I mean, why spend all that time building your altered reality avatar, the altered reality objects for demoing etc. (they show sun objects in one of the video demos)... why spend all that time navigating around a virtual world (which has to be built) and doing things in the virtual space when really you should be actually working?
I work from home every couple of weeks, and really the biggest thing I would like is a live video link to the colleges I most often talk to, having to break from working to go into a virtual world to talk to colleges is just such crud.
They show their 'virtual boardroom', which has video streams from other locations. Why bother with the virtual boardroom at all? What's wrong with just having video feeds?
Urgh... this is almost doing something for doing something's sake, without actually considering how useful it really is.
Also, in Australia calls to Mobiles cost the person calling you, so if you have no landline, all those people who want to chat to you for hours on the phone would need to pay huge rates per the minute. Compared to a local untimed call which is, what, 30 cents or so.
In the US isn't it the case where the receiver pays? It was something like that for txt messages etc when I was over there, thereby making mobile spam horrid as you ended up being charged for receiving spam, whereas here in Aus if they spam you it costs them, not you.
As such, we can't get rid of our landline really...
THEN DON'T BUY THEM Uh, if I'm not mistaken, that's pretty much what a boycott is. Yeah, good advice there, buddy. No, you are mistaken, a boycott is more than that. Not buying a product because it isn't what you need is just choosing another product. Not buying a product that you actually want based on some other grounds (ethical, whatever) is a boycott.
That, in this case, the on board graphics was fine for the OP meant that they had NO NEED for the ATI card, so wouldn't be buying it anyway, so IT'S NOT A BOYCOTT.
Dear god, could you get a little more irate about something that really DOESN'T MATTER!
Spouting the words Boycott is pure drivel.
If you find that the performance of their cards is crap in the environment that you want to use it, THEN DON'T BUY THEM, buy something else... that's what you do with items, buy the thing that best fits your need.
But to suggest a boycott? Dear god that's truly over the top and lame, and it's that sort of "You're not supporting this tiny user base who DEMANDS you spends stupidly huge amounts of time creating performance drivers for linux when really there is little to no need"...
Gah, get over yourself. Be happy with your on board graphics, you are not the market that they're after anyway... on board graphics != blistering 3D performance.
I hadn't actually, as it doesn't fit with my preconceived ideas of where such a control should be. Any box outside of what I see to the be 'mail application' doesn't apply to it, so I don't look there for it... it should also be on the main toolbar for the mail, next to 'Check Mail', it'd make far more sense.
Actually it works fine in Firefox. I'm one of the ones that have been using it since the beta started and overall quite like it. The right click menus are great ('view source' being a favourite for working out if that suspect piece of mail really is spam or not), drag and drop works fine, and the themes are nice.
My issues with it are: * Clicking on the tick boxes in order to select emails for deletion or whatever is all well and good except that it's far too easy to miss the tick box and open the email instead. * Where's the search? * I get a funny issue with thin white lines breaking up many emails when scrolling within firefox... if I select the image/text on the image they go away... it's odd.
Overall, better than the old hotmail though, and hey it means I still don't have to change the email address people still know me for using since erm... like.... 1997 or something... geeze, has it been 10 years? Yoiks! It gives me a fine address for signing up to whatever the hell I like as I don't care about getting spam at that address:)
On a serious note, I'm ashamed, ASHAMED, that browsers have become thin clients. People like you must die young? Surely? You love to find things to bitch about, things to get incensed about, things to go prematurely gray about... urgh.
The world is the way it is now, browsers are being used as thin clients because they are ubiquitous. Java is not used because it's always had a shitty install process, version management and was historically slow.
So, we have browsers that can do an awful lot installed on pretty much every single computer out there, why not use that as a nifty way of being able to deliver applications?
And if you're so pissed off with the incompatibilities with javascript/DHTML, why not use a great dev platform like Openlaszlo where you code in one language and output to either flash or DHTML?
I'm currently building a flash based app using it as you get away from the hell of browser incompatibilities by way of the standard flash player.
