A city's population starting to sound like chickens from helium intoxication? Hmmm... I doubt it would do anything bad as it would be released in the open air...
First -- it's only crappy if the difference is noticeable. Icode my music in a lossy format, but of course enough so it isn't noticeable when using headphones. That's good enough for me, and as a bonus I've saved the disk space. In the future 80 GB might be little, but it isn't today and that's what matters as you buy hard drives.
Of course the other secret is to eat 20mg of caffeine immediately before falling asleep.
Yes, the secret to cause damage to your body in the long term.:-)
Here are some more info from from Wikipedia... I wouldn't play around with pure caffeine more than I'd do with pure drugs of other kinds...:-O
---
Too much caffeine can lead to caffeine intoxication. The symptoms of this disorder are restlessness, nervousness, excitement, insomnia, flushed face, diuresis, and gastrointestial complaints. They can occur in some people after as little as 250 mg per day. More than 1 g per day may result in muscle twitching, rambling flow of thought and speech, cardiac arrhythmia, and psychomotor agitation. Caffeine intoxication can lead to symptoms similar to panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. The LD50 is estimated to be about 192 mg/kg of body mass, or about 72 cups of coffee for an average adult.
Is that better than adblock? It blocks selected Flash ads too (with a button you can click to prevent that too, I think). It also blocks most other things a user could wish for too.:)
I think there's at least three good things about them:
1. They leave out reasons for bugs and security holes from the main application since it becomes less complex. Core application developers can focus on just that -- developing the core application.
2. They let users get exactly what features they want so they can customize the application better for their needs. It will become easier to use for this reason (no need to navigate through big menu hierarchies and can spend less time learning how to use the applcation, etc).
3. The plugins, on the other hand, will be developed by highly motivated individuals or groups, which often results in a work of higher quality and better specialized for the job than if it would've been part of the main application and given only the necessary time so the main developers wouldn't delay main application releases. Take the adblock plugin for Mozilla as an example with advanced pattern matching and Flash blocking with content being intercepted before it's downloaded (as opposed to with adblocking proxies that analyze and filters already downloaded data). Or the SmoothWheel plugin that contains a dozen settings to let the user control exactly how the smooth algorithm should work (who can of course stick with defaults and never give it more thought too).
The major downsides are probably:
1. Users need to spend time downloading and finding out if plugins exist for their needs.
2. Users need to keep up to date with more than the main application if the plugins contain bugs he/she wish to see fixed.
3. Inexperienced users who aren't used to plugins, users with a lack of patience, or users who don't want to spend time to tinker with their application to get the features they need might be put off by the lack of features in the main application and switch to another one that's advertised having a larger feature set.
I'm also aware of that new TLD's are in most cases a dead end to improve domain name availability, partially due to all domain parkers purchasing domains they only wish to sell.:-P
Anyone have any ideas on how to improve this? Should domain parking in this way not be allowed? However, although that's disallowed, maybe we'd still have problems with e.g. a movie company registering a domain name just for a movie (happens all the time), which happens to have a common name.
Should more restrictions about what a company can register be put into place? Controlled TLD's that companies are forced and/or disallowed to register stuff under? So a commercial company that makes a profit can't register under.org, and so porn sites can't register stuff like www.whitehouse.com and must stick with e.g. www.whitehouse.xxx? This could make the web much easier to navigate too, as you'd not even have to think about if this is a non-profitable organization or that really is part of a network of web sites (.net).
I skimmed through the article, but still believes it's simply a game development API / abstraction layer that's the same for Windows and Xbox 2. Was there anything more to it? How is it a full-on assault on the gaming world?
Isn't it just natural for them to do this thing? Can't say it's particularly evil... If I were in their place, I wouldn't think it would be such a great idea to keep game development for your different platforms incompatible. How horribly stupid that would be, actually.
I mean, after all, Windows users could just use the file-hunting animated dog thing...
I at least think Windows indexing service sucks, so the doggie mostly takes about as much time to find stuff for me as if no indexing had been done. Maybe this is where Google tries to shine and make you find your stuff as fast as you get results from a Google query?
Or so I'm told. My personal experiences with allowing the Windows Indexing service to run in the background have been that it's more trouble than its worth. Yes, on the rare occasion that it's actually -not- indexing when I search, the search is blazingly fast (compared to a non-indexed search).
