Acutally yes I expect that any day now. Once there are enough commercial digital radio providers expect them to buy/convince legislaters to ban analog radio. Won't it be great?
btw I'm with you. When I go away on vaction to Berkshire Mass am I asking too much to be able to tune into TV to check the news where no cable access is available?
Forcing a new technology and expense onto the public that will result in nothing but higher prices and less choice isn't a good thing. btw it WILL result in a price increase. When was the last time industry ever did something for the public good that resulted in lower prices and better service?
I mean only RedHat, Suse, Debian, Mandrake, etc are LSB certified. I wish the big 4 would get it together. Oh wait.
Anyway call me jaded but I'm just going to chalk this up as yet another "Linux needs to do X to go mainstream!" article which doesn't talk about anything we haven't heard a million times before.
In reality what keeps the distros "different enough to be a hassle" is that they all want to be unique. If every distro looked exactly the same, used the exact same software, all ran the same exact kernel, and could all interchange packages with zero effort then that would be a real problem for the various distros. It would be a problem for the commercial distros and a problem for the community distros. Don't kid yourself, everyone wants to be number 1, even in OSS.
People thinking that there is going to be some sort unified single megadistro that everyone gets behind are delusional.
I'm sorry but I don't have till next week to read the article. Is this the guy responsible for NBC's "revelations" ?
Did anyone else just keep hitting PageDown and wondering when you'd get to the comments? (The answer btw in Firefox@1024x768 is 24. Anything over 23 is too many:/ )
And if all businesses decide to start charging extra to cover "potential fees" that's OK with you as well? Afterall, what's a $1 extra on every single service that you use?
If they aren't being forced to charge the fees then they shouldn't be charging for them. Its as simple as that. I can't fathom why you think users should just be fine with seeing extra charges on their bills that are going straight into the pockets of the VOIP company. At least with the regular phone company they have to charge a fee, with VOIP providers doing this they are just screwing the customer.
Don't know why they had to change the Interface 3 times in 3 games. IMHO the first one with the PDA was the best. It obivous they were going by sponsors, ie Palm 1st game, Ericsson 2nd game, 3rd game ????. The "in-game" interface for the 3rd game is slow and looks just like some shitty menu. It just make me feel like I'm back at the game menu as opposed to a spy looking at the pda on his wrist.
Also I preferred the night vision from the previous games where once you switched it on the whole screen just went "green". Now when you turn on night vision you look through a green fisheye lens. Its still useable, just not worth doing and not and improvement.
Finally I have to say if you've played the 1st two games even on Expert this game is just way too easy. I tried to challenge myself, but even though I didn't set off 1 single alarm nor get seen by guards the game was just too easy.
Finally, finally,:) They HAVE to do expansion packs. Beyond them wanting your money with reagards to the single player game there is just no reason to keep putting out entirely new games. All the tools they need are already done, just put out expansion packs for $19.95 every 3 months and trust me people WILL buy them. Shit if they just put on expansion packs for the 1st game I'd pay again what I've already spent on games 2 and 3.
"But where it becomes interesting is in the freeware domain."
Don't you mean the shareware domain?
"I can also see The Gimp having a hard time competing on the Mac without some serious remodeling of their design philosophy."
The Gimp doesn't have much marketshare on the Mac already so I don't think they have much to worry about. Also don't expect to see Freeware apps as full featured as the Gimp out there just because of CoreImage. If something comes out that can do as much as the Gimp and is clearly easier to use and more full featured expect it to be commercial, not freeware.
As I've pointed out before, Firefox's probem isn't the number of flaws its how fast they get fixed. In fact before the last release there was a rather large lag time between when there were a bunch of security flaws and when fixes came out in a stable release.
Firefox is still the most secure general purpose browser IMHO but its still has a long way to go regarding security practices. First they need to develop a decent updating mechanism though so that you don't have to reinstall the entire browser just a fix a bug. The current setup isn't non-optimal to say the least.
I don't own an Ipod and even I know that you don't have to buy a new Ipod just because the battery runs out. IIRC its a $99 fee to have Apple do it and like $30 to buy a 3rd party battery and do it yourself. I could see if you want a new one to get more capacity but if your replacing your Ipod and spending >$300 on a new Ipod just because of the battery, well that seems really stupid.
especially when you add -gentoo to the search and then find out of the 9 hits out there none of them are interesting.
I'm all for google hacking, especially where axis webcams are concerned, but that just isn't a useful one.
