No, but seriously changing the hardware design would break quite a few games. The only thing that they could probably do safely would be to switch to a NForce2 chipset board with a custom IGP (it needs to support shaders at least as well as the GeForce3.5 in the XBox). The XBox is actually quite similar to the NForce platform.
"Linux machines can be counted in the millions. Desktop machines. If you figure 10% of US desktops are running some form of free software, you get millions of computers"
Someone did write a standard - USB mass storage devices are now very common. Those little USB pendrives are USB mass storage, so are devices such as USB HDD MP3 players, USB flash readers, and most USB hard drives.
The Toshiba Pocket PCs have a USB host function. It supports keyboards with no drivers; someone has written drivers for mice, gamepads, and even... USB mass storage devices.
So, the specification already exists (thank god) and Toshiba already has USB host (thank god). Looks like Apple won't have to save the day after all.
Re:Bit pricy still - but competitive for it's mark
on
YOPY Arrives
·
· Score: 1
If you look around, you can find great deals on Pocket PCs. I got a Toshiba e335 (64M RAM, 32M Flash, XScale 300Mhz, Integrated SD expansion, 16-bit color sidelit reflective screen, speaker, microphone, stereo headphone port, USB host) for $125 on Amazon thanks to some mail in rebates (it was $250 before rebates).
I've been posting on Slashdot for quite some time. I have 315 comments, in fact.
But lately Slashdot has been getting to me. It's not the news - Slashdot has plenty of cool stories about new technologies. It's the bias. The Slashdot editors never claimed to be unbiased, but frankly they've gone overboard lately. Slashdot has become nothing but an anti-MS praise everything that Apple does pile of garbage.
Because this is Slashdot, which is now a Mac site.
In 1997, most of the Slashdot crowd used Windows, but they wouldn't admit it.
In 1999, many of the people commenting used Linux. Well, probably only some of the time. But some of the most vocal Slashdot supporters were the biggest supporters of Linux.
Linux, however, only appealed to a small audience here on Slashdot. It lacked the hardware and software support that most Slashdot users wanted.
Most of Slashdot at the time was "Closet Windows" users. They really, really wanted to get away from Windows, but Linux just wasn't a great option (even more so at the time). They talked about how great Linux was, but never used it.
Then Mac OS X came out. It had UNIX features. You could run Apache or Bash (you can do this on Windows too, by the way). It supported all the hardware you wanted flawlessly (the only hardware you wanted already came with your computer). But most of all, it wasn't Windows.
Mac OS X was perfect for those who hated Windows but couldn't make the jump to Linux - a large part of Slashdot posters.
Macs have a cult-like following. This happens because they are "different". The're also more expensive, and cooler looking. Just like a sports car, Macs set their owners apart from everyone else. Here's a fact: few people actually need a sports car. Macs appeal to those who want to spend a little more money for the "extra touches" - the OS, the appearence of the hardware, and other such things. Mac owners often develop a superiority complex (as do most people with luxury products). They express this by trying to convince people how ultimately superior Macs are to PCs. As if they are trying to justify their slower hardware and $500 extra cost.
The editors of Slashdot all got Macs. They are now part of that cult. It's all about bashing Microsoft or Dell or whoever stands in their way. When an article about a cool new Dell laptop with a WUXGA screen, DVD burner, and GeForce4 Ti graphics comes out, the only comments are about how superior the 17" PowerBook is. How the 1GHz G4 is faster than a 2.5GHz P4. How the Dell is "hotter", even though the PowerBook gets extremely hot and the Dell does not (thanks to the fans). How Mac OS X is better than Windows. How Macs must be so much more durable. How the high-resolution screen is "unreadable" (it's not). And any praise gets modded into oblivion. When a new PowerBook comes out, the opposite is true. Our savior has come, crush those PC infedels.
Guess what? Most Slashdot users still use Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Last I checked, it was near 70%. But Windows users don't need to defend their platform. It gets the job done, like a car or a pickup truck. Many of us don't want sports cars. But those with sports cars are the ones that speek the loudest.
