The average consumer who buys DVDs at WalMart or Target or rents movies at Safeway or Blockbuster has no idea what DRM is, and wouldn't care even if you told them. It had no bearing on their movie-watching lifestyle.
Until BluRay players are under $100, BluRay discs are as cheap as DVDs, people aren't going to buy BluRay discs; it's as simple as that. When they learn they need to buy a very expensive TV to see any real picture quality benefit over DVD, well, even that becomes a hard sell.
Okay, listen, I'm as much a techhead as the next guy, and far more than most (check out my Slashdot user ID), but the right tool for this job seems to be pen and paper. I carry around a small notebook with me almost everywhere I go, and it's not the electronic variety. Actual dead-tree paper. I jot stuff down throughout the day, enroute to work at a stop light, during lunch, at the movies, whatever. I can also write things down to give to people. It never needs an electrical outlet or batteries, and doesn't even need to be solar-powered, and you don't look like a tool at a coffeeshop.
If this is simply too low-tech for your lifestyle, then might I suggest you get a smartphone. You most likely carry this with you at all times, and you can easily take notes on them. Some even have qwerty keyboards. There's a very nice looking one coming out on the Sprint network next month called the HTC Touch Pro. And if you want a slim no-keyboard model, the HTC Diamond is out in a week or so. Very high-resolution screen (VGA, which is, I think 50% better than that of the iPhone). You will almost certainly be able to put Google's Android on both of these phones. Personally, I'm waiting for the HTC Touch HD, with an 800x480 screen.:)
Well, which is it, STOP or RUN? I guess we've identified where Apple got the 'drag disc to trashcan to eject' and where Microsoft got 'Click the Start button to shutdown' mindset from.
I wonder if the typical efficiency ratings are referring to % of *visible* light, and this one gets extra points for also handling UV? I dunno. The math worries me greatly, whether it's % or x. (well, no WAY it's x)
500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells
Uhm, no. FAIL.
Still, if he's getting money, there's likely something good going on here, but the reporting on this is completely ridiculous. It's enough to make me curious as to the REAL figures.
Take a ride past your local police parking lot, and jot down two or three license plate numbers. Then use a good quality laser printer and make yourself some copies of those "plates". With luck they'll never notice they're effectively tracking themselves
Or heck, just copy ANY plate(s). Randomly switch them around.
Better: copy license plates of cars that look like yours - same make, model, year, and color. Get lost in the noise & pollute the data stream at the same time.
And don't forget to wear your V for Vendetta mask for the cameras!
How would it tell my Civic from the millions of other Civics?
From the RFID-enabled VTEC sticker. The wheel spinners are actually rotating antennas to enable better gain, and the ground-effect lighting just makes you easier to spot.
I don't remember what Lenovo was offering, but I know with Dell, it's pretty pathetic. You get a *small* number of their machines available, plus a small number of available options - even if 'Linux compatability' does not apply - fewer, if not far fewer, options available with Linux Dell machines.
Then there's the matter of even *finding* the damned things on Dell's website. They've separated it into it's own dell.com/ubuntu area, and you can't (easily) get into it from within the main dell.com purchasing process. Is it really that hard for them to make Ubuntu an option in the OS choice box?
This is so much ado about nothing. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had a problem with Firefox that would have been solved by it being in its own process.
Every bandwagoner, technical lightweight is now stomping their feet that Firefox needs to get on this yesterday, but really this is pretty low on the list of things that make a real improvement in people's lives.
You've made here the classic mistake of thinking that everyone else uses a piece of technology in the same way that you do. This is not the case. With the advent of tabs, I typically have multiple dozens of them open at any given time. I also often leave programs running for days on end. I surf a LOT of very different sites, most of which I've never been to before, and which often have lots of javascript and/or Flash. This makes for a very different experience than you describe, as I've often had Firefox crash, sometimes without any warning at all, just *poof*, the window is gone without even a warning message. Fortunately, the crash recovery features of FF3 are quite good. But they don't always work, and let me say that having to reopen a browser with several dozen tabs (many of which have youtube videos and whatnot) can take rather awhile.