Unless you're in a position to change the world, there's very little to be gained by spending your time bitching about how certain, quite insignificant, things are the way they are. (And why are you 'ashamed'? Did you cause this to happen? How can you be ashamed for something you had no part in... unless, of course, you did).
"I wonder if the carvers were transcribing the patterns that various pitches made in some kind of water-bearing vessel. " Did you even watch the video? After they demonstrate on modern equipment how sand sprinkled on a surface having sound passed through it at various pitches gives pretty patterns they then demonstrate it being done with a sort of magaphone/horn arrangement with a skin pulled over the horn. Someone sings/makes a sound in one end, the skin vibrates... viola we have the same patterns being made on sand sprinkled on the skin.
That's more likely as it's easily done with the human voice as compared with trying to get water to do it.
I started off absolutely drooling for the Wii, then it came out and the basic consensus on the majority of games for it was that they were kinda average...
Now there is a game coming out that has me salivating all over again, Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition. Finally what I always thought would just be sensational on the Wii, an excellent FPS (sorta, fine... it's 3rd person). Red Steel was apparently a horrendous game, so it looks like the Wii is now finally starting to get into games that use its hardware properly.
I can't wait for more FPSs on it, the ability to move around with an analogue control while using a proper gun like pointing device... heaven for immersion.
That's the exact reason I really admire the Core architecture, as well as being insanely powerful, they are also very efficient in their power consumption, and being dual core (the majority that are sold), they are ready for the slew of consumer based apps (games etc.) that are taking advantage of parallelism.
Bring on tax time, I'm wanting my new gaming beast:P
Well, only since Core. Ahh, but Core is EXACTLY the point at which I switched over to wanting Intel over AMD. Up until then it was a serious case of AMD providing better bang for the buck, but now... now... well, different story. Core 2 Duo has low energy usage, high power, great price etc. etc. It's just the only cpu I want at present.
Then moving onto graphics, I've never really had any allegiance to nVidia vs ATI, but it's hard to ignore nVidia being the only kids on the block with DX10 cards out there, including budget ones now too... with NOTHING being shown from ATI/AMD.
It really just looks like (from this purely consumer point of view over here) that AMD is being left in the dust in terms of getting out leading edge products.
I really hope they can turn it around and bring out something to make me want an AMD core and gpu, but I see nothing that makes me want to change my mind as to my intended purchases come tax time in July!:P
I mean... gah! I know it's April fools (actually, it's been and gone in Australia), but my god how many piss poor jokes can one website take?
I come to Slashdot to enjoy some geeky news and stories of interest, not be bombarded with poor joke after poor joke, all of which are retreads of the same poor jokes we've had year after damn year.
How is being locked into wmv different to being locked into the iTunes formats?
Basically neither of these do what I want, which is just to play any video format I want with a nice interface on my TV, hence I use MediaPortal, nice, easy to setup Open Source media software... A+ from me.
Dear god that's ridiculous... although you can tell it was written with some absurd intent to curb clubs etc. showing things on really large screens without some sort of licence (ridiculous anyway), all your home has to be is less than 2000sqft and you're not allowed to show the game on a display larger than 55" OR with more than 6 speakers... MADNESS.
This isn't obvious from the wording, and even if it were so, you're in almost as absurd waters.
"Wow, Big Bobby Mc Bob Bob (can you tell I haven't seen any NFL broadcasts?) really went to town on the aquatically themed team's linebackers last night didn't he? What was the term he used?"
"I wouldn't like to say Norm, for fear of the NFL slapping a DMCA notice on my flabby arse."
I'm an Aussie, so I've never watched an NFL game such as this, but that notice "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience, and any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited" is just plain crazy (hence her initial video posting I suppose)... I mean trying to stop people DESCRIBING an event... dear god who the F*ck do they think they are? What are you supposed to do when you're talking to your mates about the big game?
