All the torrents I've run into on most major torrent sites have the ads removed into a pretty seemless viewing experience. I'm sure they're not too keen on that.
I think the truth is, cellphone makers are really only interested in one thing... selling you expensive monthly service plans. The phones are just a means to an end for them, and you'll always see them crippling functionality if it allows them to charge extra for using a feature the way THEY want you to use it. Think "Jack of all trades, master of none." when you think "all in one cellphones". That's all you're gonna get.
The problem with that paragraph being the cell phone manufacturers don't get any of your monthly service fees. Your cell phone provider does. Sure, the providers undoubtedly hire the manufacturers to make custom phones for them but it's all your evil cell phone service provider that gets all your cash and demands crippled features on your phone.
There's a small point you bring up though, most integrated devices on phones are poor implementations at best of standalones. 1mp camera with no focus or zoom, whoop-dee-freaking-doo. I think there were better cameras put out on first generation digital cameras.
Granted, fitting good implementations of these devices in a small package like a cell phone really is a true challenge.
Oh please. You mean to tell me hunting with a muzzle loader (that oh-so-modern weapon) is not a challenge?
Try it sometime. For one, you only have one shot. Also, deer have some pretty damn good hearing. One tiny, twig breaking or click your saftey off too fast and you will not get an opportunity to even try to shoot.
Crossbow is even harder.
Most sportsman I know don't use some huge freaking sniper rifle with 100x scope which you envisioned to kill deer.
By the way, I am not a hunter but several of my friends do hunt when it's in season.
Personally, I think "Internet hunting" is a ridiculous concept because of the fact that you're not tracking anything which is really what HUNTING is... locating and tracking a target on large plain. Blowing the shit out of animals that are "stocked" (placed in front of remote control guns) with extremely small boundaries is NOT hunting in the first place. It's remote target practice with live animals that have -no- chance. THAT is what the problem is. "Internet hunting" is truly a misnomer.
Actually, if you really want to get picky... Darwin is based on Mach, not BSD. OS X has a FreeBSD userland (i.e. all those crazy binaries like ls and df)
It's truly amusing to see this come up on slashdot. Being both a computer and pinball aficionado, it's interesting to see that the slashdot crowd knows very little about pinball.
Lets clear up some misconceptions that I've seen in some posts thus far:
1) Why isn't there another manufacturer to compete with Stern? Monopolies are evil. Well, the problem with that is that the pinball market is very small. 10,000 units is pretty small for a global market. The article mentions that it takes about 6,500 to 7,000 units for Stern to just breakeven. Said another way, the 7,001st machine is where they start to make profit. This is because...
2) Pinballs are very expensive. Expensive to design, expensive to make and difficult to sell a decent quantity of. All told, a new-in-box machine goes for about $4,000. Damn near impossible to sell to a consumer and getting harder to sell to operators in the waning coin-op market. I suppose that there may be some ways for them to cut corners and churn out a slightly cheaper machine but if anyone has seen a Bally/Williams machine from the 90s and compared it with a current Stern product, the difference in quality is noticable. That is because...
3) In the heyday of Williams/Bally, the market was much bigger. Then it wasn't unusual to pump out 30,000 machines of the same model instead of the under 10,000 of current models. More sales equal more profit equals more development funds. The more money available general leads to better development of "toys" and new technologies (optical switches, new hardware platforms, etc). Most Williams machines have several unique "toys" in each model and added a great amount of excitement. Stern usually only puts one "toy" in a machine and isn't exceptionally exciting. That just comes from having to shave back the cost of each machine to try and make a profit easier. It's simple business math and I can't really blame them since the slack between profit and loss is very thin.
All-in-all, hopefully Stern will keep pinball alive for many many years to come. On most "pinhead's" wishlists though is for Stern to be a little bit more innovative and make machines that are a bit more complex like old Williams/Bally machines. But undoubtedly, we'll continue to keep cheering Stern on regardless because he's keeping the dream alive.
It's a V802SE flashed to V800 EU firmware.. so no, it's not bastardized at all.
But the search for a decent HTML browser rages on, the one from ReqWireless is still the best one I've come across. The built-in browser on the phone as with most phones out there is just WAP. Which needless to say isn't very helpful in alot of situations.
Since I do not use Windows really any of the time, I would love to see this ported to a MIDP (Java) app for my Sony V800 (and the multitude of other phones that run Java apps).
I'm not doubtful this will happen since Moz seems to love interoperability but I certainly would like to see this immediately instead of the long wait because I'm impatient.
The problem was not that they did so much as how they went about it. IT WAS AN UNAPPROVED HACK.
