MS gets criticized because when they implement it, it hogs system resources and requires bleeding edge hardware to run. My 6 yr old computer will run Beryl with no effect on system performance, but i can't turn on the effects in Vista without my computer slowing to a crawl. (i tried to run it for 30 days so when i said how horrible it was, i could give examples from personal experience. i only made it 10 days, but i got plenty to bitch about.)
Despite what many have said, the DWM isn't particularly resource-intensive. It runs fine on ANY GPU you can buy today, from Intel's integrated GPU to the integrated ATI/NV solutions, not to mention any dedicated GPU you can buy.
And you weren't running Aero Glass on a 6-year-old PC. The first DirectX 9 card (minimum requirements to run Vista) didn't launch until August 2002. And having personally run Aero on a Radeon 9700 Pro, I can tell you that it has more than enough horsepower to make it run well.
People also forget that enabling Aero Glass also requires WDDM drivers. WDDM is a completely new driver model, and despite the fact that Vista betas have been shipping for years, NVIDIA's and Intel's early drivers were astoundingly bad.
The Wii is seriously overrated. Between myself and my roommate, we own all 3 next-gen systems, and I can tell you it's the 360 that gets the most playtime.
Why? Because it has the best games. The 360 has a string of first-rate titles coming out (recently BioShock, before that Gears of War, Guitar Hero, and a hell of a lot more).
That's not to say that there aren't fun games on the Wii. The Wii is what we play at parties, and it's what we play when we want to sit down for 10 minutes and play a quick game. But we can't play Zelda and Wii Sports forever, and a lot of the other titles, while solid, just haven't been very good.
And then there's XBLA. Yeah, the Wii kind of has this too with the Virtual Console, but if I'm going to drop $10 on a game, I want it to be something new. Games like Hexic 2, Lumines, Catan, and a lot more.
If you buy a 1.2-only player, you'd best have a receiver that has discrete inputs for each speaker so that the DVD player can decode for you, or you won't be getting HD-quality surround out of it.
Wrong. All current Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players decode Dolby TruHD and DTS-HD in the player, outputting uncompressed PCM - which HDMI 1.2 has no trouble carrying and your receiver should have no trouble decoding.
And I can't believe how terrible the sound quality is on GSM networks compared to CDMA networks.
GSM EFR (or the equivalent AMR-FR) sounds better than CDMA. Unfortunately, AT&T is running half-rate AMR (AMR-HR) on most of its network to increase capacity. AMR-HR is passable, but it's definitely not as good as EFR or AMR-FR.
FYI, the CDMA vocoder has a lot of noise cancellation, which is one reason it works with lower data rates.
This comitment to analog technology is just as much a problem for cell phones as for TV. This desire to keep the old stuff going is what keeps USA in the cellphone middle ages.
You don't know what the hell you're talking about.
No one except a very few luddites (and older OnStar users) use AMPS in the US.
The FCC ruled years ago that, as of February 2008, Cellular band (850MHz) providers are no longer required to provide any AMPS service.
PCS (1900MHz) carriers (T-Mobile, Sprint) have never been required to provide AMPS service. Neither T-Mobile nor Sprint have ever provided analog mobile services
Verizon and Sprint have already deployed national 3G (CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev A) networks.
Sprint will begin deploying WiMAX at the beginning of 2008
AT&T is in the process of a major UMTS/HSDPA launch. Major metro areas are covered, with more to follow in the fall.
T-Mobile is launching UMTS/HSDPA this fall. They are late not because of a lack of hardware but because of a lack of spectrum (which they rectified during the AWS auction).
There are over 85 million GSM subscribers in the US, more than any country in Western Europe.
Unlimited GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA/EV-DO is standard in the US. Billing by the megabyte is rare. I pay $20/mo for unlimited GPRS/EDGE.
Unlimited nights, weekends, and calls on the same network are common in the US.
We don't pay to call customer service.
Roaming rates in Canada/Mexico are less than roaming rates in Western Europe, despite the fact that there are legal limits on the rates in Europe.
The "US is behind in mobile phones" argument is bullshit. You might argue that the contract model we use is broken, and it probably is (although it does result in surprisingly good deals for many subscribers). But we have the same technologies as the rest of the world (GSM/UMTS/HSDPA), in addition to CDMA2000 (which is also used by South Korea, Canada, and some other countries) and iDEN. We have two healthy national GSM carriers (and soon two national GSM/UMTS carriers). I can buy any of the fancy GSM/UMTS phones out there and use it on a US network (assuming that it's unlocked and has the right bands).