Disable the Windows indexing service, thrash the Windows + F thing, and get X1. It'll work on the hard drive occasionally like the Windows indexer, but it's incredibly more fast.
Well, first this idea is part of Microsoft's WinFS plans. The idea with WinFS was partially born when Microsoft developers realized that major parts of the web can be searched faster than a user's hard drive. It will be interesting to see how this application will collide with Microsoft's plans, that's for sure. It's basically fast searches and enhanced metadata support that are the key parts of WinFS, which is in turn a key part of Longhorn.
Second, an indexing software that does the same thing is already available today and worked very well when I tried it out. It's actually almost perfect, except for the fact that it causes occasional hard drive thrashing as it tries to keep the index up-to-date. This is unfortunately a rather major downside, but if you can bear with this, you'll get literally instant file searches on your entire hard drive -- it narrows down the possible matches as you type each letter. It even indexes file contents for small files. I'm talking about X1.
I've used that in the past, but ended up getting the "real" thing instead... At least for me, RA had very low performance and choppy video. When getting the original, it was silk smooth.:-/
Firefox is called the "lean, mean browsing machine". Opera has just called it "the fastest browser on earth", and they still rank very well there, although I haven't compared with a stop watch...
After disabling the Mail & IRC to transform it from something like the Mozilla suite to Firefox, I actually enjoy and regularly use most of its features and can't complain about bloat. It's still just a 3 MB download too, if you don't include the entire Java package.:-) This is much smaller than Firefox, and it also lacks all the XUL junk I don't care for really.
I don't use the mail or IRC client so I disabled them in the Preferences. I use Opera 7.50.
Too many things going on
It has just one more menu than Firefox (the standard Windows menu), the average menu size is maybe 3-4 items larger than Firefox's, and I have only 5 buttons in the toolbar (back, forward, refresh/stop [in same button], home, wand). 1 search field, 1 address field.
Can't say anything is in non-obvious places either. I mean, how hard can it be to find the proper menu option when you only have 3 non-standard menus at an average length of maybe 12 items? (I consider File, Edit, Window, Bookmark, Help to all be very standardized or straight forward with the regular options).
Try to reduce the Linux community by litterally annoying their followers to death. Particularly the zealots will get issues if they have weak hearts (which most have since geeks don't exercise) while composing their forum posts. A very clever plan indeed...
Yes, within the well-defined limits of your hearing of course!
How do you know that five or ten years down the road these contemporary, super-duper codecs won'T be held in the same disregard?
I don't know, and never claimed so either. I just claim that I can't hear a difference between modern codecs and a CD unless I'm using high quality headphones.
128 kbps mp3's were once seen as great because when it had its breakthrough, there was almost no competition in the compressed audio field. I'm sure people could still hear differences with good hardware then too, but it was still an awesome piece of technology. Now we've moved on further and the question is no longer if the technology allows for near CD quality or not (all of them do), but if the difference is audible or not. I claim they're almost there today with e.g. 128 kbps, possibly 160, Ogg's, with the exception of when you use some good headphones or have other above average equipment.
Not even if it's about average quality speakers? Not even if it's about some rather cheap speakers?
I can't say I hear much of a difference with modern codecs, and I own some average speakers. Maybe 128 kbps mp3 can sound bad (although that depends a lot on the kind of music), but that's an aging codec anyway. I think encoded files in the 192 - 256 kbps range is the best, and 128 kbps ogg's often acceptable, especially with the DFX plugin (or similar) for Winamp to compensate for shortcomings in compressed formats.
I'd definitely not call 128 kbps in modern codecs "disgusting". In ogg's I've found it to be roughly as 160-192 kbps mp3's and that's perfectfly fine for my ears.
Slashdot Mirror
What are you trying to say might happen exactly?
A city's population starting to sound like chickens from helium intoxication? Hmmm... I doubt it would do anything bad as it would be released in the open air...
... and how would it explode, exactly?
The plant is trying to *uphold* a process, not *restrain* a process.
what's the point of testing how it sounds?
To see how much worse the lossy codecs are in comparison?