I'm sure there were a few steps to the process of viewing it that should have made these supposedly smart people think "Hey, Would Harvard want me to be doing this?".
Quite frankly, if they didn't ask that question they have as much common sense as a gourd. Viewing your acceptance status before it's made official is DEBATEABLY unethical. Using a hack to view your acceptance status before it's made official IS UNETHICAL. If you don't agree, then yes, you should have failed your ethics course.
I'm mystified by this because my Sony Ericsson V800 already does this. From the pictures, the phone seems to run the same software too. So aside from branding, I fail to see the difference. The V800 also has expandable memory via Memory Stick Pro Duo which cards are available up to 1GB for.
Granted the V800 is not "available" in America, but one can be snagged from eBay and unlocked/flashed. The same thing you're going to have to do with the W800 though.
The drawback to the V800 though is that the earphones connect through the T28 connector as there is no mini-headphone jack.:( But with a little enginuity you could make your headphones work too.
Iirc Jef was fired shortly before the Mac shipped.
Actually, after Jobs got ousted from the Lisa project, he commandeered the Macintosh project from Raskin (then a project to make a very cheap $500 computer). Shortly after taking the reigns, Jef and Steve had a number of "conflicts" and Steve eventually pushed Jef out on a leave of absence.
He truly was a pioneer though. From his very early influence on the project to his comprehensive manual on what a GUI should be.
You're absolutely right!@ There's an array inside the iPod shuffle of about 150 artists that will take precedence over all other artists and will play songs by those artists 3 times more than all others because because Apple recieved $100,000 per to make it happen.
Those of you that think that sounds completely plausable, please step to the left. Everyone else please step to the right.
Everyone standing on the left, please drink the magic juice we're distributing because you've been selected to come with us to the great beyond where you will experience another plane of being.
Everyone on the right, enjoy the rest of your life because you enjoy logic and reason.
You're saying that Apple is backing off support of Firewire because they're not including _the cable_ by default in the box.
OK, think about that. Now think about this: A majority of the people buying iPods have Windows PCs. I'm going out on a limb and saying most PCs I've seen do not have Firewire by default. So why include a cable that most people aren't going to use when you can leave it out, save money by leaving it out AND get more money when people have to buy the cable seperately.
Simple economics. So for all you tin-foil hat wearers:
Removing the Firewire cable from the iPod package does not mean they're backing off support for Firewire.
Removing the ability for the iPods to connect via Firewire DOES mean they're backing off support for Firewire.
But the latter has not and probably will not happen. The FW cable being included was just legacy from when iPods were Mac-only since most Macs had FW for sometime and USB1.1 was inadequate for transfering GB to the iPod.
You could still search based upon the unencrypted file and generate hashes from it, the chunk would just be compressed/encrypted for transmission and would defeat the fingerprinting. Then when the chunk arrives at the destination, it would just be uncompressed/unencrypted and constructed the way the original file was.
Though you are correct that you wouldn't be able to download a _chunk_ from multiple sources. You would still be perfectly able to download a _file_ from multiple sources.
This sounds an awful lot like Apple and OS X, complete with humor about pronounciation (OS X or OS TEN).
As sad as I am to say it, Cringley already fielded this one sometime in 2002 or 2003 I believe. He had a slightly insane theory that a proprietary Windows interface on top of a Linux kernel would be the best of both worlds.
I doubt it would ever happen but it would be definately interesting. Just think if Windows made the shift, there would no longer be ANY operating systems in active development that weren't based on UNIX in some way.
Is that a far-fetch dream or a reality slowly taking shape?
Stop being so short sighted, people. While it's "Yes, another slow weekend so lets post a Cringely-article" time, I believe he did nail something on the head...
This first batch of Mac-Mini's is about the tinkerers. It's for the people that have always wanted to give OS X a shot but have been not wanting to dump at least $1200 on a decent Mac. Or people that love their Mac alot and want another for the wife/kid or for their own purposes.
I guarantee you there will be a new rev. of this machine by the end of the year. Perhaps, September or so.
If this video strategy is accurate, you better believe you will see some crazier specs on the next rev. My guess is that there would be some H.264 decoder chip and an HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drive. That takes care of the playability...
As far as the downloads go, there's no way it would be real-time within the next decade but I believe many consumers would put up with a reasonable queueing time like 2-4 hours. Especially, if they consider what they're going to do later that night before they, say, go to work. Before they leave for work, select a movie, go to work, come home, watch movie.
