Still no A/V support in Messenger?
on
Microsoft At Macworld
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't see any mention of audio or video calls having been added to Messenger. I really want this - I have a number of Messenger contacts, and at the moment no way to use video with them.
In North America alone, Shuttle retails around 10,000 XPC systems per month and now they are getting a demand from consumers throughout the world. Because of the demand, Shuttle has decided to retail their XPC systems to the European and Brazilian markets.
I've had a Shuttle system on my desk for the last two and a half years, and I'm in the UK.
I always liked the idea and looks, but dislike the noise - I don't know how more recent models compare (I have an SB51G) and would be interested to, err, hear...
Lets face the facts here, Linux is great but it does have leaks. Does that mean I'm worried about it...not really. Why?, cause there is community that works to help patch such things.
What is being argued is that the community is not working to patch such things. Whether that's true or not is the debate at hand.
Better to fix an issue than know about it and leave it be *cough*microsoft*cough*.
A hilarious dig at Microsoft. Reread the article - they are stating that the Linux kernel people know about the vulnerabilities and are leaving it be.
Can't we have just one installer, one package management tool and one portage system that is shared by all the linux distributions, the bsd variants, OS X fink, windows cygwin, the comercial vendors, and all the rest?
Well, Debian and OS X Fink do share an install system - apt-get. "All the Linux distributions"? Would be nice, but there are a fair few.deb-based ones out there now. RedHat and Cygwin share a system I believe (I'm prepared to be corrected here), because Cygwin was originally has ties to RedHat.
Ideally I should be able to pop in a DVD, and have a single installer come up...
Ah, well you've lost me there already you see. A DVD? I run Debian on a old laptop that hasn't got a CD drive, let alone a DVD. I also run it on a Cobalt RaQ - not even a floppy drive there. A single installer? But on my flashy new hardware I like graphical installs, whereas I would spit blood at anything requiring a graphical install if I was trying to put it onto the Cobalt.
All you separate distributions and operating systems need to get off your high horses and share the labor for things that are common between all of you.
OK. So who gets off whose horse first? I know - let's dump RPM, I always hated it. But hold on, it's used with some of the most popular and commercially supported distros right? So I know, let's dump.deb, after all it's only minority. But hang on, some of the most stable distributions there are use.deb so there must be some merit in it. I know, let's dump RPM...and repeat ad nauseam.
Speaking as a UK resident, I can pretty confidently say that....no, we haven't a clue about all that stuff. I can say this with great confidence, having dismally failed at the similarly-themed BBC quiz University Challenge for decades now. That link is to a search, not the homepage. Just read some of the comments about failing spectacularly...
HE shouldn't have been using the devil's hand in the first place
You Sinistromanualist, you...
More seriously the, errr, granparent post is referring to this happening to his grandfather. Minus the beating, this was still happening to me when I was at school in the eighties (UK). An English teacher made a concerted effort to force me to be right-handed, and it completely messed up my writing. You can see a clear difference between the schoolbooks I had before her 'teaching', and those I wrote afterwards.
Seriously, how implausible would this have sounded 15 years ago?
Not at all - this was being touted 15 years ago. The whole Pink/Taligent/Magic thing was an Apple and IBM alliance (I may get some codenames mixed up, anyone who knows the ones I'm looking for please jump in). I can remember reading this on the long since defunt UK weekly New Computer Express.
It was actually more plausible then too. IBM were still a major power in the PC world, and Windows dominance hadn't completely taken over.
Virtual PC for the Mac is an emulator that translates x86 code to PowerPC. Virtual PC for Windows is a virtual machine that executes x86 code natively.
It isn't, no. I was a beta-testing for Virtual PC for Windows. The translation is fast, but it's not native. To check this, have a look at its behaviour on a dual-processor box.
Watch out VMware and Microsoft'? If im correct, Vmware and VPC doesnt require the host operating system to be actually ported to the virtual system, whereas Xen does.
You're right. However, for once people are using their terms correctly whereas they normally get mixed together.
