not neccessarily. the word 'pretty' is entirely subjective. i had and ran half-life 2 on a FX5700u just fine. In fact, I'd say that it looked exactly as pretty and ran exactly as fine as it does on the 6800u I purchased in January.
i think the only real thing that drives this kind of product leap is the small segment of the market that spends that kind of money on a video card 'because they can.'
granted, when the new HDL revision comes out for Source, then there will be a reason to upgrade because the older cards simply won't have the support for the new instructions. but, as it is right now, i don't see any reason to complain.
as an aside, i don't understand the WHY for people that run games like HL2 and Doom3 at 14bazillionx18trillion resolution. Even with my 6800u, I run it at 800x600...
While I can sympathize with both Apple and TigerDirect in this instance, I don't think that this is reason to boycott TigerDirect since they're not *clearly* in the wrong.
However, if you decide to boycott TigerDirect because they're a shitty company, with shitty merchandise (which they don't support at all), and shitty prices, then I'm fully with you.
Honestly, I think that TigerDirect is just taking the Rambus route and threatening Apple so that they can stir up a little bit of controversy and maybe a little traffic through their storefront.
As so beautifully put in The Phantom of the Opera: "To Hell with Glock and Handel, it's a scandal that will pack them in the aisles..."
That may be, but that's because they have "adopted" the word "tiger" as as an easily-attached mneumonic for the software (so as to differentiate the different version - like they did with Panther).
However, any colloquial terms used to refer to the product don't change it's official name.
Similarly, when we all had the different revision of Windows95 floating around, people would off-hand refer to them as OSR1 or OSR3, etc. We all still knew that it was Windows 95, but we used the mneumonic to differentiate them. Should MS have gone out any trademark each of those colloquial terms?
I think everyone is missing the point here. Apple's software is not called "Tiger." Tiger is the CODE-NAME for a specific revision of the software. The software is *still* called MacOS X. To be specific, it's MacOS X.4 (10.4?). In Linux distro parlance, we'd refer to it as MacOS X (Tiger).
Thus, while I agree with Apple's fair use of the word, I don't see how they can bitch if they're asked to remove it. Similarly, I don't see how TigerDirect can really bitch since the *official* name of the product is NOT Tiger, it's MacOS X.
while that may be, how about the fact that my set-top DVD/CD player no longer plays discs and its barely two years old? No drivers or software issues there -- just a crappy drive.
actually, i'd be careful with comments like this. for people that use their computers every day, the thermal expansion/contraction that comes from cycling power from high-temp devices like modern CPUs can actually physically damage the device over the long run.
that, by and large, is why a lot of 'geeks' tend to leave their equipment on 24/7. Over the long haul, it is actually safer for the equipment to do this.
Granted, this argument requires several bits of information about the owner's usage habits. If one only uses the computer once a week for fifteen minutes, then it makes sense to power it off after each use.
However, if you use the computer everyday, from 5am until 11pm or midnight, it makes more sense to just leave it on because of the frequency of the power cycle.
I applaud the parent's concern for fossil fuels and protection of the environment (as most on/. would, I believe), but he neglected this kind of real-world concern.
okay, while i admit that this opinion is probably shared by most of the crowd on slashdot -- it is an OPINION. how on earth does this qualify for being modded up as "insightful?"
shouldn't insightful be reserved for extra discussion or material that helps illuminate topics and points brought out in the article or other posts?
maybe i'm getting too old for this crowd, but opinions should be treated as such.
for what it's worth, i think that on the whole, DRM is useless and a waste of consumer stress and developer time. however, in the case of rental video downloads, i think that it's appropriate.
if you download a movie or song to "own", i think that DRM violates the point of "selling" things in that the product isn't actually yours to use, own, and control.
however, when renting downloads (like tv shows, etc.), then i think DRM is appropriate. after all, you don't expect to "own" the movie when you rent it from blockbuster.
100% Java-based games is a very admirable goal, but that would require Yahoo! to mandate as such to all of their developers.
Remember, Yahoo! themselves don't develop most of the games that are found on the Yahoo! games site. Independent developers (like Popcap games) develop them and Yahoo! gives these developers great leeway insofar as how the games are implemented.