Maybe you think we should have enforced a GSM monoculture like the EU. But that's not the way we do things in the US, and our way seems to be working out fine.
Someday, we do some data analysis and find any license keys with a large number (maybe 5, maybe dozens, not sure) of installation ID's. The data analysis should look for interwoven log records of installation ID, because the user might have uninstalled it on one machine, and installed it on another. Then a person (not automated process) would get a report and be able to investigate and flag certain keys as compromised.
This is a flawed metric. You presume that pirates will distribute leaked/cracked keys - they will not. More likely, they will distribute a key generator, reverse engineered from your key verification code. It will most likely be identical to the one you use internally.
Activation doesn't work. Dongles don't work. You cannot stop or even really slow the pirates. The more you add, the more of a challenge it becomes to the crackers, and the more "cred" they will get by cracking it. These people are really good with a disassembler. Code obfuscation doesn't even slow them down - they're used to it.
The more you add, the more incentive there will be to pirate your software.
Use a product key. Let the user copy/paste it in (e.g. don't use separate text boxes for the different parts of the key).
Don't tie the software to the machine. It will create a support nightmare as users upgrade their PC/reinstall/buy a new PC and are unable to use your software.
Consider offering very cheap multi-license packs. For example, 1 for $99, 2 for $139, 3 for $169. This will discourage (some) users from multi-installing and will probably net you additional sales as users "pool" together to buy your software.
Store the user's info (name, address, last 4 digits of CC number) along with the user's key in a database. Remind the user when they obtain the key that they should not distribute the key, and that distributing the key may result in it being blacklisted in future versions (with no refund). Check warez sites frequently for leaked keys. Blacklist the ones that you find.
Your objective with the key & blacklist is twofold: - Prevent casual (users who do not normally pirate) users from using your software without paying. - Force users who pirate to download and execute a keygen.
Don't bother trying to go after websites that post keys. You will only further the distribution of the key. Disable it (silently) in a point release, and don't offer the old release for download. This will make it more difficult for users to find a version of your software to work with their leaked key.
You cannot stop software piracy. The best you can do is to keep honest users honest, and not piss them off in the process.
In a discussion about ethics and social values, some people consider their freedom more important than someones inability to imagine and consider alternative ways to play a video game.
And some people don't agree with Stallman's definition of "freedom".
I don't subscribe to this "trade off some of your freedoms to encourage others" bullshit that RMS believes in. I don't think that restricting the actions of my users (or other programmers) somehow enhances the "freedom" of my software. Does it encourage individuals (and companies) to contribute who otherwise would not? Absolutely. But that's because they are compelled to share. That's not any definition of freedom that I'm aware of.
My open-source projects are BSD licensed. Stallman can scream all he wants about how my licensing decisions are hurting software freedom. My objective is to release my code with as few restrictions as is reasonable. If I ran larger projects with more commercial utility, I might use a license like the GPLv2 to require users to contribute back. But I would do so with the knowledge that I am restricting other developers to benefit the community as a whole. It's a tradeoff - one that I can see making sense for a lot of projects.
Why should we be interested in furthering the goals of a convicted monopolist?
Oh, I am so sick and fucking tired of hearing this. Should we not buy Intel products because they are a convicted monopolist in Japan? Should we never buy anything Samsung because they were convicted of price fixing (along with other major DRAM manufacturers)?
In 2030 we're still going to be hearing this bullshit line of reasoning. Somehow you believe that we should hold Microsoft to a different standard, and this is the justification you use.
The very phrase "convicted monopolist" implies that there's something illegal about having a monopoly.
But, hey, this is Slashdot. Ever since Miguel stopped drinking the Flavor-Aid, he's been pissed on by the community. Miguel has done more to enable FOSS on the desktop than pretty much anyone here. You may not like Mono, but that doesn't mean that it's not a completely legitimate and valuable project.
Personally, I don't generally agree with Miguel's assertion that OOXML is a "superb" standard.
OOXML has a lot of problems, not the least of which is the fact that it was generally designed as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft's old formats. That's understandable, but it also means that the standard is much less clean than something that was designed from the ground-up without any legacy baggage.