Virtual PC, despite the name, is not virtualisation software. It's an emulator - has the whole chip and other bits of hardware under there to run, even if it's natively running on an x86 anyway. That's why it's useful to me over VMWare, as I swap the same virtual machine between Mac and Windows platforms.
VMWare is virtualisation software. It doesn't emulate as such, instead it provides hooks to access the native platform as if it were a separate environment. That normally makes it quicker than an emulator, and I believe this is normally borne out in various speed comparisons with Virtual PC.
I've not encountered Xen, but from how things sound it really is a proper virtualisation package and not any form of emulator. It sounds like it is providing kernel hooks to access its current Linux environment as if there were multiple environments. So it definitely is virtualisation. Think of IBM's zSeries virtualisation - that needs special coding too, from what I recall.
"I see no reason why VMware/VPC need watch out, as the main market for these VMs is running Windows..." may be how most people think of it, but Virtual PC is not a VM - it's an emulated environment.
There was a post on comp.sys.cbm a few weeks ago, although they have the licenses to distribute these, the actual versions included are mostly cracked games. The reason given? It was easier to NTSC-fix the cracked versions than to strip off the copy protection of the originals.
So there you go - support your local C64 cracking crew. Even though I have a real C64, I might look at this for the convenience when the PAL version hits Europe. But please...Way Of The Exploding Fist! Ghosts'n'Goblins! One Man And His Droid for the music, the Monty Mole stuff...
I have driven this on highways with any kind of weather.
Excellent, then perhaps you'll be able to reassure me.
The only thing I'm uncertain about is how well it will cope with ice, specifically on hills. My commute involves a fairly serious hill, and I don't want to get stuck in it.
I can see a lot of negative comments at the moment, so I thought I'd add my own (UK-based) opinion.
I've always been an in-principle fan of these SMARTs. I haven't driven one, but I've been inside one at various motor shows and there's plenty of space for two plus shopping or weekend luggage. You're not going to go trans-America with it, but to think about in that way is missing the point.
It makes an excellent city car. There are a decent number kicking around in London, and I seem to remember seeing even more when I was Hamburg a few years ago. In the city, you don't care about 90mph, you care that you can pull out nippily, find a parking space and turn round. This is the best answer I've seen since the original Mini (or maybe the Renault Twingo - never did understand why that didn't make it to the UK).
I'm actively considering swapping a Jaguar X-Type for one. Reason? My car mainly drives me to the train station in the morning and back, and a Jag is total overkill for that. We have an S-Type also for weekend trips or serious travel...why have two cars that do the same job? Only thing holding me back at the moment is a concern about its ability to cope with bad weather.
If the argument is that textual equivalents should replace the icons, that just means that the setting in Preferences -> Appearance & Themes -> Style -> Miscellaneous should have 'Text by Application' in addition to 'Icons Only', 'Text Only', and 'Text Under Icons' so that the icons which need it can have it when the others do not.
Err...read what you've just said, and then reflect on the reason for this article's existance.
For myself, reading the Apple HCI guidelines in ~1992 has stood me in reasonable stead, as has the HCI course I did at my final year in university. These things change of course - much of the Apple HCI guidelines of that time have been rewritten or superceded, but it was a good start.
Having recently tried this - no, it it doesn't. You can see the first page, but if you try to log on to check your direct debit details it tells you to use IE or Netscape 7.
Here's the fun - when it says Netscape, it really means Netscape as Firefox remains banned. Has no-one told their web 'masters' that Netscape is just a bit of branding these days?
Why doesn't Apple support a Linux version of iTunes natively?
Because of all the fuss with different distros, libraries etc. I imagine. Plus there's always the fact that the desktop Linux market is not really that significant yet.
However, I do think it would make sense for Apple to contribute to the WINE project and ensure their Windows port of iTunes runs there. What harm could that do them? They'd lose Microsoft's co-operation...?
Personally I wouldn't expect a Linux native port any time soon. But keeping it going in WINE, well...there's a proposition for them.
Although you are a Coder, you guys usually do not know anything about computers in general.
(I was asked at work to install the drivers for a new monitor from one of them. it was fricking funny.)
