, and flew off to attack the Iraqis by himself.
The British did the right thing, of course, and shot him down. IIRC, he was a Major in the Army.
Now, you can certainly complain that this movie is unrealistic. I would probably agree with you there. But to base your claim on how it portrays the American military as lacking discipline is, well, unwise. ;)
Okay, well, you are curiously wrong.
D&D (the original) goes back, way back, before my time.
AD&D originally consisted of three hardcover books: the Player's Handbook, the Dungeonmaster's Guide, and the Monster Manual. The theory was that players could buy the PH and get everything they needed from it, while DMs would buy the DMG and MM for the rest. In actual fact, most everyone bought all three.
Slightly later, after the MM, the Fiend Folio was released. This was mostly a compilation of monsters from White Dwarf magazine. These four books made up AD&D as it was played in the early '80s.
Some people also used a book called Deities & Demigods. It sucked (more than D&D generally did) though so even people who had a copy didn't make much use of it.
In the mid-'80s, TSR started putting out more supplements. One of these supplements was Oriental Adventures. Another was Unearthed Arcana, which introduced a lot of rules changes; there were numerous others, like the Monster Manual II and plenty more I've forgotten (happily).
Second edition AD&D wasn't released until right around the end of the '80s. I've never played it but from what I've seen of it, it's based on Unearthed Arcana, only more so. But by the time it was released, Oriental Adventures (probably the best D&D book ever published) had gone out of print.
I'm not sure when SpellJammer came out precisely; I think it did come out around the same time as 2nd ed. More goofy stuff.
BTW, Wizards of the Coast is a division of Hasbro now. WotC bought TSR with the fortune they made from Magic: The Gathering, and then Hasbro swallowed them up.
Actually, AD&D is a trademark owned by Hasbro. Remember who bought WotC.
Trek IV was the most commercially successful of the entire series. It's still the movie with the most mainstream popularity.
Watching it now... it's so eighties, yes. It's like a cross between Ferris Bueller and Star Trek. :)
All the trekkies whined when Trek III came out, because Trek II's ending was Poignant and III ruined it, or something. :) (I disliked II, mostly because of its horrendously contrived storyline. Drunks in space. That's all I can say.)
Fortunately (perhaps), directors don't have that much power on a Trek movie set. The big-name actors are the real stars, know it, and throw their weight around accordingly.
The real powers are the writers and the actors. Oh yeah, and Rick Berman. :)
Simple. Quit trying to push nuclear families on to people.
Our whole family law system is based around the idea of the nuclear family. We make it very difficult for children to be passed around between caregivers that they're related to, unless they happen to be direct parents.
For an example, look at the Elian Gonzalez case. This case was hyped up by the American media as a battle between Cuban exiles and Cuban communism, but I think that's a misperception.
Elian was taken away from his father by his mother to be placed in the care of his extended family. Unfortunately, his mother died, and his father turned up to get custody back.
Elian's extended family couldn't even get a hearing to determine if they were more suited to take care of the young boy. The nuclear rights of the sole living parent were so strong as to completely override even the wishes of the dead mother, simply because she was dead.
Perhaps the right thing was done in the end: I don't know. But it does bother me - a lot - that Elian's family in Miami couldn't get a hearing. And the reason is because it's saying that the extended family doesn't exist.
The problem, I think, is the nuclear family. Two people just aren't enough. Most civilizations in history have used some form of extended family to raise children.
We've gone to this nuclear family model, and it's insufficient. Unfortunately, instead of going back to the extended family model, we're trying to artificially prop up the nuclear family and make it work.
Perhaps. I didn't start programming until after the first wall-socket experience. (Although not right after... that would just be too funky :)
Definitely FreeBSD.
Use FreeBSD 3.x for old boxes, 4.x for new boxes. (Especially use 3.x if you have old, weird, cranky proprietary CD-ROMs and other hardware from that era.)
Here's the breakdown:
The problem with them is that they make basic assumptions about your hardware.