There is still of ton of fun stuff out there though. Too bad about ISP's wising up and filtering ports though. Boy did it used to be fun to scan entire networks that had F&P sharing enabled with no firewall or ISP filter in the way. It used to be as simple as fire up your program, pick and range or IPs, and laugh as 1,000s of boxes we directly open to the Internet.
"Not to mention, this all will wind up creating backdoor, Internet-assisted "player editing" capabilities in competitors' games. PS2 and XBox Internet users will certainly be able to sneakily insert all the "official" information into the games. At least, I hope."
I think its more likely that they'll just stop making NCAA football games. I know unofficailly its been done in the past but considering how much it costs to develop and market a game these days I can just see where eventually you have one nfl game, one ncaa game etc by the end of this deal. I mean Christ a six year exclusive contract? How is that possibly good in any way? Do they have any idea how much power they are putting in EA's hands? With these deals alone they could make or break ANY console. What's that Microsoft? You don't want to do X,Y, and Z and pay us $50 million in kickbacks? Well then, no football for your console for the next 5 years!
...but a lot of people feel safer with [technology that works and doesn't take away your freedom].
Needing to authenticate to play a game offline is the greatest crime against gamers I can think ok. Fact is if this wasn't Half Life for that reason alone the game would have tanked otherwise.
But I suppose next your going to tell me how DRM is just the next "logical progression" to "protect users" and that people who buy will only buy CD's are just being silly for hanging on to the past.
500MHz is not what you would want to build a a HTPC with. Its possbile, people do it, but since your going to be spending good money on a hardware TV Tuner then please at least buy something like a AMD 1600 >. I use a 1GHz which gets the job done but then I also like to do emulation etc. I need a faster cpu. 500MHz unless your dirt poor and have no money isn't the best cpu to start with.
And second I'll point this part out. "This will depend on whether or not you're an "audiophile". If you don't have a surround sound speaker package setup, than almost anything will do."
At a minimum buy something like the cheap chaintech Via Envy which will give you very good audio quality and more importantly SPDIF out. Are you really going to go through all of the trouble of buying hardware and setting it up only to use some shitty realtek card that causes hiss when you playback music or TV shows? That applies even if right now your not doing surround sound.
I'm not being snobby here either. These are basic things any decent HTPC guide will tell you.
So basically your saying I can take any GPL code I want, modify it, sell it to whoever I want, but then say "its a private sale" and never re-release any GPL code. That makes zero sense to me. By it leaving the company in anyway its being distributed and therefore has to be available. The whole "oh but is a private sale" thing doesn't wash.
Perhaps I'm just wrong here but if I am I hope someone could explain why. Isn't that why we get on the cases of companies that sell GPL products but never release the changes to the public?
Drives me nuts. I especially can't stand the Apple DRM fanboys. Oh how I disklike them. Thank God for people like Jon.
The music industry survived for years and years with NO copy restrictions at all. Tapes and CD's could be copied at will. And best of all at the height of "Copyright infringement" and P2P, the record companies are making record profits.
Any yet now we are supposed to accept these lockdowns and be grateful at all for their services? Because as the parent pointed out that's already happening. Let's look at what Apple has done with the power of DRM to brainwash users. Restrict from Internet streaming to local streaming. Restrict from unlimited Lan to 5 users a day. Restrict from 10 burns of a playlist to 7(IIRC), and finally as someone else had pointed out disabled features on Itunes and the Ipod to lock out competitors.
And still Apple DRM fanboys and people ignorant of how damaging DRM can be talk about how great it is . Well from here it sure as heck looks like real world DRM implementation suck and are only getting worse. Itunes 5.0 is going to be locked down so tight you can only listen to your songs in a locked room in the presense of an authorized Apple Rep.
btw I should mention I have no problem with Itunes and besides the Ipod being expensive have no problem with it either. This prasing of DRM and accepting your software being locked down has to stop.
By supporting Red Hat you support OSS in general. That's the benefit. Of course as others stated feel free to use centos et al if that fits your needs. I've never been a fan of forcing users to pay for linux, but paying for Red Hat isn't a total waste like many users like to think.
Of course I suppose(and not directed at you) Morons saying Red Hat is the micro$oft of linux will never stop.
Sorry but if you said 4% maybe 5% I'd agree, but >10% mac use is nothing but a fantasy. I've done plently of home and office computer work over the years and Macs don't come anywhere near to being in 1 out of every 10 households. That's not me being anti-apple or anything that's just what I've seen from an IT and non-IT standpoint. In fact among my family, friends, and my wife's friends and family I can't think of any who own a Mac.
