It may look like a bargain, but check your setup first. I was about to order one, but unfortunately at 3.28 ft it was slightly too short for connecting my HD-DVD player, which is 3.29 ft away from my TV (I've found I get perceptible jitter if I place it any closer, probably due to an excess of events in the 124-126 GeV range). Luckily Amazon sells a longer cable that is already getting good reviews:
$0 with a contract. I am talking about just the phone itself, add your own SIM
Indeed. The cheapest PAYG or sim-free iPhone would be a 3GS at around 300 GBP. You can get one 'free' on a 20 GBP/month contract, but the 480 GBP you'll end up spending in the first year is not exactly cheap compared to some of the PAYG internet access deals (from 40 GBP/year). You can pick up a quite usable Huawei phone for 60 GBP on PAYG, so Android + 1 year of data need only cost 100 GBP.
Apple doesn't even attempt to compete at the low end internationally (which may well be a sensible business decision). I guess they've calculated that ignoring this section of the market entirely is preferable to undercutting the iPhone, which presumably has very healthy profit margins (the iPod Touch sells for half the price of a 3GS, and can't be much cheaper to make).
tmobile has a pay as you go for 2$/day which gives you more or less unlimited (2g speed) data...or 30$/month for at least 5GB of data
I can't help thinking the title of the story should be 'Do You Really Need to be Screwed by Typical US Network Data Tariffs'. T-mobile in the UK sells 6 months worth of data on PAYG for 20 GBP, which works out at about 11p (17 cents US) a day. To be fair, there's probably a lower cap, but I've never hit it in daily use (no tethering or VoIP, rarely video). If you don't have a phone, you can pick up a basic Android model for under 60 GBP. At this sort of price, it's hard to see a smartphone as any sort of luxury.
Actually 3.6 currently still gets security updates, but don't count on that remaining true for long.
Possibly until April, then they're talking about a new LTS-style 'extended support release' supported in parallel with the crazy dev cycle of the main product as a sop to 'enterprise' users:
'Extended' seems to mean a year at best, though, and they won't exactly be encouraging widespread use ('The ESR will not be marketed through mozilla.com properties other than the Enterprise wiki page, staging servers, and/or blogs.').
Relative pricing also varies in their international stores - the Kindle edition is slightly cheaper in the UK shop right now (and some of the Kindle price is VAT, which isn't levied on the print copy). But for me the keys figures are the weight and thickness - REAMDE is big enough to be unwieldy in hardback, something I'd never bother taking on the train, but fine commuting fodder as an ebook, especially if liberated from its DRM shackles.
Think of it like this: Android phones don't run Ubuntu.
Indeed. It's easy to tell the difference because only one of these platforms defaults to a dumbed-down smartphone GUI. And the other is sponsored by Google.
Unfortunately, doing this to Nikon raw files damages them for downstream processing, as the serial number is one of the keys for Nikon's lame encryption scheme that 'protects' white balance data.
Welcome to a future where every photo you take can be uniquely attributed to the device used to produce it, registered to you.
Nikon and Canon SLRs have had 'image authentication' for a while now. A supposedly secret private key embedded in the camera's firmware may be used to sign each image file, which can then be validated with a public key (generally using an expensive software package sold mainly to forensics people). Camera serial numbers (probably recorded with your purchase) are also embedded in the files (at least in Nikon raw files), so the original images are intended to be verifiably traceable as well as tamper-evident. However, the authentication feature is optional (off by default) and both Nikon and Canon's systems have now been cracked wide open:
As the official spokesmen for [insert name of multi billion dollar bailed-out bank here], can you confirm that all executive bonus payments for the next financial year will be returned to the taxpayer as a gesture of gratitude and goodwill?