First -- it's only crappy if the difference is noticeable. Icode my music in a lossy format, but of course enough so it isn't noticeable when using headphones. That's good enough for me, and as a bonus I've saved the disk space. In the future 80 GB might be little, but it isn't today and that's what matters as you buy hard drives.
few 'real' apps use MFC - and certainly none of Microsoft's
;)
But WordPad does!
And they even give away the source!
What does the Slashdot crowd think about the overall design and its downsides, such as power consumption on notebooks?
:-P
At least the submitter understand there's no use asking for its upsides here.
Of course the other secret is to eat 20mg of caffeine immediately before falling asleep.
:-)
:-O
Yes, the secret to cause damage to your body in the long term.
Here are some more info from from Wikipedia... I wouldn't play around with pure caffeine more than I'd do with pure drugs of other kinds...
---
Too much caffeine can lead to caffeine intoxication. The symptoms of this disorder are restlessness, nervousness, excitement, insomnia, flushed face, diuresis, and gastrointestial complaints. They can occur in some people after as little as 250 mg per day. More than 1 g per day may result in muscle twitching, rambling flow of thought and speech, cardiac arrhythmia, and psychomotor agitation. Caffeine intoxication can lead to symptoms similar to panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. The LD50 is estimated to be about 192 mg/kg of body mass, or about 72 cups of coffee for an average adult.
With its scientific goals -- yes. ;-)
... and btw, even though the mp3 name says "Yankovic" for some reason, it's definitely not by him, but Supernova.
For those who still don't know what this is all about:
mp3 download
Is that better than adblock? It blocks selected Flash ads too (with a button you can click to prevent that too, I think). It also blocks most other things a user could wish for too. :)
I think there's at least three good things about them:
1. They leave out reasons for bugs and security holes from the main application since it becomes less complex. Core application developers can focus on just that -- developing the core application.
2. They let users get exactly what features they want so they can customize the application better for their needs. It will become easier to use for this reason (no need to navigate through big menu hierarchies and can spend less time learning how to use the applcation, etc).
3. The plugins, on the other hand, will be developed by highly motivated individuals or groups, which often results in a work of higher quality and better specialized for the job than if it would've been part of the main application and given only the necessary time so the main developers wouldn't delay main application releases. Take the adblock plugin for Mozilla as an example with advanced pattern matching and Flash blocking with content being intercepted before it's downloaded (as opposed to with adblocking proxies that analyze and filters already downloaded data). Or the SmoothWheel plugin that contains a dozen settings to let the user control exactly how the smooth algorithm should work (who can of course stick with defaults and never give it more thought too).
The major downsides are probably:
1. Users need to spend time downloading and finding out if plugins exist for their needs.
2. Users need to keep up to date with more than the main application if the plugins contain bugs he/she wish to see fixed.
3. Inexperienced users who aren't used to plugins, users with a lack of patience, or users who don't want to spend time to tinker with their application to get the features they need might be put off by the lack of features in the main application and switch to another one that's advertised having a larger feature set.
I'm also aware of that new TLD's are in most cases a dead end to improve domain name availability, partially due to all domain parkers purchasing domains they only wish to sell. :-P
.org, and so porn sites can't register stuff like www.whitehouse.com and must stick with e.g. www.whitehouse.xxx? This could make the web much easier to navigate too, as you'd not even have to think about if this is a non-profitable organization or that really is part of a network of web sites (.net).
Anyone have any ideas on how to improve this? Should domain parking in this way not be allowed? However, although that's disallowed, maybe we'd still have problems with e.g. a movie company registering a domain name just for a movie (happens all the time), which happens to have a common name.
Should more restrictions about what a company can register be put into place? Controlled TLD's that companies are forced and/or disallowed to register stuff under? So a commercial company that makes a profit can't register under
Or is all this freedom best in the end?
kick your mom in the nuts
:-)
That was more funny than trollish to me actually.
I skimmed through the article, but still believes it's simply a game development API / abstraction layer that's the same for Windows and Xbox 2. Was there anything more to it? How is it a full-on assault on the gaming world?
Isn't it just natural for them to do this thing? Can't say it's particularly evil... If I were in their place, I wouldn't think it would be such a great idea to keep game development for your different platforms incompatible. How horribly stupid that would be, actually.
I mean, after all, Windows users could just use the file-hunting animated dog thing...
