Maybe I have pretty high standards, but I want a PVR/HTPC to fit in with my HiFi equipment and TV. I thought these four were rather ugly, to be honest.
I suspect companies are put off by possible legal consequences. A typical MythTV install contains a load of software which is patented (various codecs) and some software which is even illegal in certain jurisdictions (deCSS). Whilst an individual putting together a system themselves is probably pretty safe from patent lawyers, a company making money out of it would not be...
I do have one claim in there at the moment that I would like your feedback on. Those who sent me a correction early this morning mentioned that InnoDB has a bloat problem where it has trouble removing dead tuples. I have not felt like attempting to test this
You expect people to take your analyses seriously, but you don't feel like attempting to test...?. I suggest you leave serious comparison documentation to people who do feel like testing stuff. No offence intended.
OK, that's quite interesting. The C86 is DURABrite not UltraChrome but it's the same family of technology. I actually didn't know the C86 was pigment based, and so is the D68.
In the UK the printers that the stores are pushing at you are the R200/220/300, (which are ink-based, but they have the cool CD/DVD printing feature). It doesn't seem to be easy to find out but I think the cheap HPs they are selling are all ink-based. And as far as a brief research can reveal, I think all the cheap canos are dye-based. It's surprisingly hard to tell (from the online stores, at least), it doesn't seem to be considered worth advertising.
Well basically it means that they are solid ink not liquid ink. So they are not absorbed into the paper so much as they solidify to form a waxy layer on top of the printer. The ink is typically not watersoluble, so you get waterfast inks.
I had heard that some 'colour laser printers' were dye-sub, but this is not backed up by a couple of minutes worth of googling so that might be a misapprehension.
I had also heard that they -- at least the cheap ones -- don't really give you photo-quality. This is why I went for an inkjet rather than a cheap colour laser for printing my photos.
You can save a *lot* of money by refilling your cartridges. I have successfully used www.jrinkjet.com in the UK, I imagine their are similar outfits in other countries.
I have absolutely no idea how the archival qualities of the replacement inks compare to the official ones. The print quality is pretty similar on all printers I've tried it with.
Most of the major consumer printers are still dye-based. If you wander into a branch of PCWorld or Staples and pick up a printer from one of the displays, it will probably be dye-based. The pigment ones are still quite a bit more expensive. (I was eyeing up the 8-colour epson pigment printers like the R1800 but I couldn't justify the cost).
I had heard that many of the 'digital photo labs' actually use almost exactly the same kind of short-lifetime ink as home printers, and therefore suffer from the same problems. I can't find a source to justify this online. (It was a PCWorld article but I can't find it)
Personally I comfort myself in the thought that my digital photos are all backed up, I can easily reprint, and if I do have to reprint in 5-10 years I will probably have bought a better printer by then!
The longevity of convential silver halide prints is often overstated. Most people don't keep their prints in so-called 'dark storage' condition, but in frames up on their walls or on their mantlepieces. These prints fade (that is, lose some colour; not become completely colourless) within just a few years, and nonetheless we happily keep these slightly faded prints without complaint. It's not clear that digital prints are all that much worse.
You make some interesting, and good, points about the power of market economies, and the benefits they have shown all over the work. I don't dispute any of that for a minute. And your ideas about micropayments are definitely interesting.
But I still fundamentally disagree that free things are worthless. I don't buy your argument about church services - they are free. Ask a vicar/pastor/reverend if it's OK to come to his service without planning to donate to the collection. I can assure you he'll say it is, and even encourage you to come along. And church services continue to be available to people who pay no taxes, so I don't really buy the indirect payment argument.
Other things which are free: self-help groups. Mother-parent groups. Local bridge (the card game) clubs. Some public libraries. Public parks. I live in a society surrounded by things which are free, provided for the most part by the work of willing volunteers. (Aren't many fire services in the US built on volunteers? And this is the case for lifeboat services in the UK).
And back to usenet. Usenet *remains* a thoroughly useful forum. For example, comp.text.tex remains an excellent source of TeX knowhow. Has it reduced in worth due to dilution? Maybe a little. Not that I've particularly noticed. Will it 'end up' useless? Neither of us can see the future, but I doubt that very much.