"Hey Bob, see the big game last night?" "Yeah Gary, I sure did... it was awesome!" "What did you think about the touchdown in the..." "SSSSSSHHHHH! What are you doing Gary? You can't discuss the game without prior consent... just hang on a sec."
Ring ring... ring ring... *Welcome to the NFL DMCA Hotline, your call is important to us, you are currently number 13445 in the queue*.
"Oh F*ck that, let's talk about world political events"
Of course not. I avoid Flash like the plague. I do not have, do not want, nor would I accept it being installed on any of my systems. *sigh*... Really a stance I have a very hard time understanding, very hard time... but there you go. (Oh, yes, the web should be for pure information only, text only, forget images even... why would I ever want to see those horrible flash ads, it's wasting all my bandwidth etc. etc. I just don't see it holding water in this day and age of broadband connections, but each to their own).
You have yet to prove that any amount of the US military budget is in-fact wasted, and/or that any (reasonable) amount of money would improve the school system.
That the military wastes millions of dollars, and schools are underfunded, is pure left-wing propaganda. Did you actually watch the Oreo budget example? If not the main thrust of it is that millions upon millions of dollars are wasted just keeping nuclear missiles ready to be able to be launched, even though the number of said nuclear missiles is far over what is reasonably required to defend the US from any invader. As such, that is millions being wasted right there. The war in Iraq is a colossal waste of money and should never have been entered into, but that's not purely just on a financial standing.
There are many other areas I'm sure, but I'm too lazy to look them up:P
I haven't expressed any opinion. The fact of the matter is that is what has happened since WWII, that's the majority of the job the US military has been doing, there is nobody else with the capability to do so, and doing that job has, in very large part, lead to the phenomenal, unprecedented world-wide political stability, and economic boom, that we've seen since WWII. You are expressing opinion though, opinion that it's the US's job to do what it's determined as correct around the world, whether the external interference is desired or not.
Unfortunately, you're the insanely stupid one here.
First, you're looking at FEDERAL numbers. Have you ever heard of a federal school? No? That's because schools come out of state, not federal, budgets. That federal money is a tiny minority of the cash spend on public schools. True (although I have to admit prior ignorance to that, being but a lowly Australia, although we too do have state vs federal school budget issues), but that doesn't make the unseemly huge defense spending any more correct.
The facts of the matter are: educational spending has increased 100% in the past two and a half decades, while there's only been an increase of 33% more students in that same period of time. And at the same time, all measures have shown that the education system is now doing a far poorer job of educating those children than it did 25 years ago. I'm not suggesting that there aren't better ways to spend the money within the Education system, especially in America where a downward trend is definitely seen. But that shouldn't mean you go 'It's doing a bad job, pull money out of that loss pit', rather it should be a case of 'How can the money better be used, and can extra money help even more?' Education is the foundation stone of EVERYTHING else in a country, it HAS to be if you want a developed country.
The school system is not starved for money. Quite the opposite. The problem is not a lack of funds, and throwing substantially more money would not fix them, either. All it would do is increase the national debt further, and quickly bankrupt this country. By diverting funds from the defense budget, to an extent where they probably wouldn't even notice the missing amounts, to education you can make a difference, and you're not going to bankrupt the country or increase national debt in any way, that's pure right wing fear mongering.
I can see there will be no way of convincing you otherwise as with comments like "the US military is the police force of the world" you're obviously of the opinion that it's the US's job to protect all us other helpless little countries.
But your comment of : "Education (K-12) is already being given ungodly amounts of money" is just pure fallacy.
erm:
It's only now, when so many companies have sprung-up to supply useless crap, that the economy would collapse if it stopped all at once. If we wean people off of it slowly, however, it would lead to a much stronger economy. Pretty much that comment.
What else did you mean other than 'wean people off it slowly'?
Supply and demand, if people want useless crap, then people shalst have useless crap. In the end you have people making useless crap, and being paid for it and then buying the essential items such as food/water etc. which in turn supplies those who make our basic necessities with more people to buy said goods and so on.
