Thank you. Someone "gets it". Others saw my criticism of SQL and assumed that this meant I was saying it was the wrong technology, and then proceeded to defend SQL at the costs of all truth and sanity.
The GP's response is just weird. Where I did claim SQL was an actual RDBMS? When someone feels the need to put words in my mouth (he's not the only one) in order to respond to something, well, it's evidence of not having an argument.
Define irony: A guy who clearly has no experience with large scale database system telling others how bad SQL is while using a tiny fringe asstastic software package as an example.
Nah, irony is someone writing a petulant rejoiner to a comment claiming the author doesn't know what they're talking about when you haven't actually spent any time trying to understand the original comment.
Virtually every assertion you've made it based upon a failure to even make an attempt to understand what you're responding to:
"Define irony: A guy who clearly has no experience with large scale database system telling others how bad SQL is while using a tiny fringe asstastic software package as an example." - There's absolutely nothing in my comment suggesting I have no experience with large scale database systems, and the only "example" I give that involves a "tiny fringe asstastic software package" was a passing reference to MythTV to make a point about... why SQL is unpopular for non-enterprise work.
"Perhaps you should investigate the various SQL standards out there before you talk out your ass. I have a large web app that runs on Oracle, PostgreSQL and MSSQL, with the same queries. Slightly different scripts to create the database to deal with the differences in stored proceedures, so theres a little bit of truth there, but I could have moved the stored procedures to a different location if I wanted to." - You're responding to a claim that it's impossible to write queries that work under all three implementations of SQL. In fact, my first paragraph says no such thing. One of the things it says that case dependencies mean that it's very easy to write standard SQL that doesn't work on different platforms. That's absolutely true, it's one of the reasons why you'll be hard pressed to find any enterprise development shop that developers and tests under anything other than the target RDBMS(es). In addition, the first paragraph also points out a range of other issues with SQL that your response doesn't cover, such as the handling of nulls and blanks. Your response does not, as you claim, prove that "Your entire first paragraph is based on 100% factually incorrect statements." That's basically a lie.
"Your second paragraph is clearly written by... well, again someone who has never used a high end database. Any high end database worth its salt is designed to deal with raw disk space for its tables..." At this point, I'm not even sure what crack you've been smoking to think that I implied anything contradicting that. I didn't even address how high end RDBMSes store data physically on a disk. You then go off on a tangent about how crap MythTV is without ever actually addressing the point being made.
"As for the last two paragraphs... why bother, you're clearly disconnected and the rest is just you talking out your ass. Perhaps one should consider that its not SQL that sucks since so many people are capable of doing things with it just fine. Perhaps you should look a little closer to home and consider that your inability to use it is what sucks." So you actually are under the impression that abstracting the underlying RDBMS and ensuring that the HLL is kept separate is... a bad thing? That someone proposing it is "disconnected" and "talking out of (their) ass"?
It doesn't matter much I guess, but I've been working in an Oracle shop for about fifteen years now, and done my best to push free software alternatives such as PostgreSQL in recent years - and, more importantly, seen our application support people push SQL Server with much the same results. I'm directly familiar with the ability of, for example, PostgreSQL to "run the same queries as" Oracle when no thought has been put into the differences. And I'm directly familiar with the type of software that you start to get when 50 or more developers all "think" they're SQL Gods, writing their bits of our applications according to what they think is best pra
There's a fairly obvious reason for NoSQL vs Pro-SQL, and it's this: SQL is absolutely the worst database query language ever invented... apart from all the others.
Virtually no-one who's spent any time analyzing and working with large amounts of data has a good word to say about SQL. It was designed from the start as a language that would be integrated into others, and yet simple real world realities make that impossible, with 99% of implementations being of the "Build a large string, and pass that string to "the SQL connector" to be parsed and interpreted" form. Its handling of null and the empty string is incomprehensible and useless, in part because nobody involved ever had the cajones to do what needed to be done with both. There is no standardized set of data types in the real world. Simple issues with unstandardized case dependencies can make an application that works with Oracle and only uses standard "select" statements not work under, say, PostgreSQL. And these are the surface level technical issues: talk to any relational database guru and they'll come up with numerous philosophical issues too.