Even the google point is questionable. Yes, I know that google is supported by advertising. Did you know that I use google hundreds of times every day without buying a single product? That sounds free to me...
We may be reduced here to arguing about definitions.
In my opinion, there is much in this world which is good, and free [including wikipedia, which is excellent for all it's not perfect]. I see no reason to believe that all that good, free, stuff, is going to necessarily deteriorate, and I find that a rather depressing prophecy.
In other words, I think the essential flaw in Wikipedia is that it is free, because in the real world things that are free usually end up being worth the price (i.e. nothing), because there is, indeed, as you point out, no clearly reliable way to ensure that noise and froth do not swamp what's actually valuable.
Really? Ignoring the most obvious example to slashdot readers of something that is free but not worthless, I can also think of: google, public parks, church services, free music recitals, usenet... I'm sure other people can think of more.
I think the suggestion that what is free must be worthless is a truly depressing point of view!
Having said that, I do think the micropayment scheme is interesting. But I don't think you present compelling evidence that wikipedia needs or wants it.
...and people should bear in mind that that is in fact about all that is good about XML.
XML is simply a notation for structured information. It's not the first, it won't be the last, it's not the most compact (lisp is far compacter), and it may well not be the best.
But it's around, there are some robust libraries to parse it, so you might as well use it.
Tolkein certainly built a more dramatic and consistent world, paying the most inhuman attention to details (including creating the languages his people spoke...). And LOTR is rather more epic in scope, and takes the good old Wagnerian theme of an immense struggle against an old evil.
On the other hand, the Harry Potter books are more like everyday novels, in that they explore the emotions of the characters and their relationships in a way Tolkein never really bothered to do.
The books are really apples and oranges: I enjoyed them both. I did, in fact, enjoy LOTR more... but I personally enjoy the detail in Tolkein's world which many readers find boring...
I wouldn't be that surprised if, on average, LOTR was more popular with males and Harry Potter with females. (Aha! Cunning controversial point to attract attention to my post)
The best definition of science fiction I'm aware of is that science fiction is the genre studying alternative futures, pasts, or presents. "Alternative" in the sense either simply that some things turned out differently (think some of Philip K Dick, or perhaps 'Fatherland'), or, more often, that the laws of physics were slightly different.
Your classic, space-ship atom-blaster science fiction falls squarely within this definition as possible futures. Much great science fiction (Wyndham, Wells, Ballard) deals with alternative presents.
And most fantasy fiction also meets this criteria, IMO: it deals with an alternative present in which magic is possible.
Of course, lots of fantasy fiction is also strongly influenced by the mold of the 'epic' or the 'quest' (Tolkein, Eddings, etc...), but so is some science fiction, and even some plain novels.
Personally, I'm a little doubtful that (any of) the Harry Potters deserved a Hugo, but they *are* well written and enjoyable (IMO), and I don't have an issue with them being classed as science fiction.
Actually, the FSF would rather copyright didn't exist.
This is one of the most frequent GPL/FSF misconceptions I see here.
Yes, the GPL does require copyright to work. But that doesn't mean the FSF is pro-copyright. The GPL was a license built to attempt to promote free software in a world where copyright is the law. If copyright wasn't the law, there would be other ways of promoting free software, and it would probably be easier to do so.
For example, in a world without copyright, all programs or algorithms written down in academic publications (or publications of any kind) would be available for all to use. Admittedly, the GPL's protection against turning things proprietary would be lost, but it would also be less necessary (since compilation, encryption, and obfuscation are known not to be effective protections against plagiarism anyway).
For example, see the essay at the gnu website here for an example; other essays in the same place may be more apropos.
Jules
Most of the posts here seem to have misunderstood!
on
Announcing PHP-GTK
·
· Score: 5
I'm pretty sure you're getting this totally wrong.
This is nothing to do with using PHP in web pages at all. In fact, it's nothing to do with web pages.
This about using PHP as a script interpreter, just like you use perl or python as a script interpreter.
So this certainly won't allow you to embed GTK applications in web pages: that would be neat, but would require a browser-plugin at the client end, and require the PHP code to be send to the client end. So the client would need the PHP interpreter.
It won't allow you to embed gtkhtml in IE, either;-)
I hadn't thought that LCD displays were artificially inflated, though. I assumed it was just market economics --- the volumes haven't brought the prices down yet. And the technology is still new and expensive. I'd be interested to know if you have reason to think the price is artificial.