Though contrary to what Cringely thinks, I have to believe that on-demand TV would be a part of this. iTMS would be more than equipped to handle a nice catalog of episodes from your favorite past and present TV shows. TV shows that would obviously be alot smaller and quicker to download than full length movies. 22/40 minutes in length as opposed to 90-120 equates to (if the three hour estimate held up) 40-60 "queue-up" time. Or if it's just standard def TV, it could probably be played real time.
I'd personally love to see an on-demand TV service with an interface like iTMS.
But back to my rant, this first batch of mini's ultimately will not be used for "the final purpose" of the model (if there is one at all). Expect the pieces to start to fall into place after the next revision is released later this year.
Oddly enough as I sit here and read this, I am in my Florida hotel. I just visited the KSC yesterday. I must say there facility for the Saturn V is impressive.
After being treated to a movie and a simulated launch on the real (not mock) Launch Control hardware, you get to walk through the door and take in this enormous machine. I must say, the craft is pristine. Aside from a tiny bit of rust on the Escape Tower, the paint and metal body is perfect. A big piece of history preserved the way it should be.
I would assume that future plans for the other Saturn Vs would be similar though I don't know the difference in annual visitors between the other two centers and if it would be worth it to do such a grandiose thing for 2 more of them.
Perhaps they could just truck the other 2 to Florida and expand the exhibit?;)
Anyway, I just want to say, if you're a geek on vacation in Florida, Kennedy Space Center is pretty killer and a must-see.
All the people on here saying "I can build the same thing for millions less..." aren't taking into consideration that these drives (LaCie's product anyway) are not your typical off-the-shelf drive slapped into an external carrier.
With Firewire 800, the (claimed) transfer specs are significantly higher than with a homebrew drive-and-case scenario. Coupled with the fact that they're offering 500GB drives in the same form factor, makes a pretty compelling product especially at $450 for 500GB. Of course they also have the bigger drives with bigger form factors at 1TB and 1.6TB.
In any case, while I've never owned one of their drives, I am interested in purchasing a couple of theirs for my next RAID project.
Slashdot Mirror
All the torrents I've run into on most major torrent sites have the ads removed into a pretty seemless viewing experience. I'm sure they're not too keen on that.
I think the truth is, cellphone makers are really only interested in one thing ... selling you expensive monthly service plans. The phones are just a means to an end for them, and you'll always see them crippling functionality if it allows them to charge extra for using a feature the way THEY want you to use it. Think "Jack of all trades, master of none." when you think "all in one cellphones". That's all you're gonna get.
The problem with that paragraph being the cell phone manufacturers don't get any of your monthly service fees. Your cell phone provider does. Sure, the providers undoubtedly hire the manufacturers to make custom phones for them but it's all your evil cell phone service provider that gets all your cash and demands crippled features on your phone.
There's a small point you bring up though, most integrated devices on phones are poor implementations at best of standalones. 1mp camera with no focus or zoom, whoop-dee-freaking-doo. I think there were better cameras put out on first generation digital cameras.
Granted, fitting good implementations of these devices in a small package like a cell phone really is a true challenge.
Oh please. You mean to tell me hunting with a muzzle loader (that oh-so-modern weapon) is not a challenge?
Try it sometime. For one, you only have one shot. Also, deer have some pretty damn good hearing. One tiny, twig breaking or click your saftey off too fast and you will not get an opportunity to even try to shoot.
Crossbow is even harder.
Most sportsman I know don't use some huge freaking sniper rifle with 100x scope which you envisioned to kill deer.
By the way, I am not a hunter but several of my friends do hunt when it's in season.
Personally, I think "Internet hunting" is a ridiculous concept because of the fact that you're not tracking anything which is really what HUNTING is... locating and tracking a target on large plain. Blowing the shit out of animals that are "stocked" (placed in front of remote control guns) with extremely small boundaries is NOT hunting in the first place. It's remote target practice with live animals that have -no- chance. THAT is what the problem is. "Internet hunting" is truly a misnomer.
Actually, if you really want to get picky... Darwin is based on Mach, not BSD. OS X has a FreeBSD userland (i.e. all those crazy binaries like ls and df)
They did this with 10.3 too, it was 2-3 weeks if I recall..
Yeah, it appears my numbers were a bit inflated. IPD says The Addams Family production run was 20,270 machines plus an extra 1,000 for the gold edition.
Twilight Zone was around 15,000..
In any case, the ratio was about right since current titles like Lord of the Rings had 4,017 machines made.
It's truly amusing to see this come up on slashdot. Being both a computer and pinball aficionado, it's interesting to see that the slashdot crowd knows very little about pinball.