To this you add another component that's always an issue: the entirely haphazard way in which relational databases are implemented on most operating systems, whereby the DBMS is another application, that manages its own files, and needs to be coached with kind words and a happy smile in order to get anything done. Does your app use a database for something back-endy, like, for example, MythTV does for its settings and lists of channels and TV programs? Well, either forget it, or be prepared to put your users through hell as they have to ensure that the entirely separate DBMS is installed and that usernames and passwords are set up for your application's use.
And so, naturally, people hate them. With a passion. To the point that anyone sane is going to put it low on the list for any application, even when it's entirely appropriate. Of course your multiuser databases in your enterprise environment should be stored using an enterprise grade RDBMS, and as nobody's come up with anything better, you should be talking to it using SQL.
...and you should be talking to it carefully. Ideally, those writing the application core should be handing over the database access to someone who can abstract each query properly. Because SQL sucks. It just sucks less than anything else designed to do the same thing.
The Wii would make a lousy DVD player, as it has no way to pipe 5.1, beyond Dolby Pro-logic, out to a receiver.
But your comment is nonetheless hilarious, the Wii is a frighteningly good system, and software from "Rayman Raving Rabbids" to Wii Fit is justifiably popular.
Really? What other PDAs were around in 1989 when Apple started working on the Newton...
Other than the various devices by Psion, Casio, and whatever the devil that other Japanese company is called? I believe Atari came out with one around that time too (might have been slightly later, but still well before the Newton release), it even made a cameo appearance on Terminator 2.
Pocketable computers, fully programmable and bundled with basic contact-list/calculator/note taking/etc apps were common in the late eighties. Scully produced one with a touchscreen-driven GUI.
This is not to understate Apple's achievement, but the notion they were first out the door is completely wrong. They put a name to the device family that stuck, and they produced a very good version, they didn't give birth to the family. That'd be like claiming Apple invented the MP3 player, or the smartphone (indeed, it's questionable whether anything Apple has produced qualifies as a smartphone - until Apple came along, nobody took anyone seriously who described a device not capable of being programmed by its owner as a "smartphone". Apple has seriously redefined the term.)
That's not really the problem with MythTV. In some countries the scheduling data is completely free, in others, such as the US, you can get low quality crap scheduling info for free or pay a relatively small amount (compared to TiVo) to get higher quality scheduling information. As my Myth set up is not my primary DVR, I use a combination of the free OTA EPG information (urgh) and the XMLTV DirecTV feed (which is free but lacks some critical information preventing you from avoiding recording repeats, etc), but if it became my primary feed then I believe the cost of Myth's recommended service is $15 per *year*.
No, the problem with Myth is that it's just awful. Configuration is a PITA, the various UIs all have largely the same faults, you need to hunt around for documentation to find out simple stuff like what keys do what, you get cryptic error messages, and my experience of the developers thus far (albeit it was one developer, but apparently he was typical of the group) was extremely negative, with the team being defensive and, actually, rather proud of the fact that the product is barely usable.
"It's by programmers for programmers", said the developer in question, extremely annoyed that I hadn't read the obscure page on the Wiki that explains that this is the project's motto. No, I'm serious, THAT'S MYTHTV's MOTTO.
Alas the other alternatives I've seen are either not free, or they're written in Python. The last refresh I saw of Myth on Ubuntu looks a little better, but it's a long way off being a "just works" DVR tool. Despite being a free software enthusiast who almost always recommends the free software version of whatever tool anyone is looking for, from Firefox to The Gimp, I cannot find it in my heart to recommend Myth to anyone. And I'm surprised people are posting here that setting up a Myth box is some kind of solution to TiVo's patent fascism.
You certainly can't justify the inclusion of the iPad on a "worst product" list when it hasn't even been available for sale yet.
Well, I didn't, but I would. It's a stupid product and has no market.
If it becomes popular, it's going to be by accident. It'll be because of some bizarre thing nobody, not even Jobs, expects. You know, like Diebold and NCR will buy tons of them and put them in cash registers and ATMs. That kind of thing.
You might just as well tell me that I was wrong to call George W. Bush a blithering idiot who'd wreck the country if he gets elected when I said words to that effect in 2000. Sometimes something's obvious. The complete pointlessness of the iPad is one of those things.