I'm just assuming that they will gradually get more-and-more popular (already flatscreens are a fairly common sight in banks and so forth, the succesful European internet cafe 'EasyEverything' uses them exclusively, I think), and prices will come down.
I'm hoping my next monitor will be flat-screen, one way or the other. We haven't heard much of plasma screens recently; I was hoping they'd be a nice competitor technology to push prices down.
You're sure that was because of an analog connection? And not because the thing was running at a different resolution to its native resolution, and scaling?
With a high resolution like that, scaling would look just-about-OK (compared to how horrible scaling 640x480 onto 800x600 used to look on the first generation ones, anyhow!), and maybe they were demoing the scaling.
If this screen really doesn't have a digital interface, then I agree with your concerns..
Each pixel on the screen needs to have its own wires (3, presumably), and as your screens get bigger, their circumference to area ratio gets worse, so it becomes more of a problem to squeeze all the wires in along the back...
After all, 2000 x 1000 x 3 is about 6 million little conducting channels.
I think this is one of the reasons people are so excited about transparent conductors..
The GPL uses the force of copyright simply to counteract (in his view) the evils of copyright. He'd be far happier if there simply was none.
He isn't against all IP, thought. He's got no objection to IP (indeed, copyright) on 'artistic works'. It's the unusual status of software as a tool which can be copied at near-zero cost, and modified and enhanced so easily which makes it possible and very powerful to share, benefitting everyone.
Stallman has written that he doesn't think programmers should be paid salaries. He's written that he finds it disgusting that people would even suggest working for money.
Where? I just double-checked on his website, and what I find agreed with what I thought he thought, which is: There's nothing wrong with programmers being paid, as long as they're being paid to write free software.
And before I hear sniggering that that's a ridiculous idea, it's not at all. People at small companies such as Ximian and Redhat, as well as large companies like Sun and IBM are being paid to write free software all the time. (Sun has being writing free software at least as far back as the origin of Tcl, a long time ago).
2) Music is typically a finished work of art, while software can almost always be improved.
There are overlaps, and certainly there's no reason not to distribute music under a free license of one kind or another, but the arguments that music should be free are, IMO, much weaker than the arguments that software should be free.
The typical free software situation is something like this: I write a program because it's useful to me, or a group of people I know (e.g. a client). However, it's also useful to lots of other people, so I allow anyone to use it. (This is a piece of altruism on my part, so far). However, other people will have slightly different requirements and/or cleverer ideas. They can make the changes which suit them, and release them back to the community. This constant feedback approach benefits everyone.
There is a very strong parallel to the way academic research is carried out: academics publish papers with their ideas, others read those papers, come up with enhancements or corrections and publish those, rinse and repeat!
I don't think this argument transfers very well to music (or books, or other primarly artistic media).
However, it does occur in those media at a higher level, certainly. Artists (of all types) are influenced by each other, and use each other's ideas. This is out of the realm of copyright, and no one would consider complaining about it!
Another similar example is the computer games industry. Each new RTS which comes out will have implemented, in its own way, some of the latest and greatest features of its competitors. Back in the good old days when there was more than one commonly used commercial word processor;-) the same interplay was seen there.
In other words, free software is the extension of the natural and (normally) uncontested concept of the sharing of ideas in a community, to actual sharing of physical source code. The reason this extension is feasible is partly down to the almost-zero cost of copying software (compared to the very real cost of building a new car, say), and partly the immense adaptability and reusability of computer software.
But there are no ways of mathematically demonstrating encryption to be secure.
Or rather, all such demonstrations must rely on assertions saying 'XYZ is a slow process'. Such assertions can never be proven.
There's no mathematical way of proving that new algorithms won't arise.
Jules
Re:Sounds like a good idea, but..
on
The Dot in .mars
·
· Score: 4
So why don't you read the article, then?
Of course, you're absolutely right about the latency. But latency doesn't adversely affect, for example, the transmission of pictures, geological data, or even streaming video.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I have pretty high standards, but I want a PVR/HTPC to fit in with my HiFi equipment and TV. I thought these four were rather ugly, to be honest.