That's exactly the point. Although your example is a bit extreme, it doesn't back up what you say - it actually helps the poster you're replying to. Knowing about "computers in general" doesn't mean knowing how to stick a monitor driver on some desktop. That's specific knowledge about some particular platform.
Knowing about "computers in general" is much more than that. It's about algorithms at one level, it's about hardware knowledge at another level, it's about systems knowledge at yet another level....it really does have nothing whatsoever to do with slapping drivers onto things. That's the difference between tech support and design/development.
For the record, I too asked tech support to put a new graphics card driver on to my client XP box. Could I have done it myself? Yes, I could. But you see, my knowledge of computers in general tells me that the client box is a platform, a tested coherent whole. If I randomly slap a driver on to fix one problem, I might cause a whole host of others. Hence a call to tech support - tsick me an approved driver on here, you perform the operation, and you support the platform afterwards.
Be careful of claiming computing knowledge. There's a world of difference between systems knowledge and knowing how to write a particular macro in Excel, updating monitor drivers or even knowing to put in an/etc/init.d script.
Wow, a quick blast from my own past here as well. I had this book - it was part of a series, and they were all very well written.
Obviously written for a young, general audience rather than technical people. Then again that's exactly what I was part of at the time. I wasn't actually born in 1971, I was born in 1972. Strangely though, I remember the first cover not the second - perhaps I had an old edition? Anyway, my point here is that despite being a supposedly non-technical book, look at the language and level of detail covered. Look at this page, for example - get that in many introductory books these days? No, you don't. Interesting how depth of knowledge changes.
Anyway, can confirm that this piqued my interest enough to be excited about computers when the first wave of home computing hit the UK (about 1982, a ZX Spectrum 48k for me). Haven't really looked back - I now have a computing career, and whilst many factors lead to me wanting that it must be said that this book was the first to nudge me in the right direction.
Dont you realize this isnt about Bush? I dont care who won! Its about E-voting removing your right to affect change in your country by making a democratic choice.
Hear, hear.
I'm not an American, I read the article summary and saw nothing partisan in it whatsoever. Then I came to read the comments - full of "Bush won!", "Not statistically enough to turn the election!" and similar pearls of wisdom.
What is being criticised is not this specific election, nor the victory of a particular candidate. It is the process itself under scrutiny here, and that is an entirely valid line of study.
You don't make something opensource if you wanna make money. That is a straight up fact...If you wanna make the big bucks you keep it in house so no one can profit off your work.
I'll mention it to IBM.
Cheers,
Ian
(yes, I know they make money from services. As an independent contractor, I compete against them for one thing...)
Re:Vectrex/Macintosh comparison - links
on
Digital Retro
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Slashdot Mirror
Cheers,
Ian
In North America alone, Shuttle retails around 10,000 XPC systems per month and now they are getting a demand from consumers throughout the world. Because of the demand, Shuttle has decided to retail their XPC systems to the European and Brazilian markets.
I've had a Shuttle system on my desk for the last two and a half years, and I'm in the UK.
I always liked the idea and looks, but dislike the noise - I don't know how more recent models compare (I have an SB51G) and would be interested to, err, hear...
Cheers,
Ian
What is being argued is that the community is not working to patch such things. Whether that's true or not is the debate at hand.
Better to fix an issue than know about it and leave it be *cough*microsoft*cough*.
A hilarious dig at Microsoft. Reread the article - they are stating that the Linux kernel people know about the vulnerabilities and are leaving it be.
Cheers,
Ian
Well, Debian and OS X Fink do share an install system - apt-get. "All the Linux distributions"? Would be nice, but there are a fair few .deb-based ones out there now. RedHat and Cygwin share a system I believe (I'm prepared to be corrected here), because Cygwin was originally has ties to RedHat.
Ideally I should be able to pop in a DVD, and have a single installer come up...
Ah, well you've lost me there already you see. A DVD? I run Debian on a old laptop that hasn't got a CD drive, let alone a DVD. I also run it on a Cobalt RaQ - not even a floppy drive there. A single installer? But on my flashy new hardware I like graphical installs, whereas I would spit blood at anything requiring a graphical install if I was trying to put it onto the Cobalt.