But, let's be real. ODF isn't a great standard, either. It's biggest problem is that it is incomplete, but it also suffers from the same problem as OOXML (except that it's designed around OOo rather than Office).
ODF is getting better through things like the OpenFormula specification. But OOXML is getting better too.
There's so much crap around OOXML. Whatever you think about it, it's still a million times better than the undocumented binary formats that it replaced.
Miguel is right about the FUD storm. You people probably hate ReactOS too, just because it dared to admit that maybe Microsoft got something right.
Suppose the market were evenly divided, 1/4 Windows, 1/4 Linux, 1/4 Macintosh, and 1/4 online game consoles that are always connected to the internet. Where would the botnets be hosted? Probably Windows. Botnets will begin to run on other platforms within about 48 hours after the security of Windows systems rises to a level equivalent to the other available platforms.
No, it would run on 1/4 Windows, 1/4 Mac, 1/4 Linux, and 1/4 your ass.
See, I can make up statements without any justification too! It's easy to say, "botnets exist because Windows is insecure". But that statement is unjustified and meaningless. If you want rational people (and not just Slashdot MS-hating drones) to believe you, you need to provide evidence of why Windows is less secure.
And FYI, I know for a fact that Mac OS X is full of security vulnerabilities. There have been several well-documented exploits. Everyone always says, "well every OS has holes". But of course that's the same logic you use to impugn Windows.
Clearly, Apple is doing the right thing as far a public relations are concerned, but the idea that you are entitled to a refund for something you bought two months ago is ridiculous.
Absolutely true. But consider this: if the iPhone was selling at $600 two months ago and $400 today, there was at least $200 of pure profit in the item. So much for "it's not overpriced for a phone with so much advanced technology".
Also, interestingly, this seems to be an acknowledgment by Apple that the iPhone was too expensive. $400 sure is a lot easier to stomach.
Godel's "proof" is neither new nor particularly compelling. It is an extension and formalization of previous arguments. The Wikipedia article is a pretty good read. Like with Pascal's Wager, there are quite a few holes.
But, hey, it's not like anyone with a famous name was ever wrong.
You might think that's unlikely, and I tend to agree with you, because I have faith in my observations as well. But it's still just faith; there's no way to prove it one way or another using the scientific method.
You're absolutely right, but if our observations don't reflect the real world, all bets are off and we might as well quit now. The thing is, it doesn't really matter if our observations match reality.
Maybe I'm not really typing on a computer. But I assume that I am, because there is no alternative.
Fair enough. I'm no fan of ODF, and I think OOXML has gotten a lot of crap for bogus reasons. But OOXML is a buggy, broken standard. Hopefully Microsoft will clean up some of the issues and we'll see a better standard as a result.
In the mean time, I'm going to continue sending PDFs around. Neither OOXML nor ODF provide the level of consistency in layout that PDF provides.
Well, technically I could combine steps 2/3 into a single step ("print out boarding pass"). But, yeah, I guess you don't have to print out your boarding pass. You do have to "place" it on your card, which is presumably pretty easy. Not that clicking a button on Southwest's website and hitting "print" is all that hard either.
I guess my point is, ticketing is actually the easiest part of flying. It takes about a minute to print my boarding pass, and at least ten times that much to get through security.
What I want to see is a MIDlet that lets you check in, then displays a 2D barcode on your phone screen that acts as your boarding pass.
Yeah, because stating the year is a valid rhetorical technique.
Do you care to present any evidence why broadband should be considered a utility?
Gas, electric, and water/sewage are critical for life. Life was bad before modern heat, A/C, and sanitation. Most people weren't even on the Internet 10 years ago. I think it's too early to call it a utility.
Yeah, because we all want to run 3 games that'll eat up the GPU at the same time. Thats a function that could have EASILY be left out for XP. It doesn't need 3D support for it's GUI.
Google Earth, Media Center, WPF apps, and a lot more uses 3D.
Bertrand Russell posed the postulate that there is a teapot in orbit around the Sun between Earth and Mars. Because the teapot is too small, we cannot detect it with even our best telescopes (although this may change in the future). Since we cannot disprove the existence of the teapot, must we be "teapot agnostics"? Technically, yes, but from a practical standpoint, we are all "teapot atheists".