You could spend a long, long time arguing over what's useful and whats not useful and how certain things would strengthen the economy while others wouldn't... but in the end, if you just cut defence spending drastically, and put that money into education, then you'd have more educated people who can do more skilled labour, thereby making more 'useful' products, thereby strengthening the economy and making for a smarter, wiser nation.
But hey, as long as GDub is in office that is never going to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, why spend all that time building your altered reality avatar, the altered reality objects for demoing etc. (they show sun objects in one of the video demos)... why spend all that time navigating around a virtual world (which has to be built) and doing things in the virtual space when really you should be actually working?
I work from home every couple of weeks, and really the biggest thing I would like is a live video link to the colleges I most often talk to, having to break from working to go into a virtual world to talk to colleges is just such crud.
They show their 'virtual boardroom', which has video streams from other locations. Why bother with the virtual boardroom at all? What's wrong with just having video feeds?
Urgh... this is almost doing something for doing something's sake, without actually considering how useful it really is.
Also, in Australia calls to Mobiles cost the person calling you, so if you have no landline, all those people who want to chat to you for hours on the phone would need to pay huge rates per the minute. Compared to a local untimed call which is, what, 30 cents or so.
In the US isn't it the case where the receiver pays? It was something like that for txt messages etc when I was over there, thereby making mobile spam horrid as you ended up being charged for receiving spam, whereas here in Aus if they spam you it costs them, not you.
As such, we can't get rid of our landline really...
Uh, if I'm not mistaken, that's pretty much what a boycott is. Yeah, good advice there, buddy. No, you are mistaken, a boycott is more than that. Not buying a product because it isn't what you need is just choosing another product. Not buying a product that you actually want based on some other grounds (ethical, whatever) is a boycott.
That, in this case, the on board graphics was fine for the OP meant that they had NO NEED for the ATI card, so wouldn't be buying it anyway, so IT'S NOT A BOYCOTT.
Dear god, could you get a little more irate about something that really DOESN'T MATTER!
Spouting the words Boycott is pure drivel.
If you find that the performance of their cards is crap in the environment that you want to use it, THEN DON'T BUY THEM, buy something else... that's what you do with items, buy the thing that best fits your need.
But to suggest a boycott? Dear god that's truly over the top and lame, and it's that sort of "You're not supporting this tiny user base who DEMANDS you spends stupidly huge amounts of time creating performance drivers for linux when really there is little to no need"...
Gah, get over yourself. Be happy with your on board graphics, you are not the market that they're after anyway... on board graphics != blistering 3D performance.
I hadn't actually, as it doesn't fit with my preconceived ideas of where such a control should be. Any box outside of what I see to the be 'mail application' doesn't apply to it, so I don't look there for it... it should also be on the main toolbar for the mail, next to 'Check Mail', it'd make far more sense.
Actually it works fine in Firefox. I'm one of the ones that have been using it since the beta started and overall quite like it. The right click menus are great ('view source' being a favourite for working out if that suspect piece of mail really is spam or not), drag and drop works fine, and the themes are nice.
:)
My issues with it are:
* Clicking on the tick boxes in order to select emails for deletion or whatever is all well and good except that it's far too easy to miss the tick box and open the email instead.
* Where's the search?
* I get a funny issue with thin white lines breaking up many emails when scrolling within firefox... if I select the image/text on the image they go away... it's odd.
Overall, better than the old hotmail though, and hey it means I still don't have to change the email address people still know me for using since erm... like.... 1997 or something... geeze, has it been 10 years? Yoiks! It gives me a fine address for signing up to whatever the hell I like as I don't care about getting spam at that address
The world is the way it is now, browsers are being used as thin clients because they are ubiquitous. Java is not used because it's always had a shitty install process, version management and was historically slow.
So, we have browsers that can do an awful lot installed on pretty much every single computer out there, why not use that as a nifty way of being able to deliver applications?
And if you're so pissed off with the incompatibilities with javascript/DHTML, why not use a great dev platform like Openlaszlo where you code in one language and output to either flash or DHTML?