I quite like the Accent HT-400 http://www.arisetec.com/products/HT-400.htm, or some of the silverstone cases http://www.silverstonetek.com/product-case.htm, or perhaps (although personally there's something about this last that doesn't feel quite right) the http://www.ahanix.com/dvine5.html.
I suspect companies are put off by possible legal consequences. A typical MythTV install contains a load of software which is patented (various codecs) and some software which is even illegal in certain jurisdictions (deCSS). Whilst an individual putting together a system themselves is probably pretty safe from patent lawyers, a company making money out of it would not be...
You expect people to take your analyses seriously, but you don't feel like attempting to test...?. I suggest you leave serious comparison documentation to people who do feel like testing stuff. No offence intended.
OK, that's quite interesting. The C86 is DURABrite not UltraChrome but it's the same family of technology. I actually didn't know the C86 was pigment based, and so is the D68.
In the UK the printers that the stores are pushing at you are the R200/220/300, (which are ink-based, but they have the cool CD/DVD printing feature). It doesn't seem to be easy to find out but I think the cheap HPs they are selling are all ink-based. And as far as a brief research can reveal, I think all the cheap canos are dye-based. It's surprisingly hard to tell (from the online stores, at least), it doesn't seem to be considered worth advertising.
Well basically it means that they are solid ink not liquid ink. So they are not absorbed into the paper so much as they solidify to form a waxy layer on top of the printer. The ink is typically not watersoluble, so you get waterfast inks.
I had heard that some 'colour laser printers' were dye-sub, but this is not backed up by a couple of minutes worth of googling so that might be a misapprehension.
I had also heard that they -- at least the cheap ones -- don't really give you photo-quality. This is why I went for an inkjet rather than a cheap colour laser for printing my photos.
You can save a *lot* of money by refilling your cartridges. I have successfully used www.jrinkjet.com in the UK, I imagine their are similar outfits in other countries.
I have absolutely no idea how the archival qualities of the replacement inks compare to the official ones. The print quality is pretty similar on all printers I've tried it with.
That's a bit of an overstatement.
Most of the major consumer printers are still dye-based. If you wander into a branch of PCWorld or Staples and pick up a printer from one of the displays, it will probably be dye-based. The pigment ones are still quite a bit more expensive. (I was eyeing up the 8-colour epson pigment printers like the R1800 but I couldn't justify the cost).
Is that true?
_ May_2004/Digital_Photo_Pro_May_2004.pdf suggests that the problem is not as terrible as you are suggesting, and that the difference between silver halide and ink is not all that huge.
I had heard that many of the 'digital photo labs' actually use almost exactly the same kind of short-lifetime ink as home printers, and therefore suffer from the same problems. I can't find a source to justify this online. (It was a PCWorld article but I can't find it)
The article at : http://www.wilhelm-research.com/Digital_Photo_Pro
Personally I comfort myself in the thought that my digital photos are all backed up, I can easily reprint, and if I do have to reprint in 5-10 years I will probably have bought a better printer by then!
The longevity of convential silver halide prints is often overstated. Most people don't keep their prints in so-called 'dark storage' condition, but in frames up on their walls or on their mantlepieces. These prints fade (that is, lose some colour; not become completely colourless) within just a few years, and nonetheless we happily keep these slightly faded prints without complaint. It's not clear that digital prints are all that much worse.
If you're interested in learning more there is lots of information at the WIR site at http://www.wilhelm-research.com/
The number you're looking for is 12 : http://news.com.com/Google+to+bid+on+AOL/2100-1038 _3-5873485.html
You make some interesting, and good, points about the power of market economies, and the benefits they have shown all over the work. I don't dispute any of that for a minute. And your ideas about micropayments are definitely interesting.
But I still fundamentally disagree that free things are worthless. I don't buy your argument about church services - they are free. Ask a vicar/pastor/reverend if it's OK to come to his service without planning to donate to the collection. I can assure you he'll say it is, and even encourage you to come along. And church services continue to be available to people who pay no taxes, so I don't really buy the indirect payment argument.
Other things which are free: self-help groups. Mother-parent groups. Local bridge (the card game) clubs. Some public libraries. Public parks. I live in a society surrounded by things which are free, provided for the most part by the work of willing volunteers. (Aren't many fire services in the US built on volunteers? And this is the case for lifeboat services in the UK).