Welcome to Macdot. News for Mac users. Everyone else go away.
For Windows users, I recommend EMEditor (Google it) as an excellent product. It has macros, a customizable toolbar, a nice standard windows interface, source highlighting for many languages (configurable, too - add your own languages if you want). It auto-indents after brackets if you want, you can shift tab out entire blocks of text. It's not free like VIM, but it behaves much more like a "normal" text editor. They have a demo, too (not functionally limited, either). It's also free for students.
Sprint PCS Vision. 500 anytime minutes, unlimited night and weekend minutes, unlimited minutes to other Sprint phones, no roaming, no long distance. Unlimited 150 kilobit data service.
$45 per month on your phone. You can hook it up to your PC if you want..
T-Mobile Sidekick. 200 anytime minutes, 1000 night and weekend minutes, no roaming, no long distance. Unlimited GPRS data service. Java based, free SDK available. AIM native client. Native email client. And one really cool microbrowser. $40 per month.
Two ways to get unlimited data for under $50 per month. Looks like the US isn't so bad after all.
Funny how the US has a 3G network deployed (yes, Sprint's network is "3G", but just barely) while the uber-slow, high latency GPRS is still the standard in Europe.
My DirecTV/TiVo has no phone line plugged in and it works fine. It bugs you a few times a day but it still works. I can't order pay-per-view with the remote, however.
Yeah, but you should be thankful that you can still GET the driver for your wife's TNT2, and that you can get the lastest driver features availavle on your card.
NVIDIA drivers work with anything from the TNT to the GFFX 5900.
How does unlimited SMS sound? How about unlimited data (about 144 kbit/s) How about unlimited minutes after 9PM to 5AM and Saturday/Sunday? How about no charges for roaming anywhere in the country? How about unlimited minutes to anyone on the same carrier? How about 500 minutes to use anytime else? How about never paying long distance calling anywhere in the US and Canada?
I get all these. I pay $40 per month, and I never have to worry when or how I call. I don t budget my SMS messeges or my data bytes.
The parent poster is getting screwed. He just won't admit it.
Quartz Extreme only uses the GPU to accelerate window compositing - it's not even a full 3D desktop implementation.
Re:Software is behind, not hardware
on
AI Going Nowhere?
·
· Score: 1
"No machine, algorithim or other man made item has anything close to the processing power of a human brain, not now or into the forseeable future."
Get over yourself and realize that the human brain is not as astounding as you think it is. Yes, it is incredibly powerful.
Now, tell me what the square root of 1,203,312 is. Oh, you're using a calculator. Something with a 6 mhz Z80 and 24K of ram is "more powerful" than your brain.
Of course it isn't. But your brain doesn't work like a computer. And your computer doesn't work like a brain.
Your brain is good at learning and recognizing patterns. A computer is good at churning out millions of raw computations per second. It's like comparing a blender to a toaster: yes, the toaster toasts almost infinately better than a blender. And the blender blends almost infinately better than a toaster.
You may not have a problem switching to KDE, but most users will. I know many people that tried to "rewind" DVDs when they first came out. Lots of people also run worm viruses because they "come from their friends". The fact is that most users see computers on a different level than the typical Slashdot reader. Those are the people that would panic if suddenly their File menu wasn't there or if some function wasn't in the same spot.
That's strange - I have called them many times and they've always been easy to deal with. They ask how many computers it's installed on and then they give you your key. I've never waited on hold for more than a minute, either.
Slashdot Mirror
No, but seriously changing the hardware design would break quite a few games. The only thing that they could probably do safely would be to switch to a NForce2 chipset board with a custom IGP (it needs to support shaders at least as well as the GeForce3.5 in the XBox). The XBox is actually quite similar to the NForce platform.
Oh my god. Only on Slashdot could an off-topic Apple troll be moderated as "Interesting".