I'm not worshiping anyone, I'm just pointing out that smarter people (and I disagree with Gruber on a hell of a lot, but I believe him to be a smart guy) wouldn't have made the half-assed sub-ad-hominem "rebuttle" that my correspondent posted. Gruber doesn't generally post "Yeah, well you're posting on Slashdot, and someone else on Slashdot once got it wrong" as an argument.
Sure, there's a market for something "better than a Kindle", but we're talking about the iPad here.
The cheapest iPad costs more than twice the price of a Kindle. It doesn't have the eInk screen. Its battery life is a tragic fraction of the Kindle's 7-14 day battery life. The cheapest iPad doesn't have an always-on Internet connection, and if you buy the version that does (at which point the price is now 3x the Kindle), you have to pay $20 a month for Internet service.
If the Kindle ever drops below $100 I'll consider buying it. If the iPad drops below $100... I'll pass. Not seeing the point in it.
Wait, you were making an initial point? 'cos what I read was a flame that my view was apparently untrustworthy on the grounds that CmdrTaco one dissed the almighty iPod.
I think the point you're trying to make, correct me if you're wrong, is that, uh, yeah. Sorry?
It's funny though, 'cos if you were actually smart, like that guy who does Daring Fireball or something, you'd post something like "Why yes, there is a staggering market for a $700 ten inch iPhone that can't make phone calls, despite the apparent intuitive stupidity of such a premise, it happens that there's this anecdotal/emperical/logical/whatever argument in favor of it."
Unfortunately neither you nor the moderators are that smart, so the mods are resorting to modding down anyone who points out the obvious, and you're left saying "Well, yur on slashdot an sumwon on the slashdot wuz rong once therefour y r rong nuh"
Yes, I really trust the slashdot elite to predict the success or failure of a product that *hasn't even been released yet*.
Never made the quote about the iPod, FWIW, but I appreciate your putting me into some kind of elite, even if it's on Slashdot whose elite is a very low bar to shoot for.
I take it you think there is a market for a 10" iPod Touch/iPhone? Or were you just flaming me to be a jackass?
It's because beyond the "I'll probably buy one anyway" Apple fans, nobody in their right mind thinks there's a market for a $500 10" iPod Touch/$700 10" iPhone that doesn't make phone calls.
And I have a netbook (EeePC 1005HA) that costs 3/5 of that. The screen is beautiful (the web isn't 4:3 either, so I don't know what planet you're living on making the comment that it's not widescreen, and widescreen is definitely the best way to make maximum use of the available space.) I'm not a touchpad kind of person (I prefer the nipple) but the touchpad on the EeePC is definitely the best I've used on any laptop, comparing it to my Thinkpad, my work Dell, and - yes - my old Powerbook. And unlike the iPad, the netbook has a real web browser, that supports concepts like mouseover, plug-ins, and means web pages that require pop-ups to operate (not ads, things like selectors) still work without a problem. I can load real applications onto it, rather than stripped down versions "optimized" (cut-down) for a touchpad only enviroment. I can use a real keyboard.
It's been a couple of weeks now, and the supposed compelling reason for people to buy the iPad has yet to jump out. It's objectively more expensive and more limited than a Netbook. It lacks the readable screen and battery life of an eBook reader (and is more expensive.) It doesn't have the battery life of a modern MP3 player.
Who the hell wants this thing? Why is it there? What the hell Steve? What the hell?
I've never seen news readers being setguid's, but that said, even if they were that's a whole different thing to setuiding a newsreader, let alone to an actually dangerous account such as root. Setguid can be good practice in some instances, it rarely has any downsides unless the administrator and programmers are complete idiots.
INN is an NNTP server, not a newsreader, so that's a whole different ballgame. I don't know how it works now, but once upon a time every server ran as root, so it's no surprise it once did. Today, we know better, and we design servers to run as sandboxed as possible and to never get close to being root. The "1-1024 owned by root" rule has a lot to answer for.
Well, some anti-social motoring isn't criminal per-se, but is nonetheless subject to penalties. Speeding, for instance, is a famous activity for which a person committing it wouldn't be given a criminal record, or risk jail time (unless they're driving really, really, really, fast...) but which does entail fines, a possible loss of license if done frequently enough, and of which the police are generally called in to deal with.
Nope, the versions of Maemo you're talking about had a version of the standard Opera browser. Despite the presence of the world "Opera" in the names of both Opera and Opera Mini, and the fact they come from the same company, these are two entirely different browsers, as alike as, say, Windows Vista and Windows CE.