If Yahoo! were to mandate that all games on their site had to be Java-based, one of two things could happen:
1) very few games exist on the site as they are all ported
2) very few games exist at all as Yahoo! has to drop developers that are unable/unwilling to port or hire coders to port
Personally, I'd like to see all of the games be Java-based (even the delierable commercial ones) so that I could download and own them on my Linux box.
In the long run, I think that the Y! games site is going to be their biggest stumbling block because of these reasons (and, incidentally, I think it will take the longest for this site to become compliant).
Nazi references are but only one. The german government also censors religion (Scientology is actually forbidden by federal law), "hobbies" (references to bomb-making or other overtly 'terrorist' activites are forbidden), etc.
The German government has a general policy of "we give the people as much freedom as they show they are mature enough to handle." And, if things go awry on any front where it seems that the people are not mature enough to handle freedom, the government steps in and regulates things.
Incidentally, this same principle is how they handle antitrust cases. Go back and look at the history of T-Mobile(T-Online) and see how it was federally regulated to control its actions to prevent destructive monopoly.
So, no, the OP was wrong -- Nazi symbols in and of themselves are *not* perfectly legal, even for purely educational purposes. The only place where students could get their hands on the appropriate materials in order to write a school paper or such would be in specially regulated and protected collections inside libraries.
i guess on the one hand you can take the argument "it takes one to know one" in that who better to know what to watch out for than someone who's made a career out of invading people's privacy. but, thenm if that was the case, why not appoint kevin mitnik to this position?
on the other hand (and i imagine this is the most prevalent on slashdot), isn't this a bit like making the fox the keeper of the henhouse? wouldn't it be a bit *too* easy to (since he's in a position of influence) lobby for looser (or no) restrictions on spyware and adware?
my fiancee's family lives in Tuscaloosa. Anyone who has ever been there will realize that Tuscaloosa and the remainder of Alabama (with the notable exception of Mobile) is the armpit of the south.
No wonder he driven to kill -- he lives in Alabama.
this seems similar to a quote i once heard about off-the-shelf firewalls and routers for 'protection' of home-based networks.
the quote said that these firewalls would only really stop those "hackers" that didn't really want to get into the network (i.e, script kiddies or n00bs). dangerous threats wont stop until they get into your network.
in a similar vein, this is only going to stop casual pirates (much in the same way product activation did). hardcore warezers will still find ways to circumvent the protection.
so, i don't think this should be a big deal for the/. community (other than the obligatory anti-M$ bitchfest) since most of us here are intellegint enough that this point is moot.
but, then again, this is all just my $.02
Re:Now if only others would do the same
on
Sony Admits MP3 Error
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
no -- no fine print anywhere. we scoured the documentation and the packaging looking for anything to that effect and came up completely dry. in fact, the software doesn't even tell you that it's converting it -- it says something inane like "formatting for playback" or something like that. it takes a technophile to even realize what it's actually doing behind the scenes.
if i were joe public, i'd never even know that it's not actually playing MP3s.
Re:Now if only others would do the same
on
Sony Admits MP3 Error
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
obviously, you've never owned a Sony "mp3 player." i bought my fiancee one for christmas. All over the packaging it proclaimed "MP3 and WMA Compatibility" and even has MP3 in the model name. The packaging even refers to it as an MP3 player.
In reality, it includes a conversion utility in the package that converts MP3 and WMA to AAC for playback on the device. Therefore, it is an "MP3 Player" that does not natively play MP3s. When I buy an MP3 player, I want to be able to just drag and drop MP3s to it natively and have it parse and read them without any smoke and mirrors going on behind the scenes.
when you get down to the crux of it, it's very borderline to a bait and switch. but, IANAL, so i don't know how far an argument like that would go.
personally, I am very glad to see them acknowledge this faux pas. now, i wish they would release a firmware update or something to fix those old "MP3 players" so that they play back MP3s properly.
this is about the dumbest thing i think ive heard coming out of redmon.
this way when a user is off surfing pr0n and the floodgates of spyware open up, suddenly they cannot run ANY legit apps because the queue for apps is being taken up by spyware, dialers, etc.
and if, they elect to run an antivirus software and, say, ms anti-spyware, theyve just used up two of their three wishes.
since the Post Office is a common point for posting the FBI's Most Wanted lists, could this be used in conjunction with that?