I like the way it gives you a chance to back out of t link. I see people posting tinyurl links all the time and just refuse to click them for obivous reasons.
Got to remember to start using that for long links. Thanks.
I'm sorry but the grandparent obivously isn't in the target market. There are a tons of users out there who have $300 to spend on an IPod and would love something where they can game, play music, watch movies etc. No way one device can beat the best of every category, ie be better then and Ipod for music, be better than a whatever for gaming etc. That's just an unreasonable standard which nobody can realistically meet.
You'd have a point if every single portable gaming device ever made didn't rely on proprietary cartridges. I think your point about them trying to force an alternate media is completely invalid because there is no other mass market alternative.
Luminosity is a testbed for technology. It's not meant to show exactly what Gnome 2.12 or X whatever is going to look like.
You say its not useful but what about something like Expose which many users think is useful? Imagine how boring the early versions of it looked which did nothing interesting or useful? Think outside the box for a minute and realize that by using the technology someone may come up with some new ways of interacting with windows that nobody has ever thought of and turns out to be really useful. Your boring and bloated accusation is way close-minded and short-sighted.
Considering how long it was till 1.01 came out and how long 1.0 was out there with plently of know security holes I wouldn't exactly point to Firefox as the pinnacle for OSS security response.
And as much as a fanboy as I am for OSS I don't possibly see how you can say that OSS "can react faster to new threats than any closed source development model". OSS does indeed usually act faster than commercial software expecially when you bring something like IE into the picture. But whether something is open or closed has absolutely nothing to do with how fast the owner of the code responds to a security threat. That's on them and has zero to due with whether its open or closed. A commercial provider could have reacted just as quickly.
Again I'm all for pro-OSS statements, but let's keep it to the facts.
Well the IE and WMP using majority that makes up/. wouldn't have a clue on how to play an Ogg file.
And then of course you have the ogg developers doing there best to make sure you CAN'T easily find the ogg codec for windows. Worst site layout ever...
So yes mp3 for all its faults remains the best choice for widespread compatibility and ease of use.
Slashdot Mirror
Acutally yes I expect that any day now. Once there are enough commercial digital radio providers expect them to buy/convince legislaters to ban analog radio. Won't it be great?
btw I'm with you. When I go away on vaction to Berkshire Mass am I asking too much to be able to tune into TV to check the news where no cable access is available?
Forcing a new technology and expense onto the public that will result in nothing but higher prices and less choice isn't a good thing. btw it WILL result in a price increase. When was the last time industry ever did something for the public good that resulted in lower prices and better service?
I mean only RedHat, Suse, Debian, Mandrake, etc are LSB certified. I wish the big 4 would get it together. Oh wait.
Anyway call me jaded but I'm just going to chalk this up as yet another "Linux needs to do X to go mainstream!" article which doesn't talk about anything we haven't heard a million times before.
In reality what keeps the distros "different enough to be a hassle" is that they all want to be unique. If every distro looked exactly the same, used the exact same software, all ran the same exact kernel, and could all interchange packages with zero effort then that would be a real problem for the various distros. It would be a problem for the commercial distros and a problem for the community distros. Don't kid yourself, everyone wants to be number 1, even in OSS.
People thinking that there is going to be some sort unified single megadistro that everyone gets behind are delusional.
I'm sorry but I don't have till next week to read the article. Is this the guy responsible for NBC's "revelations" ?
:/ )
Did anyone else just keep hitting PageDown and wondering when you'd get to the comments?
(The answer btw in Firefox@1024x768 is 24. Anything over 23 is too many
/. the fuckers!
And if all businesses decide to start charging extra to cover "potential fees" that's OK with you as well? Afterall, what's a $1 extra on every single service that you use?
If they aren't being forced to charge the fees then they shouldn't be charging for them. Its as simple as that. I can't fathom why you think users should just be fine with seeing extra charges on their bills that are going straight into the pockets of the VOIP company. At least with the regular phone company they have to charge a fee, with VOIP providers doing this they are just screwing the customer.
Don't know why they had to change the Interface 3 times in 3 games. IMHO the first one with the PDA was the best. It obivous they were going by sponsors, ie Palm 1st game, Ericsson 2nd game, 3rd game ????. The "in-game" interface for the 3rd game is slow and looks just like some shitty menu. It just make me feel like I'm back at the game menu as opposed to a spy looking at the pda on his wrist.