I'm currently building a flash based app using it as you get away from the hell of browser incompatibilities by way of the standard flash player.
Unless you're in a position to change the world, there's very little to be gained by spending your time bitching about how certain, quite insignificant, things are the way they are. (And why are you 'ashamed'? Did you cause this to happen? How can you be ashamed for something you had no part in... unless, of course, you did).
That's more likely as it's easily done with the human voice as compared with trying to get water to do it.
I started off absolutely drooling for the Wii, then it came out and the basic consensus on the majority of games for it was that they were kinda average...
Now there is a game coming out that has me salivating all over again, Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition. Finally what I always thought would just be sensational on the Wii, an excellent FPS (sorta, fine... it's 3rd person). Red Steel was apparently a horrendous game, so it looks like the Wii is now finally starting to get into games that use its hardware properly.
I can't wait for more FPSs on it, the ability to move around with an analogue control while using a proper gun like pointing device... heaven for immersion.
That's the exact reason I really admire the Core architecture, as well as being insanely powerful, they are also very efficient in their power consumption, and being dual core (the majority that are sold), they are ready for the slew of consumer based apps (games etc.) that are taking advantage of parallelism.
:P
Bring on tax time, I'm wanting my new gaming beast
Then moving onto graphics, I've never really had any allegiance to nVidia vs ATI, but it's hard to ignore nVidia being the only kids on the block with DX10 cards out there, including budget ones now too... with NOTHING being shown from ATI/AMD.
It really just looks like (from this purely consumer point of view over here) that AMD is being left in the dust in terms of getting out leading edge products.
I really hope they can turn it around and bring out something to make me want an AMD core and gpu, but I see nothing that makes me want to change my mind as to my intended purchases come tax time in July!
Put together the age old slide show along with the 'gather around the atlas and I'll show you where I went'
Just great work. Would love to do this to my photo collection, but alas the time will not present itself.
You speak the truth.
I mean... gah! I know it's April fools (actually, it's been and gone in Australia), but my god how many piss poor jokes can one website take?
I come to Slashdot to enjoy some geeky news and stories of interest, not be bombarded with poor joke after poor joke, all of which are retreads of the same poor jokes we've had year after damn year.
How is being locked into wmv different to being locked into the iTunes formats?
Basically neither of these do what I want, which is just to play any video format I want with a nice interface on my TV, hence I use MediaPortal, nice, easy to setup Open Source media software... A+ from me.
Sorry, what did you say? I stopped reading after the first pwned.
Really... ARGH!
Dear god that's ridiculous... although you can tell it was written with some absurd intent to curb clubs etc. showing things on really large screens without some sort of licence (ridiculous anyway), all your home has to be is less than 2000sqft and you're not allowed to show the game on a display larger than 55" OR with more than 6 speakers... MADNESS.
Shear frigging madness.
This isn't obvious from the wording, and even if it were so, you're in almost as absurd waters.
"Wow, Big Bobby Mc Bob Bob (can you tell I haven't seen any NFL broadcasts?) really went to town on the aquatically themed team's linebackers last night didn't he? What was the term he used?"
"I wouldn't like to say Norm, for fear of the NFL slapping a DMCA notice on my flabby arse."
I'm an Aussie, so I've never watched an NFL game such as this, but that notice "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience, and any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited" is just plain crazy (hence her initial video posting I suppose)... I mean trying to stop people DESCRIBING an event... dear god who the F*ck do they think they are? What are you supposed to do when you're talking to your mates about the big game?
"Hey Bob, see the big game last night?"
"Yeah Gary, I sure did... it was awesome!"
"What did you think about the touchdown in the..."
"SSSSSSHHHHH! What are you doing Gary? You can't discuss the game without prior consent... just hang on a sec."
Ring ring... ring ring...
*Welcome to the NFL DMCA Hotline, your call is important to us, you are currently number 13445 in the queue*.