All you separate distributions and operating systems need to get off your high horses and share the labor for things that are common between all of you.
OK. So who gets off whose horse first? I know - let's dump RPM, I always hated it. But hold on, it's used with some of the most popular and commercially supported distros right? So I know, let's dump .deb, after all it's only minority. But hang on, some of the most stable distributions there are use .deb so there must be some merit in it. I know, let's dump RPM...and repeat ad nauseam.
Cheers,
Ian
Cheers,
Ian
They would also bring iTMS compatibility, allowing playback of Fairplay'd AAC files.
Cheers,
Ian
You Sinistromanualist, you...
More seriously the, errr, granparent post is referring to this happening to his grandfather. Minus the beating, this was still happening to me when I was at school in the eighties (UK). An English teacher made a concerted effort to force me to be right-handed, and it completely messed up my writing. You can see a clear difference between the schoolbooks I had before her 'teaching', and those I wrote afterwards.
For the worse, of course.
Cheers,
Ian
Not at all - this was being touted 15 years ago. The whole Pink/Taligent/Magic thing was an Apple and IBM alliance (I may get some codenames mixed up, anyone who knows the ones I'm looking for please jump in). I can remember reading this on the long since defunt UK weekly New Computer Express.
It was actually more plausible then too. IBM were still a major power in the PC world, and Windows dominance hadn't completely taken over.
Cheers,
Ian
Cheers,
Ian
Platform-dependant. Starts quickly on my Mac here (867Mhz G4 Powerbook), whereas OpenOffice and NeoOffice take an age.
Cheers,
Ian
It isn't, no. I was a beta-testing for Virtual PC for Windows. The translation is fast, but it's not native. To check this, have a look at its behaviour on a dual-processor box.
Cheers,
Ian
You're right. However, for once people are using their terms correctly whereas they normally get mixed together.
Virtual PC, despite the name, is not virtualisation software. It's an emulator - has the whole chip and other bits of hardware under there to run, even if it's natively running on an x86 anyway. That's why it's useful to me over VMWare, as I swap the same virtual machine between Mac and Windows platforms.
VMWare is virtualisation software. It doesn't emulate as such, instead it provides hooks to access the native platform as if it were a separate environment. That normally makes it quicker than an emulator, and I believe this is normally borne out in various speed comparisons with Virtual PC.
I've not encountered Xen, but from how things sound it really is a proper virtualisation package and not any form of emulator. It sounds like it is providing kernel hooks to access its current Linux environment as if there were multiple environments. So it definitely is virtualisation. Think of IBM's zSeries virtualisation - that needs special coding too, from what I recall.
"I see no reason why VMware/VPC need watch out, as the main market for these VMs is running Windows..." may be how most people think of it, but Virtual PC is not a VM - it's an emulated environment.
Cheers,
Ian
So, where do I go instead? Where else has a large usenet archive with proper threaded searches?
Cheers,
Ian
So there you go - support your local C64 cracking crew. Even though I have a real C64, I might look at this for the convenience when the PAL version hits Europe. But please...Way Of The Exploding Fist! Ghosts'n'Goblins! One Man And His Droid for the music, the Monty Mole stuff...
Cheers,
Ian
Excellent, then perhaps you'll be able to reassure me.
The only thing I'm uncertain about is how well it will cope with ice, specifically on hills. My commute involves a fairly serious hill, and I don't want to get stuck in it.
Ever driven one when it's icy?
Cheers,
Ian
I've always been an in-principle fan of these SMARTs. I haven't driven one, but I've been inside one at various motor shows and there's plenty of space for two plus shopping or weekend luggage. You're not going to go trans-America with it, but to think about in that way is missing the point.
It makes an excellent city car. There are a decent number kicking around in London, and I seem to remember seeing even more when I was Hamburg a few years ago. In the city, you don't care about 90mph, you care that you can pull out nippily, find a parking space and turn round. This is the best answer I've seen since the original Mini (or maybe the Renault Twingo - never did understand why that didn't make it to the UK).