The problem is that there are an infinite number of bogus postulates. Unless we are to be agnostic about everything (Will the Sun really rise tomorrow?), we must go by the preponderance of evidence. The lack of evidence otherwise suggests that there is no God, which is my current belief. If the evidence changes, so will my beliefs.
Incidentally, the "bogus religion" theory throws a monkey wrench into Pascal's Wager. Pascal's Wager assumes that the only two possibilities are a Christian God who rewards belief and no God at all. What if, for example, God rewarded skepticism? What if Hinduism is correct? Since there is no solid evidence to suggest that this religion is any more correct than any other religion, we cannot make such an assumption.
No, this latest discovery doesn't break science. This kind of discovery is exactly what science is all about - constantly looking for new evidence to enhance our understanding, whether or not that evidence supports the current theory. Scientific skepticism isn't about being closed to new ideas, it's about treating every theory with a critical eye and constantly trying to prove yourself wrong.
When was the last time you heard a Fundamentalist Christian utter the words, "I was wrong"?
The HD DVD has barely enough space for 24-bit/192 kHz for two channels. The Bluray can support that audio quality for six channels. That's a big ole difference.
2 1/2 hours of uncompressed 24/192 6-channel audio is 31GB. Even with a 50GB dual-layer Blu-Ray disc, that leaves only 19GB for the video - and that's not even including additional languages/soundtracks, let alone extra features like commentary or special features.
And that brings me to the most important point. Any 200 dollar audio system can easily show the difference between the formats.
Bullshit. You don't know what the hell you are talking about. The pathetically low bitrate Dolby Digital AC-3 has been the standard for movie theaters for YEARS now. DD Plus sounds even better. And, lest we forget, Dolby TrueHD, which HD-DVD has more than enough space for, is completely LOSSLESS. You can't tell the difference because THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE.
Oh, and your $200 audio system isn't going to even handle uncompressed 6-channel PCM. The only consumer standard that can currently carry 6-channel 24/192 audio is HDMI, and no $200 system today has HDMI support.
You're probably the same kind of dick who won't believe that good 256kbps MP3s sound nearly as good as uncompressed PCM, despite the fact that double-blind listening tests confirm it again and again. Psychoacoustic compression works, and it works well. We use it on our iPods, when we watch TV (ATSC is low bitrate Dolby Digtial AC-3) and when we go to the theater.
Broadcasters adopted the Beta format over the VHS format for news (originally) because of the dramatic quality differences. The VHS based news recorders were blown off the market within a year by Beta. This started the 25 year dynasty of Broadcast technical progression: BetaCam, BetaCam-SP, Digital BetaCam, BetaCam-SX, BetaCam-IMX, HDCam and HDCam-SR. If you saw the last several Star Wars movies, they were shot with HDCam - a Beta format derivative, not film.
This isn't wrong, just misleading. BetaCam is a component format that shares little in common with the consumer-level Betamax.
Yeah, VHS sucked. So did Beta at first. LaserDisc looked better than either. But consumers wanted cheap players and long recording time, not the best picture quality.
Cry me a river. No one cares anymore. Just like no one will care in 10 years about HD-DVD/Blu-Ray.
Wrong. People keep saying this, but 35mm motion picture is nowhere near 20 megapixels when you're talking about the third or fourth generation prints that go to theathers.
Many, many films today use digital color correction or digital effects at 2k (2048x1080p) resolution. Major films, including Mann's Collateral and Miami Vice, Episode III, and others are 'filmed' digitally at 2k resolution with great success.
Go see a digital cinema. It is shockingly better - sharper, no gate jitter, and no noise. 2K is more than adequete.
It depends on what your purpose is. Are you trying to release your software in the most open way possible, or are you trying to encourage companies to give back when they take?
RMS's GPL vision gives us protection against corporate parasites
So fucking what? You call them parasites, I call them users. You don't seem to grasp that code is not a limited resource. Microsoft using my code DOES NOT in any way reduce the availability or utility of my code in general.
You don't like the fact that companies don't have to give back under a BSD license. I'd like them to give back, too, but I don't want to force them to do so.
Everything open-source that I have ever written is now available under a BSD license (some things have GPL code from other contributors, so the entire project remains GPL). I am sick and tired of RMS telling us that HE knows what's right for my users.