Every time they've 'tweaked the algorithm' in the last few years, the quality of the default results seems to have gone down. They're already swamped by transient material whenever a search term gets attached to something newsworthy (If I wanted this stuff, I'd use their 'news' or 'blogs' or 'groups' search). Google routinely assumes I've made a typo whenever a query is close to a more popular search with similar spelling, and has the cheek to search for their alternative first. And of course quotes, which rarely used to be necessary, now seem to be vital to get any sort of specificity (Google assumes I'd rather see a more popular site containing some of my terms, rather than a more obscure site containing all of them). All this sophisticated second guessing has made Google a blunter instrument, and I have to resort to the same sort of tricks I needed to get useful stuff out of AltaVista back in the 90s.
Not sure how much mileage there is in these, though. Working on upgrading the crippled 'fallback' mode of Gnome 3 to something a bit closer to the Gnome 2 Panel might be more worthwhile in the long run. Meanwhile, there's Xfce.
That's harsh. Just a few months ago, Blackberry's unique social networking features played an important role in facilitating the high profile collaborative activities of many members of the key under-25 demographic!:
At St. Paul's Cathedral, London, there is no elaborate memorial for its architect, Christopher Wren, who is buried there. Instead there's a simple Latin inscription that notes that he lived 'not for his own profit but for the public good' and ends with 'Reader, if you seek his monument - look around you.'
as for TFA whomever came up with a camera dock so you can work your iPod from across the room? A little too much time on their hands methinks.
I think the prize for 'gratuitous use of an iPod when there's more appropriate technology' must go the Ion Torrent DNA sequencer, a $50,000 piece of lab equipment that incorporates a dock for an iPod Touch (which supposedly runs a status monitoring app, though the machine itself has a perfectly good screen for this):
But from a 2011 perspective, maybe the most curious artefact in iPod history is the HP-branded version, which it's very hard to imagine Apple allowing now:
no xorg changes don't screw with KDE. I'm happily running it from 11.10.
No problem running Xfce either.
Like a lot of other Ubuntu users, I cast about for alternatives as soon as Unity reared its ugly head as the default interface, and installed a few VMs to try out various Debian and Ubuntu derivatives running the obvious desktops. I wasn't mad on KDE, found the 'fallback' mode of Gnome 3 lacking, but rather liked Xfce and LXDE (though I missed some of the Gnome applications). It turned out that, for me at least, the best solution was very simple - a standard Ubuntu installation with the xfce4 meta-package added later (not Xubuntu, which comes with a rather different selection of default software). No need to change distribution or struggle with a 'new interface paradigm', and everything Just Works (including the useful Gnome stuff).
"Starting with", yes; "committing to", not even close.
'Default choices', not 'eternally set in stone choices'. The point is that (e.g.) the Xubuntu vs Ubuntu maintainers have made many arbitrarily different and not always obvious decisions about what should be included in the default installation that have nothing to do with Xfce and Unity. If a novice user wants 'everything in Ubuntu, only with an Xfce desktop', they might assume that Xubuntu is the best option (it's the only one offered by WUBI). In fact, in this case it's rather less hassle to start with Ubuntu and grapple with Unity just long enough to install Xfce.
With WUBI, you're just choosing between complete Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Mythbuntu installations, and the appropriate ISO is downloaded. Although the distro selector is labelled 'desktop environment', you're really committing to all the default choices made by the maintainers of each of the derivative distributions.Choose 'Ubuntu' and you'll get Unity, Libreoffice and so on.
I have no idea where you get the idea from that these distros have a hang-up about GUI and OS not being decoupled - you clearly don't know what you're talking about...Ubuntu/Lubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu only differ in the choice of GUI.
I'm not sure that make your point very well. The Ubuntu derivatives use the same packaging system and repositories, but differ a lot in their selection of default software, not just the desktop. Ubuntu could very easily make the choice of desktop an option in the installer, but deliberately doesn't - that would mess with the 'corporate indentity' it's trying to create, which has now become synoymous with Unity. Of course there's nothing to stop an experienced user installing, say, Xfce afterwards, which is simple but (in a subtle way) not exactly encouraged. They'd probably rather you used the Xubuntu-branded derivative to start with (and wonder why it installs Abiword and Gnumeric instead of Libreoffice). Fostering distinct, semi-independent distributions, each coupled by default to a specific desktop, protects the core branding (and its preferred desktop) without limiting choice in an obvious way. But if Unity, Gnome 3, Gnome 2, Xfce and LXDE were all presented as equal choices in mainstream Ubuntu at install time (like the MS browser choice screen!) how many people would go for Unity?