"Linux machines can be counted in the millions. Desktop machines. If you figure 10% of US desktops are running some form of free software, you get millions of computers"
I doubt that it is even 5%.
Three statisticians go hunting.
They see a prize buck.
One statistician fires... Bang... 10 meters to the left.
The second statistician fires... Bang... 10 meters to the right.
The third statistician jumps up and down, yelling "We Got It!".
Does anyone see something wrong with an entire forum website devoted to a MP3 player.
Someone did write a standard - USB mass storage devices are now very common. Those little USB pendrives are USB mass storage, so are devices such as USB HDD MP3 players, USB flash readers, and most USB hard drives.
The Toshiba Pocket PCs have a USB host function. It supports keyboards with no drivers; someone has written drivers for mice, gamepads, and even... USB mass storage devices.
So, the specification already exists (thank god) and Toshiba already has USB host (thank god). Looks like Apple won't have to save the day after all.
If you look around, you can find great deals on Pocket PCs. I got a Toshiba e335 (64M RAM, 32M Flash, XScale 300Mhz, Integrated SD expansion, 16-bit color sidelit reflective screen, speaker, microphone, stereo headphone port, USB host) for $125 on Amazon thanks to some mail in rebates (it was $250 before rebates).
Hello,
I've been posting on Slashdot for quite some time. I have 315 comments, in fact.
But lately Slashdot has been getting to me. It's not the news - Slashdot has plenty of cool stories about new technologies. It's the bias. The Slashdot editors never claimed to be unbiased, but frankly they've gone overboard lately. Slashdot has become nothing but an anti-MS praise everything that Apple does pile of garbage.
I'm sick of it. I want the old Slashdot back.
Because this is Slashdot, which is now a Mac site.
In 1997, most of the Slashdot crowd used Windows, but they wouldn't admit it.
In 1999, many of the people commenting used Linux. Well, probably only some of the time. But some of the most vocal Slashdot supporters were the biggest supporters of Linux.
Linux, however, only appealed to a small audience here on Slashdot. It lacked the hardware and software support that most Slashdot users wanted.
Most of Slashdot at the time was "Closet Windows" users. They really, really wanted to get away from Windows, but Linux just wasn't a great option (even more so at the time). They talked about how great Linux was, but never used it.
Then Mac OS X came out. It had UNIX features. You could run Apache or Bash (you can do this on Windows too, by the way). It supported all the hardware you wanted flawlessly (the only hardware you wanted already came with your computer). But most of all, it wasn't Windows.
Mac OS X was perfect for those who hated Windows but couldn't make the jump to Linux - a large part of Slashdot posters.
Macs have a cult-like following. This happens because they are "different". The're also more expensive, and cooler looking. Just like a sports car, Macs set their owners apart from everyone else. Here's a fact: few people actually need a sports car. Macs appeal to those who want to spend a little more money for the "extra touches" - the OS, the appearence of the hardware, and other such things. Mac owners often develop a superiority complex (as do most people with luxury products). They express this by trying to convince people how ultimately superior Macs are to PCs. As if they are trying to justify their slower hardware and $500 extra cost.
The editors of Slashdot all got Macs. They are now part of that cult. It's all about bashing Microsoft or Dell or whoever stands in their way. When an article about a cool new Dell laptop with a WUXGA screen, DVD burner, and GeForce4 Ti graphics comes out, the only comments are about how superior the 17" PowerBook is. How the 1GHz G4 is faster than a 2.5GHz P4. How the Dell is "hotter", even though the PowerBook gets extremely hot and the Dell does not (thanks to the fans). How Mac OS X is better than Windows. How Macs must be so much more durable. How the high-resolution screen is "unreadable" (it's not). And any praise gets modded into oblivion. When a new PowerBook comes out, the opposite is true. Our savior has come, crush those PC infedels.
Guess what? Most Slashdot users still use Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Last I checked, it was near 70%. But Windows users don't need to defend their platform. It gets the job done, like a car or a pickup truck. Many of us don't want sports cars. But those with sports cars are the ones that speek the loudest.