You can pretty much whatever the hell you want with my code. That's the way I want it.
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No wonder the universe is so screwy. It's coded in Ruby. Maybe next time they'll use a proper language like Java.
Despite what many have said, the DWM isn't particularly resource-intensive. It runs fine on ANY GPU you can buy today, from Intel's integrated GPU to the integrated ATI/NV solutions, not to mention any dedicated GPU you can buy.
And you weren't running Aero Glass on a 6-year-old PC. The first DirectX 9 card (minimum requirements to run Vista) didn't launch until August 2002. And having personally run Aero on a Radeon 9700 Pro, I can tell you that it has more than enough horsepower to make it run well.
People also forget that enabling Aero Glass also requires WDDM drivers. WDDM is a completely new driver model, and despite the fact that Vista betas have been shipping for years, NVIDIA's and Intel's early drivers were astoundingly bad.
The Wii is seriously overrated. Between myself and my roommate, we own all 3 next-gen systems, and I can tell you it's the 360 that gets the most playtime.
Why? Because it has the best games. The 360 has a string of first-rate titles coming out (recently BioShock, before that Gears of War, Guitar Hero, and a hell of a lot more).
That's not to say that there aren't fun games on the Wii. The Wii is what we play at parties, and it's what we play when we want to sit down for 10 minutes and play a quick game. But we can't play Zelda and Wii Sports forever, and a lot of the other titles, while solid, just haven't been very good.
And then there's XBLA. Yeah, the Wii kind of has this too with the Virtual Console, but if I'm going to drop $10 on a game, I want it to be something new. Games like Hexic 2, Lumines, Catan, and a lot more.
Wrong. All current Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players decode Dolby TruHD and DTS-HD in the player, outputting uncompressed PCM - which HDMI 1.2 has no trouble carrying and your receiver should have no trouble decoding.
And I can't believe how terrible the sound quality is on GSM networks compared to CDMA networks.
GSM EFR (or the equivalent AMR-FR) sounds better than CDMA. Unfortunately, AT&T is running half-rate AMR (AMR-HR) on most of its network to increase capacity. AMR-HR is passable, but it's definitely not as good as EFR or AMR-FR.
FYI, the CDMA vocoder has a lot of noise cancellation, which is one reason it works with lower data rates.
You don't know what the hell you're talking about.
The "US is behind in mobile phones" argument is bullshit. You might argue that the contract model we use is broken, and it probably is (although it does result in surprisingly good deals for many subscribers). But we have the same technologies as the rest of the world (GSM/UMTS/HSDPA), in addition to CDMA2000 (which is also used by South Korea, Canada, and some other countries) and iDEN. We have two healthy national GSM carriers (and soon two national GSM/UMTS carriers). I can buy any of the fancy GSM/UMTS phones out there and use it on a US network (assuming that it's unlocked and has the right bands).
Maybe you think we should have enforced a GSM monoculture like the EU. But that's not the way we do things in the US, and our way seems to be working out fine.
This is a flawed metric. You presume that pirates will distribute leaked/cracked keys - they will not. More likely, they will distribute a key generator, reverse engineered from your key verification code. It will most likely be identical to the one you use internally.
Activation doesn't work. Dongles don't work. You cannot stop or even really slow the pirates. The more you add, the more of a challenge it becomes to the crackers, and the more "cred" they will get by cracking it. These people are really good with a disassembler. Code obfuscation doesn't even slow them down - they're used to it.
The more you add, the more incentive there will be to pirate your software.
Use a product key. Let the user copy/paste it in (e.g. don't use separate text boxes for the different parts of the key).
Don't tie the software to the machine. It will create a support nightmare as users upgrade their PC/reinstall/buy a new PC and are unable to use your software.
Consider offering very cheap multi-license packs. For example, 1 for $99, 2 for $139, 3 for $169. This will discourage (some) users from multi-installing and will probably net you additional sales as users "pool" together to buy your software.
Store the user's info (name, address, last 4 digits of CC number) along with the user's key in a database. Remind the user when they obtain the key that they should not distribute the key, and that distributing the key may result in it being blacklisted in future versions (with no refund). Check warez sites frequently for leaked keys. Blacklist the ones that you find.
Your objective with the key & blacklist is twofold:
- Prevent casual (users who do not normally pirate) users from using your software without paying.