Every Intel box in the universe is capable of putting up characters on the screen. Anything past that, you're making assumptions.
The *BSD installers can be setup on a box with a Hercules graphics card.
And you wonder why you'd want to do that? Well, let's say you're setting up a server. The normal way I have of getting a server going is to plug in a video card - any video card, junk is great - get FreeBSD going on it, get a telnet or ssh daemon running, and then compile a custom kernel with no video card driver & rip that sucker out of there. Because there's no GUI, I can do that.
I'm a he, not a they, as a careful examination of my email addy would probably show. :)
Kinda. I was thinking of the latter, though. How much of the media remains free from the direct control of the MPAA or RIAA, and how much of the rest agrees with them on the DMCA? I would suggest, nearly all.
Which is partly why I pay for Salon, and run my own website. I think this state of things is wrong: we've lost our free press to corporate consolidation rather than government censorship. However, it's still the state of things as they are.
The people who back the DMCA own the media.
No, I've managed to dodge the kids bullet so far. However, I don't see how that's relevant: like everybody else who's once been 14, I remember what it's like. (Or at least that's what you would think.)
Toddlers are a different issue. We've restricted what toddlers can do for a very long time, probably since before recorded history.
My argument is that we're drawing the line too high. And yes, you're right in a sense: the police are suffering from the same illusions as the parents are. (At least in some cases. I still remember the 15-year-old boy I once knew who was drunk out of his mind one night and walked past a group of police officers bellowing that he was god. He was in a public park that was closed because it was after hours, and remarkably obviously underage: he looked about 12. Thus, he was guilty of three offenses: trespassing, underage drinking and disturbing the peace. Yet, they didn't arrest him. I'll never know the real reason why, but the best theory I've heard is that they were at a checkpoint checking for people without driver's licenses, and if they'd busted him, they might have missed their quota. It probably helped that he was white and had obviously middle-class clothes on, too.)
Maybe I shouldn't complain too much, though. I used to stick my thumb in wall sockets when I was a preteen because it felt neat. I suspect you'd disapprove of that too :)
Which universe do you live in? Hell, I know more than 12 DirecTV hackers myself. There are thousands of 'em.
Dr. Felten:
Some commentators would characterize the last 25 years or so as a conflict between patent holders (the manufacturers of consumer technology) and copyright holders (the producers of consumer culture). The landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Sony v. Universal, was set up as typifying this conflict.
However, it would seem that, many years after the movie studios lost their attempt to prevent consumer VCRs from being sold, the VCR has, if anything, benefitted the motion picture industry.
Similarly, in the recent Napster case, it is worthwhile noting that after the RIAA successfully shut down Napster, their sales started to immediately decline, and have continued to decline. Many have argued that Napster provided a vastly superior method of music promotion, especially for older records, than radio, and its shutdown has resulted in music fans not finding out about records they might otherwise buy.
Do you think that this conflict is more imagined than real? In other words, is it more likely to the benefit of the cultural industries to work with technological development, rather than fight it?
Actually, even insane rollerbladers coast a lot more than that.
The trouble is when you get on bumpy surfaces, like sidewalks. If you only rollerblade on paved areas, then it's really smooth and actually if your CD player is properly centered in a backpack or something, it'll skip less than it would if you were running at the same speed.
But on a sidewalk... if you get up any decent speed at all, you're facing bumps. Every time you hit one of those edges, it jostles the player. You bounce, but your player doesn't like it so much.
That means that if you speed down the sidewalk for, say, 400 seconds, your CD player's buffer is now empty, and is not being refilled.
In most cities, it's not safe to blade on the roads, and therefore we get this problem.
Okay. A couple things.
One: Patent law makes nobody a criminal. Copyright is the only form of intellectual property protection that intersects with the criminal law. Patent and trademark are purely civil matters. This is one of the big reasons why I'm against copyright on binaries; copyright in some respects is stronger than patent.
Two: I'm not sure what you mean by "overly broad." Patent law in some respects is narrower than copyright; the main one is the term.