And back to usenet. Usenet *remains* a thoroughly useful forum. For example, comp.text.tex remains an excellent source of TeX knowhow. Has it reduced in worth due to dilution? Maybe a little. Not that I've particularly noticed. Will it 'end up' useless? Neither of us can see the future, but I doubt that very much.
Even the google point is questionable. Yes, I know that google is supported by advertising. Did you know that I use google hundreds of times every day without buying a single product? That sounds free to me...
We may be reduced here to arguing about definitions.
In my opinion, there is much in this world which is good, and free [including wikipedia, which is excellent for all it's not perfect]. I see no reason to believe that all that good, free, stuff, is going to necessarily deteriorate, and I find that a rather depressing prophecy.
...and people should bear in mind that that is in fact about all that is good about XML.
XML is simply a notation for structured information. It's not the first, it won't be the last, it's not the most compact (lisp is far compacter), and it may well not be the best.
But it's around, there are some robust libraries to parse it, so you might as well use it.
It's all directed acyclic graphs, really...
Jules
Better how?
Tolkein certainly built a more dramatic and consistent world, paying the most inhuman attention to details (including creating the languages his people spoke...). And LOTR is rather more epic in scope, and takes the good old Wagnerian theme of an immense struggle against an old evil.
On the other hand, the Harry Potter books are more like everyday novels, in that they explore the emotions of the characters and their relationships in a way Tolkein never really bothered to do.
The books are really apples and oranges: I enjoyed them both. I did, in fact, enjoy LOTR more... but I personally enjoy the detail in Tolkein's world which many readers find boring...
I wouldn't be that surprised if, on average, LOTR was more popular with males and Harry Potter with females. (Aha! Cunning controversial point to attract attention to my post)
Jules
So what is science fiction, then?
The best definition of science fiction I'm aware of is that science fiction is the genre studying alternative futures, pasts, or presents. "Alternative" in the sense either simply that some things turned out differently (think some of Philip K Dick, or perhaps 'Fatherland'), or, more often, that the laws of physics were slightly different.
Your classic, space-ship atom-blaster science fiction falls squarely within this definition as possible futures. Much great science fiction (Wyndham, Wells, Ballard) deals with alternative presents.
And most fantasy fiction also meets this criteria, IMO: it deals with an alternative present in which magic is possible.
Of course, lots of fantasy fiction is also strongly influenced by the mold of the 'epic' or the 'quest' (Tolkein, Eddings, etc...), but so is some science fiction, and even some plain novels.
Personally, I'm a little doubtful that (any of) the Harry Potters deserved a Hugo, but they *are* well written and enjoyable (IMO), and I don't have an issue with them being classed as science fiction.
Jules
Actually, the FSF would rather copyright didn't exist.
This is one of the most frequent GPL/FSF misconceptions I see here.
Yes, the GPL does require copyright to work. But that doesn't mean the FSF is pro-copyright. The GPL was a license built to attempt to promote free software in a world where copyright is the law. If copyright wasn't the law, there would be other ways of promoting free software, and it would probably be easier to do so.
For example, in a world without copyright, all programs or algorithms written down in academic publications (or publications of any kind) would be available for all to use. Admittedly, the GPL's protection against turning things proprietary would be lost, but it would also be less necessary (since compilation, encryption, and obfuscation are known not to be effective protections against plagiarism anyway).
For example, see the essay at the gnu website here for an example; other essays in the same place may be more apropos.
Jules
I'm pretty sure you're getting this totally wrong.
;-)
This is nothing to do with using PHP in web pages at all. In fact, it's nothing to do with web pages.
This about using PHP as a script interpreter, just like you use perl or python as a script interpreter.
So this certainly won't allow you to embed GTK applications in web pages: that would be neat, but would require a browser-plugin at the client end, and require the PHP code to be send to the client end. So the client would need the PHP interpreter.
It won't allow you to embed gtkhtml in IE, either
Jules
Damn. You're right, that's not nice at all.
Someone down below (tonywong?) claims that the DVI spec is only up to 1280x1024? Seems a bit short sighted, if true.
Jules
It would be nice!