- Force users who pirate to download and execute a keygen.
Don't bother trying to go after websites that post keys. You will only further the distribution of the key. Disable it (silently) in a point release, and don't offer the old release for download. This will make it more difficult for users to find a version of your software to work with their leaked key.
You cannot stop software piracy. The best you can do is to keep honest users honest, and not piss them off in the process.
And some people don't agree with Stallman's definition of "freedom".
I don't subscribe to this "trade off some of your freedoms to encourage others" bullshit that RMS believes in. I don't think that restricting the actions of my users (or other programmers) somehow enhances the "freedom" of my software. Does it encourage individuals (and companies) to contribute who otherwise would not? Absolutely. But that's because they are compelled to share. That's not any definition of freedom that I'm aware of.
My open-source projects are BSD licensed. Stallman can scream all he wants about how my licensing decisions are hurting software freedom. My objective is to release my code with as few restrictions as is reasonable. If I ran larger projects with more commercial utility, I might use a license like the GPLv2 to require users to contribute back. But I would do so with the knowledge that I am restricting other developers to benefit the community as a whole. It's a tradeoff - one that I can see making sense for a lot of projects.
Oh, I am so sick and fucking tired of hearing this. Should we not buy Intel products because they are a convicted monopolist in Japan? Should we never buy anything Samsung because they were convicted of price fixing (along with other major DRAM manufacturers)?
In 2030 we're still going to be hearing this bullshit line of reasoning. Somehow you believe that we should hold Microsoft to a different standard, and this is the justification you use.
The very phrase "convicted monopolist" implies that there's something illegal about having a monopoly.
But, hey, this is Slashdot. Ever since Miguel stopped drinking the Flavor-Aid, he's been pissed on by the community. Miguel has done more to enable FOSS on the desktop than pretty much anyone here. You may not like Mono, but that doesn't mean that it's not a completely legitimate and valuable project.
Personally, I don't generally agree with Miguel's assertion that OOXML is a "superb" standard.
OOXML has a lot of problems, not the least of which is the fact that it was generally designed as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft's old formats. That's understandable, but it also means that the standard is much less clean than something that was designed from the ground-up without any legacy baggage.
But, let's be real. ODF isn't a great standard, either. It's biggest problem is that it is incomplete, but it also suffers from the same problem as OOXML (except that it's designed around OOo rather than Office).
ODF is getting better through things like the OpenFormula specification. But OOXML is getting better too.
There's so much crap around OOXML. Whatever you think about it, it's still a million times better than the undocumented binary formats that it replaced.
Miguel is right about the FUD storm. You people probably hate ReactOS too, just because it dared to admit that maybe Microsoft got something right.
No, it would run on 1/4 Windows, 1/4 Mac, 1/4 Linux, and 1/4 your ass.
See, I can make up statements without any justification too! It's easy to say, "botnets exist because Windows is insecure". But that statement is unjustified and meaningless. If you want rational people (and not just Slashdot MS-hating drones) to believe you, you need to provide evidence of why Windows is less secure.
And FYI, I know for a fact that Mac OS X is full of security vulnerabilities. There have been several well-documented exploits. Everyone always says, "well every OS has holes". But of course that's the same logic you use to impugn Windows.
Absolutely true. But consider this: if the iPhone was selling at $600 two months ago and $400 today, there was at least $200 of pure profit in the item. So much for "it's not overpriced for a phone with so much advanced technology".
Also, interestingly, this seems to be an acknowledgment by Apple that the iPhone was too expensive. $400 sure is a lot easier to stomach.
Godel's "proof" is neither new nor particularly compelling. It is an extension and formalization of previous arguments. The Wikipedia article is a pretty good read. Like with Pascal's Wager, there are quite a few holes.
But, hey, it's not like anyone with a famous name was ever wrong.
You're absolutely right, but if our observations don't reflect the real world, all bets are off and we might as well quit now. The thing is, it doesn't really matter if our observations match reality.
Maybe I'm not really typing on a computer. But I assume that I am, because there is no alternative.
Clearly manufacturing didn't drop in price by $200/unit in two months. The iPhone is and has always been a high-margin item, like many mobile phones.
I absolutely guarantee that Hon Hai can crank out iPhones for WAY lower than $400.