Don't really know any other good use for this technology. As other folks have noticed, knocking over stamp machines is not entirely the most lucrative way to make a living.
I can only think that it must have something to do with track the activities of terrorists and other so-called "undesirables."
Granted, once the people that this technology is targeting catch wind of it, they'll just go back to buying their stamps at FoodMax/Kroger and depositing letters in the boxes that are outside the building.
depends on your perspective. If I imagine myself to be a server, I'm pushing information to a client and pulling information from a client, like the name implies.
you're interpreting it from the client perspective, which is not where the name came from.
haven't we done this several times before. hell, even with a nintendo property. anyone still remember the crappy mario brothers movie? and we've already seen more pokemon movies than anyone should ever have to endure.
if they want any hope of pulling this off, it *has* to be animated (like final fantasy). and it has to be targeted at a real and intelligent adult audience. this simply won't work if it's targeted at 8-14 year olds.
even then, it needs to be a powerful franchise. metroid - doable. zelda - doable (potentially in the vein of LoTR). but, excite bike? what are they going to do? make it like The Fast and the Furious with Mario as referee?
i guess all we can do is wait and see, but i'm not holding my breath for anything groundbreaking.
for those of us that read the article, we see that the entire nVidia/ATi argument is practically moot. the developer explicity says that the card will be primarily 2D because his employer won't give enough funding to produce an ASIC. Thus, they're using an FPGA and will only really be able to implement a 2D core.
Slashdot Mirror
not neccessarily. the word 'pretty' is entirely subjective. i had and ran half-life 2 on a FX5700u just fine. In fact, I'd say that it looked exactly as pretty and ran exactly as fine as it does on the 6800u I purchased in January.
i think the only real thing that drives this kind of product leap is the small segment of the market that spends that kind of money on a video card 'because they can.'
granted, when the new HDL revision comes out for Source, then there will be a reason to upgrade because the older cards simply won't have the support for the new instructions. but, as it is right now, i don't see any reason to complain.
as an aside, i don't understand the WHY for people that run games like HL2 and Doom3 at 14bazillionx18trillion resolution. Even with my 6800u, I run it at 800x600...
but, i'm rambling on now that my $.02 is expired.
anyone else experience that the majority of the banner ads attached to this story are for TigerDirect.com?
While I can sympathize with both Apple and TigerDirect in this instance, I don't think that this is reason to boycott TigerDirect since they're not *clearly* in the wrong.
However, if you decide to boycott TigerDirect because they're a shitty company, with shitty merchandise (which they don't support at all), and shitty prices, then I'm fully with you.
Honestly, I think that TigerDirect is just taking the Rambus route and threatening Apple so that they can stir up a little bit of controversy and maybe a little traffic through their storefront.
As so beautifully put in The Phantom of the Opera: "To Hell with Glock and Handel, it's a scandal that will pack them in the aisles..."
That may be, but that's because they have "adopted" the word "tiger" as as an easily-attached mneumonic for the software (so as to differentiate the different version - like they did with Panther).
However, any colloquial terms used to refer to the product don't change it's official name.
Similarly, when we all had the different revision of Windows95 floating around, people would off-hand refer to them as OSR1 or OSR3, etc. We all still knew that it was Windows 95, but we used the mneumonic to differentiate them. Should MS have gone out any trademark each of those colloquial terms?
I think everyone is missing the point here. Apple's software is not called "Tiger." Tiger is the CODE-NAME for a specific revision of the software. The software is *still* called MacOS X. To be specific, it's MacOS X.4 (10.4?). In Linux distro parlance, we'd refer to it as MacOS X (Tiger).
Thus, while I agree with Apple's fair use of the word, I don't see how they can bitch if they're asked to remove it. Similarly, I don't see how TigerDirect can really bitch since the *official* name of the product is NOT Tiger, it's MacOS X.
while that may be, how about the fact that my set-top DVD/CD player no longer plays discs and its barely two years old? No drivers or software issues there -- just a crappy drive.
I've always found the word "geek" to be much like the word "nigger".