Around half of Blu-ray discs are single layer, limiting them to 25G (and one or two HD DVD titles were single layer too.) That's high definition video plus at least one "lossless" 5.1 audio track, plus several "lossy" audio tracks for different languages/commentary/7.1 audio for people who'd prefer that over "lossless". Typically two hours of HD 1080p video, minus the audio, fits into a little over 10G. You'll only need one audio track to be streamed to you at any time.
Likewise, ATSC tends to be around 5G an hour (sometimes a little over, sometimes a little under), including two channels of 5.1 audio, and that's not even H.264!
Sure, you're not going to rent many HD movies if you're limited to 50G per month, but unless you're doing something severely wrong, or are typically watching 10 hour long movies, you should be able to watch up to 5 a month in quality akin to Blu-ray or HD DVD.
Here in the UK you can pay £30/month for unlimited calls and sms. More expensive but less hassle.
Exactly.
That's why this isn't going to take off. Here in the US, unlimited calls have been available for the last year or two, and before that "virtually unlimited" (generally unlimited off-peak calls combined with "more peak minutes than you could ever use") was the rule. And MagicJack is a US product.
Essentially, if you have a cellphone, there's no point in this service - indeed, the service is actually going to be a PITA - how are you supposed to receive calls on your cellphone number at home? What happens if you start a call at home and want to finish it away from home? If you don't have a cellphone, then... why use a system designed around a cellphone?
About the best I can think of is for someone to reverse engineer it and see if they can get it to work via T-Mobile's UMA service, making it a way to fill in mobile blackspots. Other than that, it's a neat trick, and a great geek toy, but as an effective product, it's not.
So does it allow you to make calls when you're not in range of your house, like the guy's T-Mobile contract?
I think that's the point. The problem here with all the "VoIP and Wifi will take over from old fashioned phones" people is that they're bucking the trend. People have migrated in droves from landlines to cellphones, despite the higher costs associated with the latter, for the very simple reason that cellphones work everywhere and landlines only work in one spot.
I love the "idea" of this widget, but like the GP, I'm doubtful I'd ever find it useful. And initially I thought "That's because I'm a geek", but then it occured to me that I had everything backwards - it's the geek in me that finds it interesting, it's the normal person in me that finds it useless in practice. My wife, my friends, my collegues, are not going to use this thing. We have cellphones because we want a phone that works everywhere, and this isn't it.
Unless your monitor is an exact multiple of 30fps (which it probably isn't, even an NTSC TV signal is 29.97ffps, not 30) you're going to see jerkiness with your example.
This, incidentally, is why, for example, the "downward pan" at the beginning of Star Wars (to name a famous pan) appears to be jerky when you watch it on TV, no matter how good your progressive-scan DVD player is, yet appears perfectly smooth when seen at the cinema. Incompatible frame rates are a real problem, and that 30/1.001 crap was one of the worst technical decisions made in TV even if it did appear to make perfect sense at the time (the reason was that TVs would have needed to be slightly more expensive to filter out various frequency artifacts had the framerate been exactly 30ffps.)
(ffps = full frames per second, in case anyone thinks I typo'd - full frame = two fields.)
The entire point of a standard is that it's supposed to be, you know, standard, not subject to upgrades every year or two that destroy a significant chunk of your investment.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you. Someone "gets it". Others saw my criticism of SQL and assumed that this meant I was saying it was the wrong technology, and then proceeded to defend SQL at the costs of all truth and sanity.
The GP's response is just weird. Where I did claim SQL was an actual RDBMS? When someone feels the need to put words in my mouth (he's not the only one) in order to respond to something, well, it's evidence of not having an argument.
Nah, irony is someone writing a petulant rejoiner to a comment claiming the author doesn't know what they're talking about when you haven't actually spent any time trying to understand the original comment.
Virtually every assertion you've made it based upon a failure to even make an attempt to understand what you're responding to:
It doesn't matter much I guess, but I've been working in an Oracle shop for about fifteen years now, and done my best to push free software alternatives such as PostgreSQL in recent years - and, more importantly, seen our application support people push SQL Server with much the same results. I'm directly familiar with the ability of, for example, PostgreSQL to "run the same queries as" Oracle when no thought has been put into the differences. And I'm directly familiar with the type of software that you start to get when 50 or more developers all "think" they're SQL Gods, writing their bits of our applications according to what they think is best pra
There's a fairly obvious reason for NoSQL vs Pro-SQL, and it's this: SQL is absolutely the worst database query language ever invented... apart from all the others.
