The more and more I read about these barebones/minicases the more I think that could make a tiny entertainment box in the living room. Especially after a few case mods, like clear casing and/or neon lights.
You could have MAME and other emulators running on it, and just connect up some Playstation controllers via a USB adaptor. Then it could double as a DVD/video/music system via an infrared remote control, cordless keyboard and/or mouse. It wouldn't be that expensive either as looking at the specs it looks most above are already taken care of. The only concern would be the noise generated but I don't know enough on that to comment. Maybe you could downclock the machine and use a smaller fan.
Anyone know the availability of these in Australia? I couldn't find anywhere via google that sold them locally.
Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but will the GLPing of mplayer improve the chances of default DVD support in any of the Linux distros? Or does the problem in regards to the legality of compiled DeCSS libraries/code still stop this from happening? This is not a troll by any means, I just don't fully understand the situation.
I wonder if this bill comes into effect if it will make filtering out spam a lot easier. I use the very basic elm filter, which can be used to filter mail according to words in the headers, and despite it's simplicity it can be quite effective at targetting spam. Just looking for the keywords of mortgage, insurance, stocks etc it reduces my spam quite signifiantly.
Yet it's hard to catch spam of a sexual nature because that sort of mail is often quite deceptive in use of the subject headings. Quite often I open a message with innocous the subject of "Hey there" only to discover it's either some girl who likes to 'ride' horses or wants to me pay her college fees via her private webcam.
Whether this bill comes into effect, and they actually manage to enforce is a whole other issue.
Isn't the fact it's free reason enough to use it. Being a poor university student, who earns a measly $11 AUS (or $6 US) an hour for answering phones for Pizza Hut I don't exactly have much money to splurge on software. So if need a tool to get the job done I will try to find a free alternative. Sure I could pirate software but that doesn't gel to well with my conscience. Which reminds me, I think it's time I started personally thanking free/open source coders for what they provide.
I definitely agree that manufacturers shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of how they use their equipment. Not should governments regulate equipment. It like Steve Jobs said it isn't their fault if customers use their iPods for piracy, because their primary purpose is not piracy, it that's of a portable listening device. Same deal with VCRS, the only reason that aren't illegal is that their primary purpose isn't to infringe copyrights.
For that reason I disagree with comparing this to firearms, which some/many people believe shouldn't be banned/regulated. Unlike the iPod, the primary of firearms is not to entertain, but to kill things be it people or animals.
People should realize that EVERY MS product is spyware.
While Microsoft doesn't having a gleaming reputation in these parts it's a big claim to say that all Microsoft products contain spyware. The only cases I have read is of Media Player and perhaps Product Activation but both of those are open to contestation.
Plus the only spyware that Ad-Aware detects after a clean Windows 2000 install is some IE registry thing, whose name evades me but that is trivial in comparison to KaZaa.
So until you back up your claim with some credible links I am skeptical.
As someone who deals heavily with the music industry I think one part of the problem is the huge marketing infrastructure, which represents a huge chunk of the cost of CDs.
While I have no figures to support my claims it's amazing the ammount of people that are required to put out a record through a major label. You have publicists, freebies and junkets for reviewers, marketting, managers, advertising etc that all needs to be paid for. Then as you get bigger generally more money is spent on these things so at the end of day the band gets very little of the cut.
The record industry is by no means stable, people are being made redundant all time, and with a system like this where the costs of putting out a record are enormous it's days of hype and marketting are probably numbered.
Are we talking atmosphere processing plants like in the film 'Aliens'? I just whipped out the Aliens Colonial Marine Technical Manual by Lee Brimmicobe-Woood, and in the last couple of pages it details how they work (though I am guessing it is made up).
Anyway for those that are interested the plant supposedly worked by heating and ionizing the atmosphere using a high temperature electrical arc. Then to cut a long description short the gas was heated to 5000 K so that it could be broken into it's component atoms, thus oxygen could be derived. While I am no scientist (unless computer science counts) this does sound plausible going on my general knowledge.
This is a pretty obvious hoax. The speakers on a coin-op are crappy and totally unable to handle frequences that an MP3 is going to put out.