I at least think Windows indexing service sucks, so the doggie mostly takes about as much time to find stuff for me as if no indexing had been done. Maybe this is where Google tries to shine and make you find your stuff as fast as you get results from a Google query?
It works a lot better when you enable indexing.
Or so I'm told. My personal experiences with allowing the Windows Indexing service to run in the background have been that it's more trouble than its worth. Yes, on the rare occasion that it's actually -not- indexing when I search, the search is blazingly fast (compared to a non-indexed search).
Disable the Windows indexing service, thrash the Windows + F thing, and get X1. It'll work on the hard drive occasionally like the Windows indexer, but it's incredibly more fast.
Well, first this idea is part of Microsoft's WinFS plans. The idea with WinFS was partially born when Microsoft developers realized that major parts of the web can be searched faster than a user's hard drive. It will be interesting to see how this application will collide with Microsoft's plans, that's for sure. It's basically fast searches and enhanced metadata support that are the key parts of WinFS, which is in turn a key part of Longhorn.
Second, an indexing software that does the same thing is already available today and worked very well when I tried it out. It's actually almost perfect, except for the fact that it causes occasional hard drive thrashing as it tries to keep the index up-to-date. This is unfortunately a rather major downside, but if you can bear with this, you'll get literally instant file searches on your entire hard drive -- it narrows down the possible matches as you type each letter. It even indexes file contents for small files. I'm talking about X1.
I've used that in the past, but ended up getting the "real" thing instead... At least for me, RA had very low performance and choppy video. When getting the original, it was silk smooth. :-/
"lean and mean" browser
:-) This is much smaller than Firefox, and it also lacks all the XUL junk I don't care for really.
Firefox is called the "lean, mean browsing machine". Opera has just called it "the fastest browser on earth", and they still rank very well there, although I haven't compared with a stop watch...
After disabling the Mail & IRC to transform it from something like the Mozilla suite to Firefox, I actually enjoy and regularly use most of its features and can't complain about bloat. It's still just a 3 MB download too, if you don't include the entire Java package.
I don't use the mail or IRC client so I disabled them in the Preferences. I use Opera 7.50.
Too many things going on
It has just one more menu than Firefox (the standard Windows menu), the average menu size is maybe 3-4 items larger than Firefox's, and I have only 5 buttons in the toolbar (back, forward, refresh/stop [in same button], home, wand). 1 search field, 1 address field.
Can't say anything is in non-obvious places either. I mean, how hard can it be to find the proper menu option when you only have 3 non-standard menus at an average length of maybe 12 items? (I consider File, Edit, Window, Bookmark, Help to all be very standardized or straight forward with the regular options).
Try to reduce the Linux community by litterally annoying their followers to death. Particularly the zealots will get issues if they have weak hearts (which most have since geeks don't exercise) while composing their forum posts. A very clever plan indeed...
Listening is a learning process too.
Yes, within the well-defined limits of your hearing of course!
How do you know that five or ten years down the road these contemporary, super-duper codecs won'T be held in the same disregard?
I don't know, and never claimed so either. I just claim that I can't hear a difference between modern codecs and a CD unless I'm using high quality headphones.
128 kbps mp3's were once seen as great because when it had its breakthrough, there was almost no competition in the compressed audio field. I'm sure people could still hear differences with good hardware then too, but it was still an awesome piece of technology. Now we've moved on further and the question is no longer if the technology allows for near CD quality or not (all of them do), but if the difference is audible or not. I claim they're almost there today with e.g. 128 kbps, possibly 160, Ogg's, with the exception of when you use some good headphones or have other above average equipment.
Badger badger badger!
Now that has a ring to it!
No matter *what*?
Not even if it's about average quality speakers?
Not even if it's about some rather cheap speakers?
I can't say I hear much of a difference with modern codecs, and I own some average speakers. Maybe 128 kbps mp3 can sound bad (although that depends a lot on the kind of music), but that's an aging codec anyway. I think encoded files in the 192 - 256 kbps range is the best, and 128 kbps ogg's often acceptable, especially with the DFX plugin (or similar) for Winamp to compensate for shortcomings in compressed formats.
I'd definitely not call 128 kbps in modern codecs "disgusting". In ogg's I've found it to be roughly as 160-192 kbps mp3's and that's perfectfly fine for my ears.