Fair enough. I'm no fan of ODF, and I think OOXML has gotten a lot of crap for bogus reasons. But OOXML is a buggy, broken standard. Hopefully Microsoft will clean up some of the issues and we'll see a better standard as a result.
In the mean time, I'm going to continue sending PDFs around. Neither OOXML nor ODF provide the level of consistency in layout that PDF provides.
Well, technically I could combine steps 2/3 into a single step ("print out boarding pass"). But, yeah, I guess you don't have to print out your boarding pass. You do have to "place" it on your card, which is presumably pretty easy. Not that clicking a button on Southwest's website and hitting "print" is all that hard either.
I guess my point is, ticketing is actually the easiest part of flying. It takes about a minute to print my boarding pass, and at least ten times that much to get through security.
What I want to see is a MIDlet that lets you check in, then displays a 2D barcode on your phone screen that acts as your boarding pass.
It couldn't get any easier.
Yeah, because stating the year is a valid rhetorical technique.
Do you care to present any evidence why broadband should be considered a utility?
Gas, electric, and water/sewage are critical for life. Life was bad before modern heat, A/C, and sanitation. Most people weren't even on the Internet 10 years ago. I think it's too early to call it a utility.
Google Earth, Media Center, WPF apps, and a lot more uses 3D.
Why the hell shouldn't our GPUs multitask?
The phrase you are looking for is "teapot atheist".
Bertrand Russell posed the postulate that there is a teapot in orbit around the Sun between Earth and Mars. Because the teapot is too small, we cannot detect it with even our best telescopes (although this may change in the future). Since we cannot disprove the existence of the teapot, must we be "teapot agnostics"? Technically, yes, but from a practical standpoint, we are all "teapot atheists".
The problem is that there are an infinite number of bogus postulates. Unless we are to be agnostic about everything (Will the Sun really rise tomorrow?), we must go by the preponderance of evidence. The lack of evidence otherwise suggests that there is no God, which is my current belief. If the evidence changes, so will my beliefs.
Incidentally, the "bogus religion" theory throws a monkey wrench into Pascal's Wager. Pascal's Wager assumes that the only two possibilities are a Christian God who rewards belief and no God at all. What if, for example, God rewarded skepticism? What if Hinduism is correct? Since there is no solid evidence to suggest that this religion is any more correct than any other religion, we cannot make such an assumption.
No, this latest discovery doesn't break science. This kind of discovery is exactly what science is all about - constantly looking for new evidence to enhance our understanding, whether or not that evidence supports the current theory. Scientific skepticism isn't about being closed to new ideas, it's about treating every theory with a critical eye and constantly trying to prove yourself wrong.
When was the last time you heard a Fundamentalist Christian utter the words, "I was wrong"?
Good to know that, no matter how much we may hate AT&T and T-Mo in the US, Rogers still sucks more.
Interestingly enough I'm posting this from Canada.
This isn't wrong, just misleading. BetaCam is a component format that shares little in common with the consumer-level Betamax.
Yeah, VHS sucked. So did Beta at first. LaserDisc looked better than either. But consumers wanted cheap players and long recording time, not the best picture quality.
Cry me a river. No one cares anymore. Just like no one will care in 10 years about HD-DVD/Blu-Ray.
Wrong. People keep saying this, but 35mm motion picture is nowhere near 20 megapixels when you're talking about the third or fourth generation prints that go to theathers.
Many, many films today use digital color correction or digital effects at 2k (2048x1080p) resolution. Major films, including Mann's Collateral and Miami Vice, Episode III, and others are 'filmed' digitally at 2k resolution with great success.
Go see a digital cinema. It is shockingly better - sharper, no gate jitter, and no noise. 2K is more than adequete.
It depends on what your purpose is. Are you trying to release your software in the most open way possible, or are you trying to encourage companies to give back when they take?
So fucking what? You call them parasites, I call them users. You don't seem to grasp that code is not a limited resource. Microsoft using my code DOES NOT in any way reduce the availability or utility of my code in general.
You don't like the fact that companies don't have to give back under a BSD license. I'd like them to give back, too, but I don't want to force them to do so.
Everything open-source that I have ever written is now available under a BSD license (some things have GPL code from other contributors, so the entire project remains GPL). I am sick and tired of RMS telling us that HE knows what's right for my users.
You can pretty much whatever the hell you want with my code. That's the way I want it.