I've always found the word 'geek' as a synonym for 'to kill' but then I read a lot of Shadowrun as a youth.
actually, i'd be careful with comments like this. for people that use their computers every day, the thermal expansion/contraction that comes from cycling power from high-temp devices like modern CPUs can actually physically damage the device over the long run.
/. would, I believe), but he neglected this kind of real-world concern.
that, by and large, is why a lot of 'geeks' tend to leave their equipment on 24/7. Over the long haul, it is actually safer for the equipment to do this.
Granted, this argument requires several bits of information about the owner's usage habits. If one only uses the computer once a week for fifteen minutes, then it makes sense to power it off after each use.
However, if you use the computer everyday, from 5am until 11pm or midnight, it makes more sense to just leave it on because of the frequency of the power cycle.
I applaud the parent's concern for fossil fuels and protection of the environment (as most on
okay, while i admit that this opinion is probably shared by most of the crowd on slashdot -- it is an OPINION. how on earth does this qualify for being modded up as "insightful?"
shouldn't insightful be reserved for extra discussion or material that helps illuminate topics and points brought out in the article or other posts?
maybe i'm getting too old for this crowd, but opinions should be treated as such.
for what it's worth, i think that on the whole, DRM is useless and a waste of consumer stress and developer time. however, in the case of rental video downloads, i think that it's appropriate.
if you download a movie or song to "own", i think that DRM violates the point of "selling" things in that the product isn't actually yours to use, own, and control.
however, when renting downloads (like tv shows, etc.), then i think DRM is appropriate. after all, you don't expect to "own" the movie when you rent it from blockbuster.
100% Java-based games is a very admirable goal, but that would require Yahoo! to mandate as such to all of their developers.
Remember, Yahoo! themselves don't develop most of the games that are found on the Yahoo! games site. Independent developers (like Popcap games) develop them and Yahoo! gives these developers great leeway insofar as how the games are implemented.
If Yahoo! were to mandate that all games on their site had to be Java-based, one of two things could happen:
1) very few games exist on the site as they are all ported
2) very few games exist at all as Yahoo! has to drop developers that are unable/unwilling to port or hire coders to port
Personally, I'd like to see all of the games be Java-based (even the delierable commercial ones) so that I could download and own them on my Linux box.
In the long run, I think that the Y! games site is going to be their biggest stumbling block because of these reasons (and, incidentally, I think it will take the longest for this site to become compliant).
crappers! this means that there will never be a sequel to Arcanum (unless they open the license and let folks run amok with it)...
Actually, lots of things like that are regulated.
Nazi references are but only one. The german government also censors religion (Scientology is actually forbidden by federal law), "hobbies" (references to bomb-making or other overtly 'terrorist' activites are forbidden), etc.
The German government has a general policy of "we give the people as much freedom as they show they are mature enough to handle." And, if things go awry on any front where it seems that the people are not mature enough to handle freedom, the government steps in and regulates things.
Incidentally, this same principle is how they handle antitrust cases. Go back and look at the history of T-Mobile(T-Online) and see how it was federally regulated to control its actions to prevent destructive monopoly.
So, no, the OP was wrong -- Nazi symbols in and of themselves are *not* perfectly legal, even for purely educational purposes. The only place where students could get their hands on the appropriate materials in order to write a school paper or such would be in specially regulated and protected collections inside libraries.
i guess on the one hand you can take the argument "it takes one to know one" in that who better to know what to watch out for than someone who's made a career out of invading people's privacy. but, thenm if that was the case, why not appoint kevin mitnik to this position?
on the other hand (and i imagine this is the most prevalent on slashdot), isn't this a bit like making the fox the keeper of the henhouse? wouldn't it be a bit *too* easy to (since he's in a position of influence) lobby for looser (or no) restrictions on spyware and adware?
my fiancee's family lives in Tuscaloosa. Anyone who has ever been there will realize that Tuscaloosa and the remainder of Alabama (with the notable exception of Mobile) is the armpit of the south.
No wonder he driven to kill -- he lives in Alabama.
this seems similar to a quote i once heard about off-the-shelf firewalls and routers for 'protection' of home-based networks.