Virtually no-one who's spent any time analyzing and working with large amounts of data has a good word to say about SQL. It was designed from the start as a language that would be integrated into others, and yet simple real world realities make that impossible, with 99% of implementations being of the "Build a large string, and pass that string to "the SQL connector" to be parsed and interpreted" form. Its handling of null and the empty string is incomprehensible and useless, in part because nobody involved ever had the cajones to do what needed to be done with both. There is no standardized set of data types in the real world. Simple issues with unstandardized case dependencies can make an application that works with Oracle and only uses standard "select" statements not work under, say, PostgreSQL. And these are the surface level technical issues: talk to any relational database guru and they'll come up with numerous philosophical issues too.
To this you add another component that's always an issue: the entirely haphazard way in which relational databases are implemented on most operating systems, whereby the DBMS is another application, that manages its own files, and needs to be coached with kind words and a happy smile in order to get anything done. Does your app use a database for something back-endy, like, for example, MythTV does for its settings and lists of channels and TV programs? Well, either forget it, or be prepared to put your users through hell as they have to ensure that the entirely separate DBMS is installed and that usernames and passwords are set up for your application's use.
And so, naturally, people hate them. With a passion. To the point that anyone sane is going to put it low on the list for any application, even when it's entirely appropriate. Of course your multiuser databases in your enterprise environment should be stored using an enterprise grade RDBMS, and as nobody's come up with anything better, you should be talking to it using SQL.
Sure: Here's a link.
Yeah, and, and, Hans Reiser murdered a woman and then lied to cover it up!
Oh, that one's real. Sorry about that.
Mod -1,000,000 "Frankly Totally Tasteless"
The Wii would make a lousy DVD player, as it has no way to pipe 5.1, beyond Dolby Pro-logic, out to a receiver.
But your comment is nonetheless hilarious, the Wii is a frighteningly good system, and software from "Rayman Raving Rabbids" to Wii Fit is justifiably popular.
Other than the various devices by Psion, Casio, and whatever the devil that other Japanese company is called? I believe Atari came out with one around that time too (might have been slightly later, but still well before the Newton release), it even made a cameo appearance on Terminator 2.
Pocketable computers, fully programmable and bundled with basic contact-list/calculator/note taking/etc apps were common in the late eighties. Scully produced one with a touchscreen-driven GUI.
This is not to understate Apple's achievement, but the notion they were first out the door is completely wrong. They put a name to the device family that stuck, and they produced a very good version, they didn't give birth to the family. That'd be like claiming Apple invented the MP3 player, or the smartphone (indeed, it's questionable whether anything Apple has produced qualifies as a smartphone - until Apple came along, nobody took anyone seriously who described a device not capable of being programmed by its owner as a "smartphone". Apple has seriously redefined the term.)
That's not really the problem with MythTV. In some countries the scheduling data is completely free, in others, such as the US, you can get low quality crap scheduling info for free or pay a relatively small amount (compared to TiVo) to get higher quality scheduling information. As my Myth set up is not my primary DVR, I use a combination of the free OTA EPG information (urgh) and the XMLTV DirecTV feed (which is free but lacks some critical information preventing you from avoiding recording repeats, etc), but if it became my primary feed then I believe the cost of Myth's recommended service is $15 per *year*.
No, the problem with Myth is that it's just awful. Configuration is a PITA, the various UIs all have largely the same faults, you need to hunt around for documentation to find out simple stuff like what keys do what, you get cryptic error messages, and my experience of the developers thus far (albeit it was one developer, but apparently he was typical of the group) was extremely negative, with the team being defensive and, actually, rather proud of the fact that the product is barely usable.
"It's by programmers for programmers", said the developer in question, extremely annoyed that I hadn't read the obscure page on the Wiki that explains that this is the project's motto. No, I'm serious, THAT'S MYTHTV's MOTTO.