I very much like the idea of each tab in its own process. Plus, this should work better on multi-core CPUs, which is also quite nice.
Anyone know about the general longevity of these devices? The shelf life of a hard drive isn't incredibly impressive.
Once they get the wear-levelling working as advertised, SSDs will beat spinning disks, hands-down. Wear-levelling will result in less capacity as time goes on, unlike a spinning disk which shreds itself and you lose everything. In theory, an SSD will still be able to read data on failed cells (they apparently fail on write), so this should result in less data loss than with a spinning disk. In theory. We'll see what happens in practice. My one worry with this scheme is what happens when you want to throw out an old SSD with private data in those read-only 'failed' cells. You can't write to them to overwrite them. Physical destruction seems the only way to get rid of SSDs with private data, as far as I've heard thus far.
Not really - Flash is now completely open sourced (this happened months ago).
The ones that had been working on it before that happened seemed to get stuck at Flash 7 compatability, but they should have no troubles now, I'd think.
Slashdot Mirror
"Broadband: You can't have any(tm)."
The average consumer who buys DVDs at WalMart or Target or rents movies at Safeway or Blockbuster has no idea what DRM is, and wouldn't care even if you told them. It had no bearing on their movie-watching lifestyle.
Until BluRay players are under $100, BluRay discs are as cheap as DVDs, people aren't going to buy BluRay discs; it's as simple as that. When they learn they need to buy a very expensive TV to see any real picture quality benefit over DVD, well, even that becomes a hard sell.
It's right where I left it.
Okay, listen, I'm as much a techhead as the next guy, and far more than most (check out my Slashdot user ID), but the right tool for this job seems to be pen and paper. I carry around a small notebook with me almost everywhere I go, and it's not the electronic variety. Actual dead-tree paper. I jot stuff down throughout the day, enroute to work at a stop light, during lunch, at the movies, whatever. I can also write things down to give to people. It never needs an electrical outlet or batteries, and doesn't even need to be solar-powered, and you don't look like a tool at a coffeeshop.
If this is simply too low-tech for your lifestyle, then might I suggest you get a smartphone. You most likely carry this with you at all times, and you can easily take notes on them. Some even have qwerty keyboards. There's a very nice looking one coming out on the Sprint network next month called the HTC Touch Pro. And if you want a slim no-keyboard model, the HTC Diamond is out in a week or so. Very high-resolution screen (VGA, which is, I think 50% better than that of the iPhone). You will almost certainly be able to put Google's Android on both of these phones. Personally, I'm waiting for the HTC Touch HD, with an 800x480 screen. :)
000150 STOP RUN.
Well, which is it, STOP or RUN? I guess we've identified where Apple got the 'drag disc to trashcan to eject' and where Microsoft got 'Click the Start button to shutdown' mindset from.
Hey, loan me one of your job cards. The keypunch machine ate mine.
cookie.
000100 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
000200 PROGRAM-ID. HELLOWORLD.
000300
000400*
000500 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
000600 CONFIGURATION SECTION.
000700 SOURCE-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.
000800 OBJECT-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.
000900
001000 DATA DIVISION.
001100 FILE SECTION.
001200
100000 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
100100
100200 MAIN-LOGIC SECTION.
100300 BEGIN.
100400 DISPLAY " " LINE 1 POSITION 1 ERASE EOS.
100500 DISPLAY "NO THANKS!" LINE 15 POSITION 10.
100600 STOP RUN.
100700 MAIN-LOGIC-EXIT.
100800 EXIT.
I wonder if the typical efficiency ratings are referring to % of *visible* light, and this one gets extra points for also handling UV? I dunno. The math worries me greatly, whether it's % or x. (well, no WAY it's x)
500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells
Uhm, no. FAIL.
Still, if he's getting money, there's likely something good going on here, but the reporting on this is completely ridiculous. It's enough to make me curious as to the REAL figures.