"Oh F*ck that, let's talk about world political events"
Of course not. I avoid Flash like the plague. I do not have, do not want, nor would I accept it being installed on any of my systems. *sigh*... Really a stance I have a very hard time understanding, very hard time... but there you go. (Oh, yes, the web should be for pure information only, text only, forget images even... why would I ever want to see those horrible flash ads, it's wasting all my bandwidth etc. etc. I just don't see it holding water in this day and age of broadband connections, but each to their own).
Here's the transcript of said flash presentation, I think you'll find the numbers are much larger than my just 'millions upon millions' statement (although it is millions, just lots of them).
That the military wastes millions of dollars, and schools are underfunded, is pure left-wing propaganda. Did you actually watch the Oreo budget example? If not the main thrust of it is that millions upon millions of dollars are wasted just keeping nuclear missiles ready to be able to be launched, even though the number of said nuclear missiles is far over what is reasonably required to defend the US from any invader. As such, that is millions being wasted right there. The war in Iraq is a colossal waste of money and should never have been entered into, but that's not purely just on a financial standing.
There are many other areas I'm sure, but I'm too lazy to look them up
First, you're looking at FEDERAL numbers. Have you ever heard of a federal school? No? That's because schools come out of state, not federal, budgets. That federal money is a tiny minority of the cash spend on public schools. True (although I have to admit prior ignorance to that, being but a lowly Australia, although we too do have state vs federal school budget issues), but that doesn't make the unseemly huge defense spending any more correct. The facts of the matter are: educational spending has increased 100% in the past two and a half decades, while there's only been an increase of 33% more students in that same period of time. And at the same time, all measures have shown that the education system is now doing a far poorer job of educating those children than it did 25 years ago. I'm not suggesting that there aren't better ways to spend the money within the Education system, especially in America where a downward trend is definitely seen. But that shouldn't mean you go 'It's doing a bad job, pull money out of that loss pit', rather it should be a case of 'How can the money better be used, and can extra money help even more?' Education is the foundation stone of EVERYTHING else in a country, it HAS to be if you want a developed country. The school system is not starved for money. Quite the opposite. The problem is not a lack of funds, and throwing substantially more money would not fix them, either. All it would do is increase the national debt further, and quickly bankrupt this country. By diverting funds from the defense budget, to an extent where they probably wouldn't even notice the missing amounts, to education you can make a difference, and you're not going to bankrupt the country or increase national debt in any way, that's pure right wing fear mongering.
Oh, and I didn't realise that video had been taken down, here's a flash version of the Oreo demonstration here
I can see there will be no way of convincing you otherwise as with comments like "the US military is the police force of the world" you're obviously of the opinion that it's the US's job to protect all us other helpless little countries.
But your comment of : "Education (K-12) is already being given ungodly amounts of money" is just pure fallacy.
See here.
Defense spending gets 54Billion dollars out of 983Billion, while your precious military gets... wait for it... 439Billion dollars!
Almost HALF of all the tax money collected goes to the military, while a measly 5% goes to education.
And you think that's right?
That's just insanely stupid... insanely so.
And, to make it even simpler, try this: The U.S. Defense Budget, Explained with OREO Cookies
It just doesn't make sense.
But hey, if you'd prefer to think that it's the US's 'job' to 'police' the world then you just go right ahead.
What else did you mean other than 'wean people off it slowly'?
Supply and demand, if people want useless crap, then people shalst have useless crap. In the end you have people making useless crap, and being paid for it and then buying the essential items such as food/water etc. which in turn supplies those who make our basic necessities with more people to buy said goods and so on.
You could spend a long, long time arguing over what's useful and whats not useful and how certain things would strengthen the economy while others wouldn't... but in the end, if you just cut defence spending drastically, and put that money into education, then you'd have more educated people who can do more skilled labour, thereby making more 'useful' products, thereby strengthening the economy and making for a smarter, wiser nation.
But hey, as long as GDub is in office that is never going to happen.
Who the fuck are you people who just come on here and completely unreasonably go apeshit at people? It's just not cool.