:) They HAVE to do expansion packs. Beyond them wanting your money with reagards to the single player game there is just no reason to keep putting out entirely new games. All the tools they need are already done, just put out expansion packs for $19.95 every 3 months and trust me people WILL buy them. Shit if they just put on expansion packs for the 1st game I'd pay again what I've already spent on games 2 and 3.
Also I preferred the night vision from the previous games where once you switched it on the whole screen just went "green". Now when you turn on night vision you look through a green fisheye lens. Its still useable, just not worth doing and not and improvement.
Finally I have to say if you've played the 1st two games even on Expert this game is just way too easy. I tried to challenge myself, but even though I didn't set off 1 single alarm nor get seen by guards the game was just too easy.
Finally, finally,
"But where it becomes interesting is in the freeware domain."
Don't you mean the shareware domain?
"I can also see The Gimp having a hard time competing on the Mac without some serious remodeling of their design philosophy."
The Gimp doesn't have much marketshare on the Mac already so I don't think they have much to worry about. Also don't expect to see Freeware apps as full featured as the Gimp out there just because of CoreImage. If something comes out that can do as much as the Gimp and is clearly easier to use and more full featured expect it to be commercial, not freeware.
As I've pointed out before, Firefox's probem isn't the number of flaws its how fast they get fixed. In fact before the last release there was a rather large lag time between when there were a bunch of security flaws and when fixes came out in a stable release.
Firefox is still the most secure general purpose browser IMHO but its still has a long way to go regarding security practices. First they need to develop a decent updating mechanism though so that you don't have to reinstall the entire browser just a fix a bug. The current setup isn't non-optimal to say the least.
I don't own an Ipod and even I know that you don't have to buy a new Ipod just because the battery runs out. IIRC its a $99 fee to have Apple do it and like $30 to buy a 3rd party battery and do it yourself. I could see if you want a new one to get more capacity but if your replacing your Ipod and spending >$300 on a new Ipod just because of the battery, well that seems really stupid.
especially when you add -gentoo to the search and then find out of the 9 hits out there none of them are interesting.
I'm all for google hacking, especially where axis webcams are concerned, but that just isn't a useful one.
There is still of ton of fun stuff out there though. Too bad about ISP's wising up and filtering ports though. Boy did it used to be fun to scan entire networks that had F&P sharing enabled with no firewall or ISP filter in the way. It used to be as simple as fire up your program, pick and range or IPs, and laugh as 1,000s of boxes we directly open to the Internet.
"Not to mention, this all will wind up creating backdoor, Internet-assisted "player editing" capabilities in competitors' games. PS2 and XBox Internet users will certainly be able to sneakily insert all the "official" information into the games. At least, I hope."
I think its more likely that they'll just stop making NCAA football games. I know unofficailly its been done in the past but considering how much it costs to develop and market a game these days I can just see where eventually you have one nfl game, one ncaa game etc by the end of this deal. I mean Christ a six year exclusive contract? How is that possibly good in any way? Do they have any idea how much power they are putting in EA's hands? With these deals alone they could make or break ANY console. What's that Microsoft? You don't want to do X,Y, and Z and pay us $50 million in kickbacks? Well then, no football for your console for the next 5 years!
This is so wrong.
...but a lot of people feel safer with [technology that works and doesn't take away your freedom].
Needing to authenticate to play a game offline is the greatest crime against gamers I can think ok. Fact is if this wasn't Half Life for that reason alone the game would have tanked otherwise.
But I suppose next your going to tell me how DRM is just the next "logical progression" to "protect users" and that people who buy will only buy CD's are just being silly for hanging on to the past.
500MHz is not what you would want to build a a HTPC with. Its possbile, people do it, but since your going to be spending good money on a hardware TV Tuner then please at least buy something like a AMD 1600 >. I use a 1GHz which gets the job done but then I also like to do emulation etc. I need a faster cpu. 500MHz unless your dirt poor and have no money isn't the best cpu to start with.
And second I'll point this part out. "This will depend on whether or not you're an "audiophile". If you don't have a surround sound speaker package setup, than almost anything will do."
At a minimum buy something like the cheap chaintech Via Envy which will give you very good audio quality and more importantly SPDIF out. Are you really going to go through all of the trouble of buying hardware and setting it up only to use some shitty realtek card that causes hiss when you playback music or TV shows? That applies even if right now your not doing surround sound.
I'm not being snobby here either. These are basic things any decent HTPC guide will tell you.
Mandriva? How ahh European...
In Mandriva company changes name to _________!