Take a ride past your local police parking lot, and jot down two or three license plate numbers. Then use a good quality laser printer and make yourself some copies of those "plates". With luck they'll never notice they're effectively tracking themselves
Or heck, just copy ANY plate(s). Randomly switch them around.
Better: copy license plates of cars that look like yours - same make, model, year, and color. Get lost in the noise & pollute the data stream at the same time.
And don't forget to wear your V for Vendetta mask for the cameras!
How would it tell my Civic from the millions of other Civics?
From the RFID-enabled VTEC sticker. The wheel spinners are actually rotating antennas to enable better gain, and the ground-effect lighting just makes you easier to spot.
Sucker.
By contrast, two advantages of batteries are 1) vastly higher energy density, and 2) the fact that they exist.
I've found existence to be highly overrated.
Damn you, Google Star View! There IS such a thing as privacy, you know!
I don't remember what Lenovo was offering, but I know with Dell, it's pretty pathetic. You get a *small* number of their machines available, plus a small number of available options - even if 'Linux compatability' does not apply - fewer, if not far fewer, options available with Linux Dell machines.
Then there's the matter of even *finding* the damned things on Dell's website. They've separated it into it's own dell.com/ubuntu area, and you can't (easily) get into it from within the main dell.com purchasing process. Is it really that hard for them to make Ubuntu an option in the OS choice box?
Lame.
I'm hoping someone can explain to me why the far better-established and easily-maintained option of Solar Power isn't first on the list.
Okay, genius, what do the astronauts do when there's a cloudy day on the Moon?
Sheesh. You should really think about these things before you post.
We just have to wait until he dies (which will no doubt be on November 5, because God hates us) to cut him open and count his rings.
Vampires have rings?
This is so much ado about nothing. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had a problem with Firefox that would have been solved by it being in its own process.
Every bandwagoner, technical lightweight is now stomping their feet that Firefox needs to get on this yesterday, but really this is pretty low on the list of things that make a real improvement in people's lives.
You've made here the classic mistake of thinking that everyone else uses a piece of technology in the same way that you do. This is not the case. With the advent of tabs, I typically have multiple dozens of them open at any given time. I also often leave programs running for days on end. I surf a LOT of very different sites, most of which I've never been to before, and which often have lots of javascript and/or Flash. This makes for a very different experience than you describe, as I've often had Firefox crash, sometimes without any warning at all, just *poof*, the window is gone without even a warning message. Fortunately, the crash recovery features of FF3 are quite good. But they don't always work, and let me say that having to reopen a browser with several dozen tabs (many of which have youtube videos and whatnot) can take rather awhile.
I very much like the idea of each tab in its own process. Plus, this should work better on multi-core CPUs, which is also quite nice.
I guess Duke Nukem Forever really *won't* ever come out. *sigh*
It's been nice typing at you guys. It's been an honor and a privilege. Godspeed.
Anyone know about the general longevity of these devices?
The shelf life of a hard drive isn't incredibly impressive.
Once they get the wear-levelling working as advertised, SSDs will beat spinning disks, hands-down. Wear-levelling will result in less capacity as time goes on, unlike a spinning disk which shreds itself and you lose everything. In theory, an SSD will still be able to read data on failed cells (they apparently fail on write), so this should result in less data loss than with a spinning disk. In theory. We'll see what happens in practice. My one worry with this scheme is what happens when you want to throw out an old SSD with private data in those read-only 'failed' cells. You can't write to them to overwrite them. Physical destruction seems the only way to get rid of SSDs with private data, as far as I've heard thus far.
If you're old enough, think back to the Blitter on the Amiga
Oh, man! +5, Amiga Reference! :)
You just made my day.
on Sick, Sad World!
That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen modded to +5.
*pft* Hell, I can beat *that*! Just check out some of my comments. I expect an apology.
Man, I just realized how old I'm getting ...
No you didn't. You realized that awhile back but forgot.
Not really - Flash is now completely open sourced (this happened months ago).
The ones that had been working on it before that happened seemed to get stuck at Flash 7 compatability, but they should have no troubles now, I'd think.
That law will be the first one up against the wall when the revolution comes.