Lets clear up some misconceptions that I've seen in some posts thus far:
1) Why isn't there another manufacturer to compete with Stern? Monopolies are evil. Well, the problem with that is that the pinball market is very small. 10,000 units is pretty small for a global market. The article mentions that it takes about 6,500 to 7,000 units for Stern to just breakeven. Said another way, the 7,001st machine is where they start to make profit. This is because...
2) Pinballs are very expensive. Expensive to design, expensive to make and difficult to sell a decent quantity of. All told, a new-in-box machine goes for about $4,000. Damn near impossible to sell to a consumer and getting harder to sell to operators in the waning coin-op market. I suppose that there may be some ways for them to cut corners and churn out a slightly cheaper machine but if anyone has seen a Bally/Williams machine from the 90s and compared it with a current Stern product, the difference in quality is noticable. That is because...
3) In the heyday of Williams/Bally, the market was much bigger. Then it wasn't unusual to pump out 30,000 machines of the same model instead of the under 10,000 of current models. More sales equal more profit equals more development funds. The more money available general leads to better development of "toys" and new technologies (optical switches, new hardware platforms, etc). Most Williams machines have several unique "toys" in each model and added a great amount of excitement. Stern usually only puts one "toy" in a machine and isn't exceptionally exciting. That just comes from having to shave back the cost of each machine to try and make a profit easier. It's simple business math and I can't really blame them since the slack between profit and loss is very thin.
All-in-all, hopefully Stern will keep pinball alive for many many years to come. On most "pinhead's" wishlists though is for Stern to be a little bit more innovative and make machines that are a bit more complex like old Williams/Bally machines. But undoubtedly, we'll continue to keep cheering Stern on regardless because he's keeping the dream alive.
It's a V802SE flashed to V800 EU firmware.. so no, it's not bastardized at all.
But the search for a decent HTML browser rages on, the one from ReqWireless is still the best one I've come across. The built-in browser on the phone as with most phones out there is just WAP. Which needless to say isn't very helpful in alot of situations.
Since I do not use Windows really any of the time, I would love to see this ported to a MIDP (Java) app for my Sony V800 (and the multitude of other phones that run Java apps).
I'm not doubtful this will happen since Moz seems to love interoperability but I certainly would like to see this immediately instead of the long wait because I'm impatient.
The problem was not that they did so much as how they went about it. IT WAS AN UNAPPROVED HACK.
I'm sure there were a few steps to the process of viewing it that should have made these supposedly smart people think "Hey, Would Harvard want me to be doing this?".
Quite frankly, if they didn't ask that question they have as much common sense as a gourd. Viewing your acceptance status before it's made official is DEBATEABLY unethical. Using a hack to view your acceptance status before it's made official IS UNETHICAL. If you don't agree, then yes, you should have failed your ethics course.
512MB Duo cards can be had for relatively cheap... Like here for example.
Considering most high-end phones cost $600 anyway, what's another $90 for half a GB?
I'm mystified by this because my Sony Ericsson V800 already does this. From the pictures, the phone seems to run the same software too. So aside from branding, I fail to see the difference. The V800 also has expandable memory via Memory Stick Pro Duo which cards are available up to 1GB for.
:( But with a little enginuity you could make your headphones work too.
Granted the V800 is not "available" in America, but one can be snagged from eBay and unlocked/flashed. The same thing you're going to have to do with the W800 though.
The drawback to the V800 though is that the earphones connect through the T28 connector as there is no mini-headphone jack.
Iirc Jef was fired shortly before the Mac shipped.
Actually, after Jobs got ousted from the Lisa project, he commandeered the Macintosh project from Raskin (then a project to make a very cheap $500 computer). Shortly after taking the reigns, Jef and Steve had a number of "conflicts" and Steve eventually pushed Jef out on a leave of absence.
He truly was a pioneer though. From his very early influence on the project to his comprehensive manual on what a GUI should be.
You're absolutely right!@ There's an array inside the iPod shuffle of about 150 artists that will take precedence over all other artists and will play songs by those artists 3 times more than all others because because Apple recieved $100,000 per to make it happen.
Those of you that think that sounds completely plausable, please step to the left. Everyone else please step to the right.
Everyone standing on the left, please drink the magic juice we're distributing because you've been selected to come with us to the great beyond where you will experience another plane of being.
Everyone on the right, enjoy the rest of your life because you enjoy logic and reason.
You're saying that Apple is backing off support of Firewire because they're not including _the cable_ by default in the box.
OK, think about that. Now think about this: A majority of the people buying iPods have Windows PCs. I'm going out on a limb and saying most PCs I've seen do not have Firewire by default. So why include a cable that most people aren't going to use when you can leave it out, save money by leaving it out AND get more money when people have to buy the cable seperately.