I'm actively considering swapping a Jaguar X-Type for one. Reason? My car mainly drives me to the train station in the morning and back, and a Jag is total overkill for that. We have an S-Type also for weekend trips or serious travel...why have two cars that do the same job? Only thing holding me back at the moment is a concern about its ability to cope with bad weather.
No, I'm seriously interested in these.
Cheers,
Ian
Err...read what you've just said, and then reflect on the reason for this article's existance.
For myself, reading the Apple HCI guidelines in ~1992 has stood me in reasonable stead, as has the HCI course I did at my final year in university. These things change of course - much of the Apple HCI guidelines of that time have been rewritten or superceded, but it was a good start.
Cheers,
Ian
Having recently tried this - no, it it doesn't. You can see the first page, but if you try to log on to check your direct debit details it tells you to use IE or Netscape 7.
Here's the fun - when it says Netscape, it really means Netscape as Firefox remains banned. Has no-one told their web 'masters' that Netscape is just a bit of branding these days?
Cheers,
Ian
Because of all the fuss with different distros, libraries etc. I imagine. Plus there's always the fact that the desktop Linux market is not really that significant yet.
However, I do think it would make sense for Apple to contribute to the WINE project and ensure their Windows port of iTunes runs there. What harm could that do them? They'd lose Microsoft's co-operation...?
Personally I wouldn't expect a Linux native port any time soon. But keeping it going in WINE, well...there's a proposition for them.
Cheers,
Ian
(I was asked at work to install the drivers for a new monitor from one of them. it was fricking funny.)
That's exactly the point. Although your example is a bit extreme, it doesn't back up what you say - it actually helps the poster you're replying to. Knowing about "computers in general" doesn't mean knowing how to stick a monitor driver on some desktop. That's specific knowledge about some particular platform.
Knowing about "computers in general" is much more than that. It's about algorithms at one level, it's about hardware knowledge at another level, it's about systems knowledge at yet another level....it really does have nothing whatsoever to do with slapping drivers onto things. That's the difference between tech support and design/development.
For the record, I too asked tech support to put a new graphics card driver on to my client XP box. Could I have done it myself? Yes, I could. But you see, my knowledge of computers in general tells me that the client box is a platform, a tested coherent whole. If I randomly slap a driver on to fix one problem, I might cause a whole host of others. Hence a call to tech support - tsick me an approved driver on here, you perform the operation, and you support the platform afterwards.
Be careful of claiming computing knowledge. There's a world of difference between systems knowledge and knowing how to write a particular macro in Excel, updating monitor drivers or even knowing to put in an /etc/init.d script.
Cheers,
Ian
Cheers,
Ian
Obviously written for a young, general audience rather than technical people. Then again that's exactly what I was part of at the time. I wasn't actually born in 1971, I was born in 1972. Strangely though, I remember the first cover not the second - perhaps I had an old edition? Anyway, my point here is that despite being a supposedly non-technical book, look at the language and level of detail covered. Look at this page, for example - get that in many introductory books these days? No, you don't. Interesting how depth of knowledge changes.
Anyway, can confirm that this piqued my interest enough to be excited about computers when the first wave of home computing hit the UK (about 1982, a ZX Spectrum 48k for me). Haven't really looked back - I now have a computing career, and whilst many factors lead to me wanting that it must be said that this book was the first to nudge me in the right direction.
Cheers,
Ian
Hear, hear.
I'm not an American, I read the article summary and saw nothing partisan in it whatsoever. Then I came to read the comments - full of "Bush won!", "Not statistically enough to turn the election!" and similar pearls of wisdom.
What is being criticised is not this specific election, nor the victory of a particular candidate. It is the process itself under scrutiny here, and that is an entirely valid line of study.
Cheers,
Ian
I'll mention it to IBM.
Cheers,
Ian
(yes, I know they make money from services. As an independent contractor, I compete against them for one thing...)
Co-incidence? They do look similar in physical design to me (I'm purely thinking of a physical resemblance, not actual hardware).
Cheers,
Ian