/. community (other than the obligatory anti-M$ bitchfest) since most of us here are intellegint enough that this point is moot.
the quote said that these firewalls would only really stop those "hackers" that didn't really want to get into the network (i.e, script kiddies or n00bs). dangerous threats wont stop until they get into your network.
in a similar vein, this is only going to stop casual pirates (much in the same way product activation did). hardcore warezers will still find ways to circumvent the protection.
so, i don't think this should be a big deal for the
but, then again, this is all just my $.02
no -- no fine print anywhere. we scoured the documentation and the packaging looking for anything to that effect and came up completely dry. in fact, the software doesn't even tell you that it's converting it -- it says something inane like "formatting for playback" or something like that. it takes a technophile to even realize what it's actually doing behind the scenes.
if i were joe public, i'd never even know that it's not actually playing MP3s.
obviously, you've never owned a Sony "mp3 player." i bought my fiancee one for christmas. All over the packaging it proclaimed "MP3 and WMA Compatibility" and even has MP3 in the model name. The packaging even refers to it as an MP3 player.
In reality, it includes a conversion utility in the package that converts MP3 and WMA to AAC for playback on the device. Therefore, it is an "MP3 Player" that does not natively play MP3s. When I buy an MP3 player, I want to be able to just drag and drop MP3s to it natively and have it parse and read them without any smoke and mirrors going on behind the scenes.
when you get down to the crux of it, it's very borderline to a bait and switch. but, IANAL, so i don't know how far an argument like that would go.
personally, I am very glad to see them acknowledge this faux pas. now, i wish they would release a firmware update or something to fix those old "MP3 players" so that they play back MP3s properly.
this is about the dumbest thing i think ive heard coming out of redmon.
this way when a user is off surfing pr0n and the floodgates of spyware open up, suddenly they cannot run ANY legit apps because the queue for apps is being taken up by spyware, dialers, etc.
and if, they elect to run an antivirus software and, say, ms anti-spyware, theyve just used up two of their three wishes.
somehow that just doesnt make sense.
since the Post Office is a common point for posting the FBI's Most Wanted lists, could this be used in conjunction with that?
Don't really know any other good use for this technology. As other folks have noticed, knocking over stamp machines is not entirely the most lucrative way to make a living.
I can only think that it must have something to do with track the activities of terrorists and other so-called "undesirables."
Granted, once the people that this technology is targeting catch wind of it, they'll just go back to buying their stamps at FoodMax/Kroger and depositing letters in the boxes that are outside the building.
depends on your perspective. If I imagine myself to be a server, I'm pushing information to a client and pulling information from a client, like the name implies.
you're interpreting it from the client perspective, which is not where the name came from.
haven't we done this several times before. hell, even with a nintendo property. anyone still remember the crappy mario brothers movie? and we've already seen more pokemon movies than anyone should ever have to endure.
if they want any hope of pulling this off, it *has* to be animated (like final fantasy). and it has to be targeted at a real and intelligent adult audience. this simply won't work if it's targeted at 8-14 year olds.
even then, it needs to be a powerful franchise. metroid - doable. zelda - doable (potentially in the vein of LoTR). but, excite bike? what are they going to do? make it like The Fast and the Furious with Mario as referee?
i guess all we can do is wait and see, but i'm not holding my breath for anything groundbreaking.
Okay, so I can understand that Slashdot editors don't read past posts to ensure that they don't re-invent the wheel.
t p://www.crystalinks.com/montauk.htmle denseve.net/montauk_experiment_project .htm
t tp://www.navalships.org/eldridge.html. spiritual-endeavors.org/abilities/phila .htm
But, apprarently, DoD doesn't either. Experiments into this kind of thing have been done before...and long ago to, though DoD strictly denies it.
http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/montauk.html
ht
http://www.
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq21-1.htm
h
http://www
for those of us that read the article, we see that the entire nVidia/ATi argument is practically moot. the developer explicity says that the card will be primarily 2D because his employer won't give enough funding to produce an ASIC. Thus, they're using an FPGA and will only really be able to implement a 2D core.
German?
Umm, no. This is DUTCH. That's why he's from the Netherlands, where the people are called DUTCH and they speak DUTCH.
Dutch, German == Germanic Tongues
Dutch != German
Niederländisch ist nicht deutsch!
granted, this is a neat idea, but how exactly does it make you more productive?