Welcome to Macdot. News for Mac users. Everyone else go away.
Let the flame war begin.
For Windows users, I recommend EMEditor (Google it) as an excellent product. It has macros, a customizable toolbar, a nice standard windows interface, source highlighting for many languages (configurable, too - add your own languages if you want). It auto-indents after brackets if you want, you can shift tab out entire blocks of text. It's not free like VIM, but it behaves much more like a "normal" text editor. They have a demo, too (not functionally limited, either). It's also free for students.
Windows (as of Windows 2000) has a built in FTP client as well. Just type the URL in the address bar.
Except that it does great in Doom III, which uses the same kind of features as a DX9 game (even though it's OpenGL).
Sprint PCS Vision. 500 anytime minutes, unlimited night and weekend minutes, unlimited minutes to other Sprint phones, no roaming, no long distance. Unlimited 150 kilobit data service.
$45 per month on your phone. You can hook it up to your PC if you want..
T-Mobile Sidekick. 200 anytime minutes, 1000 night and weekend minutes, no roaming, no long distance. Unlimited GPRS data service. Java based, free SDK available. AIM native client. Native email client. And one really cool microbrowser. $40 per month.
Two ways to get unlimited data for under $50 per month. Looks like the US isn't so bad after all.
Funny how the US has a 3G network deployed (yes, Sprint's network is "3G", but just barely) while the uber-slow, high latency GPRS is still the standard in Europe.
My DirecTV/TiVo has no phone line plugged in and it works fine. It bugs you a few times a day but it still works. I can't order pay-per-view with the remote, however.
Yeah, but you should be thankful that you can still GET the driver for your wife's TNT2, and that you can get the lastest driver features availavle on your card.
NVIDIA drivers work with anything from the TNT to the GFFX 5900.
How does unlimited SMS sound?
How about unlimited data (about 144 kbit/s)
How about unlimited minutes after 9PM to 5AM and Saturday/Sunday?
How about no charges for roaming anywhere in the country?
How about unlimited minutes to anyone on the same carrier?
How about 500 minutes to use anytime else?
How about never paying long distance calling anywhere in the US and Canada?
I get all these. I pay $40 per month, and I never have to worry when or how I call. I don
t budget my SMS messeges or my data bytes.
The parent poster is getting screwed. He just won't admit it.
No, they sued McDonalds for having 190 degree coffee that caused third degree burns.
How about unlimited 144kbit/sec data?
That's what Sprint offers.
They use CDMA.
You mean that you don't have a PDA/Phone with 3rd generation high-speed CDMA technology?
Shame on you.
Quartz Extreme only uses the GPU to accelerate window compositing - it's not even a full 3D desktop implementation.
"No machine, algorithim or other man made item has anything close to the processing power of a human brain, not now or into the forseeable future."
Get over yourself and realize that the human brain is not as astounding as you think it is. Yes, it is incredibly powerful.
Now, tell me what the square root of 1,203,312 is. Oh, you're using a calculator. Something with a 6 mhz Z80 and 24K of ram is "more powerful" than your brain.
Of course it isn't. But your brain doesn't work like a computer. And your computer doesn't work like a brain.
Your brain is good at learning and recognizing patterns. A computer is good at churning out millions of raw computations per second. It's like comparing a blender to a toaster: yes, the toaster toasts almost infinately better than a blender. And the blender blends almost infinately better than a toaster.
You may not have a problem switching to KDE, but most users will. I know many people that tried to "rewind" DVDs when they first came out. Lots of people also run worm viruses because they
"come from their friends". The fact is that most users see computers on a different level than the typical Slashdot reader. Those are the people that would panic if suddenly their File menu wasn't there or if some function wasn't in the same spot.
That's strange - I have called them many times and they've always been easy to deal with. They ask how many computers it's installed on and then they give you your key. I've never waited on hold for more than a minute, either.
When you make 200,000 a year, it's really not a problem to pay $1500 a year for TV/Internet/Phone.