So basically your saying I can take any GPL code I want, modify it, sell it to whoever I want, but then say "its a private sale" and never re-release any GPL code. That makes zero sense to me. By it leaving the company in anyway its being distributed and therefore has to be available. The whole "oh but is a private sale" thing doesn't wash.
Perhaps I'm just wrong here but if I am I hope someone could explain why. Isn't that why we get on the cases of companies that sell GPL products but never release the changes to the public?
Drives me nuts. I especially can't stand the Apple DRM fanboys. Oh how I disklike them. Thank God for people like Jon.
The music industry survived for years and years with NO copy restrictions at all. Tapes and CD's could be copied at will. And best of all at the height of "Copyright infringement" and P2P, the record companies are making record profits.
Any yet now we are supposed to accept these lockdowns and be grateful at all for their services? Because as the parent pointed out that's already happening. Let's look at what Apple has done with the power of DRM to brainwash users. Restrict from Internet streaming to local streaming. Restrict from unlimited Lan to 5 users a day. Restrict from 10 burns of a playlist to 7(IIRC), and finally as someone else had pointed out disabled features on Itunes and the Ipod to lock out competitors.
And still Apple DRM fanboys and people ignorant of how damaging DRM can be talk about how great it is . Well from here it sure as heck looks like real world DRM implementation suck and are only getting worse. Itunes 5.0 is going to be locked down so tight you can only listen to your songs in a locked room in the presense of an authorized Apple Rep.
btw I should mention I have no problem with Itunes and besides the Ipod being expensive have no problem with it either. This prasing of DRM and accepting your software being locked down has to stop.
By supporting Red Hat you support OSS in general. That's the benefit. Of course as others stated feel free to use centos et al if that fits your needs. I've never been a fan of forcing users to pay for linux, but paying for Red Hat isn't a total waste like many users like to think.
Of course I suppose(and not directed at you) Morons saying Red Hat is the micro$oft of linux will never stop.
Sorry but if you said 4% maybe 5% I'd agree, but >10% mac use is nothing but a fantasy. I've done plently of home and office computer work over the years and Macs don't come anywhere near to being in 1 out of every 10 households. That's not me being anti-apple or anything that's just what I've seen from an IT and non-IT standpoint. In fact among my family, friends, and my wife's friends and family I can't think of any who own a Mac.
I like the way it gives you a chance to back out of t link. I see people posting tinyurl links all the time and just refuse to click them for obivous reasons.
Got to remember to start using that for long links. Thanks.
I'm sorry but the grandparent obivously isn't in the target market. There are a tons of users out there who have $300 to spend on an IPod and would love something where they can game, play music, watch movies etc. No way one device can beat the best of every category, ie be better then and Ipod for music, be better than a whatever for gaming etc. That's just an unreasonable standard which nobody can realistically meet.
You'd have a point if every single portable gaming device ever made didn't rely on proprietary cartridges. I think your point about them trying to force an alternate media is completely invalid because there is no other mass market alternative.
Luminosity is a testbed for technology. It's not meant to show exactly what Gnome 2.12 or X whatever is going to look like.
You say its not useful but what about something like Expose which many users think is useful? Imagine how boring the early versions of it looked which did nothing interesting or useful? Think outside the box for a minute and realize that by using the technology someone may come up with some new ways of interacting with windows that nobody has ever thought of and turns out to be really useful. Your boring and bloated accusation is way close-minded and short-sighted.
Considering how long it was till 1.01 came out and how long 1.0 was out there with plently of know security holes I wouldn't exactly point to Firefox as the pinnacle for OSS security response.
And as much as a fanboy as I am for OSS I don't possibly see how you can say that OSS "can react faster to new threats than any closed source development model". OSS does indeed usually act faster than commercial software expecially when you bring something like IE into the picture. But whether something is open or closed has absolutely nothing to do with how fast the owner of the code responds to a security threat. That's on them and has zero to due with whether its open or closed. A commercial provider could have reacted just as quickly.
Again I'm all for pro-OSS statements, but let's keep it to the facts.
I mean geez I try not to bitch about the dupes and crappy stories that get posted here, but man is this a non-story.
t or/
btw a good free pdf creatore for windows.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcrea
Well the IE and WMP using majority that makes up /. wouldn't have a clue on how to play an Ogg file.
And then of course you have the ogg developers doing there best to make sure you CAN'T easily find the ogg codec for windows. Worst site layout ever...
So yes mp3 for all its faults remains the best choice for widespread compatibility and ease of use.