I hadn't thought that LCD displays were artificially inflated, though. I assumed it was just market economics --- the volumes haven't brought the prices down yet. And the technology is still new and expensive. I'd be interested to know if you have reason to think the price is artificial.
I'm just assuming that they will gradually get more-and-more popular (already flatscreens are a fairly common sight in banks and so forth, the succesful European internet cafe 'EasyEverything' uses them exclusively, I think), and prices will come down.
I'm hoping my next monitor will be flat-screen, one way or the other. We haven't heard much of plasma screens recently; I was hoping they'd be a nice competitor technology to push prices down.
Jules
You're sure that was because of an analog connection? And not because the thing was running at a different resolution to its native resolution, and scaling?
With a high resolution like that, scaling would look just-about-OK (compared to how horrible scaling 640x480 onto 800x600 used to look on the first generation ones, anyhow!), and maybe they were demoing the scaling.
If this screen really doesn't have a digital interface, then I agree with your concerns..
Jules
Getting all the wires in, I think.
Each pixel on the screen needs to have its own wires (3, presumably), and as your screens get bigger, their circumference to area ratio gets worse, so it becomes more of a problem to squeeze all the wires in along the back...
After all, 2000 x 1000 x 3 is about 6 million little conducting channels.
I think this is one of the reasons people are so excited about transparent conductors..
Jules
No, RMS isn't at all pro-copyright.
The GPL uses the force of copyright simply to counteract (in his view) the evils of copyright. He'd be far happier if there simply was none.
He isn't against all IP, thought. He's got no objection to IP (indeed, copyright) on 'artistic works'. It's the unusual status of software as a tool which can be copied at near-zero cost, and modified and enhanced so easily which makes it possible and very powerful to share, benefitting everyone.
Jules
Stallman has written that he doesn't think programmers should be paid salaries. He's written that he finds it disgusting that people would even suggest working for money.
Where? I just double-checked on his website, and what I find agreed with what I thought he thought, which is: There's nothing wrong with programmers being paid, as long as they're being paid to write free software.
And before I hear sniggering that that's a ridiculous idea, it's not at all. People at small companies such as Ximian and Redhat, as well as large companies like Sun and IBM are being paid to write free software all the time. (Sun has being writing free software at least as far back as the origin of Tcl, a long time ago).
Jules
Yes, that's a good question.
;-) the same interplay was seen there.
The differences are:
1) Music is beautiful, while software is useful.
2) Music is typically a finished work of art, while software can almost always be improved.
There are overlaps, and certainly there's no reason not to distribute music under a free license of one kind or another, but the arguments that music should be free are, IMO, much weaker than the arguments that software should be free.
The typical free software situation is something like this: I write a program because it's useful to me, or a group of people I know (e.g. a client). However, it's also useful to lots of other people, so I allow anyone to use it. (This is a piece of altruism on my part, so far). However, other people will have slightly different requirements and/or cleverer ideas. They can make the changes which suit them, and release them back to the community. This constant feedback approach benefits everyone.
There is a very strong parallel to the way academic research is carried out: academics publish papers with their ideas, others read those papers, come up with enhancements or corrections and publish those, rinse and repeat!
I don't think this argument transfers very well to music (or books, or other primarly artistic media).
However, it does occur in those media at a higher level, certainly. Artists (of all types) are influenced by each other, and use each other's ideas. This is out of the realm of copyright, and no one would consider complaining about it!
Another similar example is the computer games industry. Each new RTS which comes out will have implemented, in its own way, some of the latest and greatest features of its competitors. Back in the good old days when there was more than one commonly used commercial word processor
In other words, free software is the extension of the natural and (normally) uncontested concept of the sharing of ideas in a community, to actual sharing of physical source code. The reason this extension is feasible is partly down to the almost-zero cost of copying software (compared to the very real cost of building a new car, say), and partly the immense adaptability and reusability of computer software.
Jules
Err....
But there are no ways of mathematically demonstrating encryption to be secure.
Or rather, all such demonstrations must rely on assertions saying 'XYZ is a slow process'. Such assertions can never be proven.
There's no mathematical way of proving that new algorithms won't arise.
Jules
So why don't you read the article, then?
Of course, you're absolutely right about the latency. But latency doesn't adversely affect, for example, the transmission of pictures, geological data, or even streaming video.
Jules