Simple economics. So for all you tin-foil hat wearers:
Removing the Firewire cable from the iPod package does not mean they're backing off support for Firewire.
Removing the ability for the iPods to connect via Firewire DOES mean they're backing off support for Firewire.
But the latter has not and probably will not happen. The FW cable being included was just legacy from when iPods were Mac-only since most Macs had FW for sometime and USB1.1 was inadequate for transfering GB to the iPod.
That's not necessarily true.
You could still search based upon the unencrypted file and generate hashes from it, the chunk would just be compressed/encrypted for transmission and would defeat the fingerprinting. Then when the chunk arrives at the destination, it would just be uncompressed/unencrypted and constructed the way the original file was.
Though you are correct that you wouldn't be able to download a _chunk_ from multiple sources. You would still be perfectly able to download a _file_ from multiple sources.
This sounds an awful lot like Apple and OS X, complete with humor about pronounciation (OS X or OS TEN).
As sad as I am to say it, Cringley already fielded this one sometime in 2002 or 2003 I believe. He had a slightly insane theory that a proprietary Windows interface on top of a Linux kernel would be the best of both worlds.
I doubt it would ever happen but it would be definately interesting. Just think if Windows made the shift, there would no longer be ANY operating systems in active development that weren't based on UNIX in some way.
Is that a far-fetch dream or a reality slowly taking shape?
welcome our new Max OS X overlords!
Stop being so short sighted, people. While it's "Yes, another slow weekend so lets post a Cringely-article" time, I believe he did nail something on the head...
This first batch of Mac-Mini's is about the tinkerers. It's for the people that have always wanted to give OS X a shot but have been not wanting to dump at least $1200 on a decent Mac. Or people that love their Mac alot and want another for the wife/kid or for their own purposes.
I guarantee you there will be a new rev. of this machine by the end of the year. Perhaps, September or so.
If this video strategy is accurate, you better believe you will see some crazier specs on the next rev. My guess is that there would be some H.264 decoder chip and an HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drive. That takes care of the playability...
As far as the downloads go, there's no way it would be real-time within the next decade but I believe many consumers would put up with a reasonable queueing time like 2-4 hours. Especially, if they consider what they're going to do later that night before they, say, go to work. Before they leave for work, select a movie, go to work, come home, watch movie.
Though contrary to what Cringely thinks, I have to believe that on-demand TV would be a part of this. iTMS would be more than equipped to handle a nice catalog of episodes from your favorite past and present TV shows. TV shows that would obviously be alot smaller and quicker to download than full length movies. 22/40 minutes in length as opposed to 90-120 equates to (if the three hour estimate held up) 40-60 "queue-up" time. Or if it's just standard def TV, it could probably be played real time.
I'd personally love to see an on-demand TV service with an interface like iTMS.
But back to my rant, this first batch of mini's ultimately will not be used for "the final purpose" of the model (if there is one at all). Expect the pieces to start to fall into place after the next revision is released later this year.
Oddly enough as I sit here and read this, I am in my Florida hotel. I just visited the KSC yesterday. I must say there facility for the Saturn V is impressive.
;)
After being treated to a movie and a simulated launch on the real (not mock) Launch Control hardware, you get to walk through the door and take in this enormous machine. I must say, the craft is pristine. Aside from a tiny bit of rust on the Escape Tower, the paint and metal body is perfect. A big piece of history preserved the way it should be.
I would assume that future plans for the other Saturn Vs would be similar though I don't know the difference in annual visitors between the other two centers and if it would be worth it to do such a grandiose thing for 2 more of them.
Perhaps they could just truck the other 2 to Florida and expand the exhibit?
Anyway, I just want to say, if you're a geek on vacation in Florida, Kennedy Space Center is pretty killer and a must-see.
the top 10 tech cliches that will still be cliches in 2005!
Same thing every year, no news.
And a good deal if you ask me...
All the people on here saying "I can build the same thing for millions less..." aren't taking into consideration that these drives (LaCie's product anyway) are not your typical off-the-shelf drive slapped into an external carrier.
With Firewire 800, the (claimed) transfer specs are significantly higher than with a homebrew drive-and-case scenario. Coupled with the fact that they're offering 500GB drives in the same form factor, makes a pretty compelling product especially at $450 for 500GB. Of course they also have the bigger drives with bigger form factors at 1TB and 1.6TB.
In any case, while I've never owned one of their drives, I am interested in purchasing a couple of theirs for my next RAID project.
Na...
If he threw it, they'd rush out real fast and offer him a gig on the Today show. *cough*
Is posting busted or does nobody care about NetBSD?
You'd think the username "Nice Horsecock" would've been a minor hint to his mentality.