Alas the other alternatives I've seen are either not free, or they're written in Python. The last refresh I saw of Myth on Ubuntu looks a little better, but it's a long way off being a "just works" DVR tool. Despite being a free software enthusiast who almost always recommends the free software version of whatever tool anyone is looking for, from Firefox to The Gimp, I cannot find it in my heart to recommend Myth to anyone. And I'm surprised people are posting here that setting up a Myth box is some kind of solution to TiVo's patent fascism.
Well, I didn't, but I would. It's a stupid product and has no market.
If it becomes popular, it's going to be by accident. It'll be because of some bizarre thing nobody, not even Jobs, expects. You know, like Diebold and NCR will buy tons of them and put them in cash registers and ATMs. That kind of thing.
You might just as well tell me that I was wrong to call George W. Bush a blithering idiot who'd wreck the country if he gets elected when I said words to that effect in 2000. Sometimes something's obvious. The complete pointlessness of the iPad is one of those things.
I'm not worshiping anyone, I'm just pointing out that smarter people (and I disagree with Gruber on a hell of a lot, but I believe him to be a smart guy) wouldn't have made the half-assed sub-ad-hominem "rebuttle" that my correspondent posted. Gruber doesn't generally post "Yeah, well you're posting on Slashdot, and someone else on Slashdot once got it wrong" as an argument.
Sure, there's a market for something "better than a Kindle", but we're talking about the iPad here.
The cheapest iPad costs more than twice the price of a Kindle. It doesn't have the eInk screen. Its battery life is a tragic fraction of the Kindle's 7-14 day battery life. The cheapest iPad doesn't have an always-on Internet connection, and if you buy the version that does (at which point the price is now 3x the Kindle), you have to pay $20 a month for Internet service.
If the Kindle ever drops below $100 I'll consider buying it. If the iPad drops below $100... I'll pass. Not seeing the point in it.
Wait, you were making an initial point? 'cos what I read was a flame that my view was apparently untrustworthy on the grounds that CmdrTaco one dissed the almighty iPod.
I think the point you're trying to make, correct me if you're wrong, is that, uh, yeah. Sorry?
It's funny though, 'cos if you were actually smart, like that guy who does Daring Fireball or something, you'd post something like "Why yes, there is a staggering market for a $700 ten inch iPhone that can't make phone calls, despite the apparent intuitive stupidity of such a premise, it happens that there's this anecdotal/emperical/logical/whatever argument in favor of it."
Unfortunately neither you nor the moderators are that smart, so the mods are resorting to modding down anyone who points out the obvious, and you're left saying "Well, yur on slashdot an sumwon on the slashdot wuz rong once therefour y r rong nuh"
Never made the quote about the iPod, FWIW, but I appreciate your putting me into some kind of elite, even if it's on Slashdot whose elite is a very low bar to shoot for.
I take it you think there is a market for a 10" iPod Touch/iPhone? Or were you just flaming me to be a jackass?
It's because beyond the "I'll probably buy one anyway" Apple fans, nobody in their right mind thinks there's a market for a $500 10" iPod Touch/$700 10" iPhone that doesn't make phone calls.
And I have a netbook (EeePC 1005HA) that costs 3/5 of that. The screen is beautiful (the web isn't 4:3 either, so I don't know what planet you're living on making the comment that it's not widescreen, and widescreen is definitely the best way to make maximum use of the available space.) I'm not a touchpad kind of person (I prefer the nipple) but the touchpad on the EeePC is definitely the best I've used on any laptop, comparing it to my Thinkpad, my work Dell, and - yes - my old Powerbook. And unlike the iPad, the netbook has a real web browser, that supports concepts like mouseover, plug-ins, and means web pages that require pop-ups to operate (not ads, things like selectors) still work without a problem. I can load real applications onto it, rather than stripped down versions "optimized" (cut-down) for a touchpad only enviroment. I can use a real keyboard.
It's been a couple of weeks now, and the supposed compelling reason for people to buy the iPad has yet to jump out. It's objectively more expensive and more limited than a Netbook. It lacks the readable screen and battery life of an eBook reader (and is more expensive.) It doesn't have the battery life of a modern MP3 player.
Who the hell wants this thing? Why is it there? What the hell Steve? What the hell?
I've never seen news readers being setguid's, but that said, even if they were that's a whole different thing to setuiding a newsreader, let alone to an actually dangerous account such as root. Setguid can be good practice in some instances, it rarely has any downsides unless the administrator and programmers are complete idiots.