If you take the time to carefully read the article you'll see that he actually replaced the speakers.
I used a 5 piece set of Altec Lansing speakers as my speaker system. There are two satellite speakers, two surround speakers and a subwoofer. Believe it or not, they sound GREAT. The subwoofer sits on the floor of the cabinet. The two satellites are run up the cabinet and are visible hanging above the monitor area.
Sure it's pretty large in its beta stage, but if you read the article you will notice the following paragraph.
The unit's present box is a desktop PC painted black, nothing fancy and fairly large. Patnode admits the unit is still much bigger than it needs to be, but he is already working on variants to reduce its size.
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You could have MAME and other emulators running on it, and just connect up some Playstation controllers via a USB adaptor. Then it could double as a DVD/video/music system via an infrared remote control, cordless keyboard and/or mouse. It wouldn't be that expensive either as looking at the specs it looks most above are already taken care of. The only concern would be the noise generated but I don't know enough on that to comment. Maybe you could downclock the machine and use a smaller fan.
Anyone know the availability of these in Australia? I couldn't find anywhere via google that sold them locally.
Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but will the GLPing of mplayer improve the chances of default DVD support in any of the Linux distros? Or does the problem in regards to the legality of compiled DeCSS libraries/code still stop this from happening? This is not a troll by any means, I just don't fully understand the situation.
I wonder if this bill comes into effect if it will make filtering out spam a lot easier. I use the very basic elm filter, which can be used to filter mail according to words in the headers, and despite it's simplicity it can be quite effective at targetting spam. Just looking for the keywords of mortgage, insurance, stocks etc it reduces my spam quite signifiantly.
Yet it's hard to catch spam of a sexual nature because that sort of mail is often quite deceptive in use of the subject headings. Quite often I open a message with innocous the subject of "Hey there" only to discover it's either some girl who likes to 'ride' horses or wants to me pay her college fees via her private webcam.
Whether this bill comes into effect, and they actually manage to enforce is a whole other issue.
Isn't the fact it's free reason enough to use it. Being a poor university student, who earns a measly $11 AUS (or $6 US) an hour for answering phones for Pizza Hut I don't exactly have much money to splurge on software. So if need a tool to get the job done I will try to find a free alternative. Sure I could pirate software but that doesn't gel to well with my conscience. Which reminds me, I think it's time I started personally thanking free/open source coders for what they provide.
I definitely agree that manufacturers shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of how they use their equipment. Not should governments regulate equipment. It like Steve Jobs said it isn't their fault if customers use their iPods for piracy, because their primary purpose is not piracy, it that's of a portable listening device. Same deal with VCRS, the only reason that aren't illegal is that their primary purpose isn't to infringe copyrights.
For that reason I disagree with comparing this to firearms, which some/many people believe shouldn't be banned/regulated. Unlike the iPod, the primary of firearms is not to entertain, but to kill things be it people or animals.
So until you back up your claim with some credible links I am skeptical.
As someone who deals heavily with the music industry I think one part of the problem is the huge marketing infrastructure, which represents a huge chunk of the cost of CDs.
While I have no figures to support my claims it's amazing the ammount of people that are required to put out a record through a major label. You have publicists, freebies and junkets for reviewers, marketting, managers, advertising etc that all needs to be paid for. Then as you get bigger generally more money is spent on these things so at the end of day the band gets very little of the cut.
The record industry is by no means stable, people are being made redundant all time, and with a system like this where the costs of putting out a record are enormous it's days of hype and marketting are probably numbered.
Are we talking atmosphere processing plants like in the film 'Aliens'? I just whipped out the Aliens Colonial Marine Technical Manual by Lee Brimmicobe-Woood, and in the last couple of pages it details how they work (though I am guessing it is made up).
Anyway for those that are interested the plant supposedly worked by heating and ionizing the atmosphere using a high temperature electrical arc. Then to cut a long description short the gas was heated to 5000 K so that it could be broken into it's component atoms, thus oxygen could be derived. While I am no scientist (unless computer science counts) this does sound plausible going on my general knowledge.
If you take the time to carefully read the article you'll see that he actually replaced the speakers.