INN is an NNTP server, not a newsreader, so that's a whole different ballgame. I don't know how it works now, but once upon a time every server ran as root, so it's no surprise it once did. Today, we know better, and we design servers to run as sandboxed as possible and to never get close to being root. The "1-1024 owned by root" rule has a lot to answer for.
Well, some anti-social motoring isn't criminal per-se, but is nonetheless subject to penalties. Speeding, for instance, is a famous activity for which a person committing it wouldn't be given a criminal record, or risk jail time (unless they're driving really, really, really, fast...) but which does entail fines, a possible loss of license if done frequently enough, and of which the police are generally called in to deal with.
Why would you setuid a newsreader?
Just curious. I've never seen that before. Newsreaders have no good reason to be root, any more than email clients.
Nope, the versions of Maemo you're talking about had a version of the standard Opera browser. Despite the presence of the world "Opera" in the names of both Opera and Opera Mini, and the fact they come from the same company, these are two entirely different browsers, as alike as, say, Windows Vista and Windows CE.
How do you work that out?
Around half of Blu-ray discs are single layer, limiting them to 25G (and one or two HD DVD titles were single layer too.) That's high definition video plus at least one "lossless" 5.1 audio track, plus several "lossy" audio tracks for different languages/commentary/7.1 audio for people who'd prefer that over "lossless". Typically two hours of HD 1080p video, minus the audio, fits into a little over 10G. You'll only need one audio track to be streamed to you at any time.
Likewise, ATSC tends to be around 5G an hour (sometimes a little over, sometimes a little under), including two channels of 5.1 audio, and that's not even H.264!
Sure, you're not going to rent many HD movies if you're limited to 50G per month, but unless you're doing something severely wrong, or are typically watching 10 hour long movies, you should be able to watch up to 5 a month in quality akin to Blu-ray or HD DVD.
They're not hardwired to your laptop keyboard though.
Exactly.
That's why this isn't going to take off. Here in the US, unlimited calls have been available for the last year or two, and before that "virtually unlimited" (generally unlimited off-peak calls combined with "more peak minutes than you could ever use") was the rule. And MagicJack is a US product.
Essentially, if you have a cellphone, there's no point in this service - indeed, the service is actually going to be a PITA - how are you supposed to receive calls on your cellphone number at home? What happens if you start a call at home and want to finish it away from home? If you don't have a cellphone, then... why use a system designed around a cellphone?
About the best I can think of is for someone to reverse engineer it and see if they can get it to work via T-Mobile's UMA service, making it a way to fill in mobile blackspots. Other than that, it's a neat trick, and a great geek toy, but as an effective product, it's not.
So does it allow you to make calls when you're not in range of your house, like the guy's T-Mobile contract?
I think that's the point. The problem here with all the "VoIP and Wifi will take over from old fashioned phones" people is that they're bucking the trend. People have migrated in droves from landlines to cellphones, despite the higher costs associated with the latter, for the very simple reason that cellphones work everywhere and landlines only work in one spot.
I love the "idea" of this widget, but like the GP, I'm doubtful I'd ever find it useful. And initially I thought "That's because I'm a geek", but then it occured to me that I had everything backwards - it's the geek in me that finds it interesting, it's the normal person in me that finds it useless in practice. My wife, my friends, my collegues, are not going to use this thing. We have cellphones because we want a phone that works everywhere, and this isn't it.
Unless your monitor is an exact multiple of 30fps (which it probably isn't, even an NTSC TV signal is 29.97ffps, not 30) you're going to see jerkiness with your example.
This, incidentally, is why, for example, the "downward pan" at the beginning of Star Wars (to name a famous pan) appears to be jerky when you watch it on TV, no matter how good your progressive-scan DVD player is, yet appears perfectly smooth when seen at the cinema. Incompatible frame rates are a real problem, and that 30/1.001 crap was one of the worst technical decisions made in TV even if it did appear to make perfect sense at the time (the reason was that TVs would have needed to be slightly more expensive to filter out various frequency artifacts had the framerate been exactly 30ffps.)
(ffps = full frames per second, in case anyone thinks I typo'd - full frame = two fields.)
I think you've hit upon why Blu-ray sucks.
The entire point of a standard is that it's supposed to be, you know, standard, not subject to upgrades every year or two that destroy a significant chunk of your investment.