Slashdot Mirror
Amazon is selling it for $1.24 cheaper! Whoo!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003CT08E4
It may look like a bargain, but check your setup first. I was about to order one, but unfortunately at 3.28 ft it was slightly too short for connecting my HD-DVD player, which is 3.29 ft away from my TV (I've found I get perceptible jitter if I place it any closer, probably due to an excess of events in the 124-126 GeV range). Luckily Amazon sells a longer cable that is already getting good reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Digital-Audio-Ethernet-Connection/dp/B003CT2A6I
At $2,694.75 it's a little on the pricey side, but I'm viewing this as a long-term investment like the player itself.
RichRelevance is neither independent nor impartial
...and (FWIW) this is the only time I recall following a link in a Slashdot story (second link, TFA) to find the site blocked by Web of Trust:
http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/richrelevance.com
$0 with a contract. I am talking about just the phone itself, add your own SIM
Indeed. The cheapest PAYG or sim-free iPhone would be a 3GS at around 300 GBP. You can get one 'free' on a 20 GBP/month contract, but the 480 GBP you'll end up spending in the first year is not exactly cheap compared to some of the PAYG internet access deals (from 40 GBP/year). You can pick up a quite usable Huawei phone for 60 GBP on PAYG, so Android + 1 year of data need only cost 100 GBP.
Apple doesn't even attempt to compete at the low end internationally (which may well be a sensible business decision). I guess they've calculated that ignoring this section of the market entirely is preferable to undercutting the iPhone, which presumably has very healthy profit margins (the iPod Touch sells for half the price of a 3GS, and can't be much cheaper to make).
tmobile has a pay as you go for 2$/day which gives you more or less unlimited (2g speed) data...or 30$/month for at least 5GB of data
I can't help thinking the title of the story should be 'Do You Really Need to be Screwed by Typical US Network Data Tariffs'. T-mobile in the UK sells 6 months worth of data on PAYG for 20 GBP, which works out at about 11p (17 cents US) a day. To be fair, there's probably a lower cap, but I've never hit it in daily use (no tethering or VoIP, rarely video). If you don't have a phone, you can pick up a basic Android model for under 60 GBP. At this sort of price, it's hard to see a smartphone as any sort of luxury.
Why? I'm beginning to be interested in Rand. Why the objection?
Here's a pretty good argument:
http://www.gq.com/entertainment/books/200911/ayn-rand-dick-books-fountainhead
Actually 3.6 currently still gets security updates, but don't count on that remaining true for long.
Possibly until April, then they're talking about a new LTS-style 'extended support release' supported in parallel with the crazy dev cycle of the main product as a sop to 'enterprise' users:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise/Firefox/ExtendedSupport:Proposal
'Extended' seems to mean a year at best, though, and they won't exactly be encouraging widespread use ('The ESR will not be marketed through mozilla.com properties other than the Enterprise wiki page, staging servers, and/or blogs.').
Relative pricing also varies in their international stores - the Kindle edition is slightly cheaper in the UK shop right now (and some of the Kindle price is VAT, which isn't levied on the print copy). But for me the keys figures are the weight and thickness - REAMDE is big enough to be unwieldy in hardback, something I'd never bother taking on the train, but fine commuting fodder as an ebook, especially if liberated from its DRM shackles.
Think of it like this: Android phones don't run Ubuntu.
Indeed. It's easy to tell the difference because only one of these platforms defaults to a dumbed-down smartphone GUI. And the other is sponsored by Google.
If not then why not?
So we can't hear the poor thing cry when it enters the extended mission phase:
http://xkcd.com/695/
Probably a one-liner with exiftool!:
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/exiftool_pod.html#writing_examples
Unfortunately, doing this to Nikon raw files damages them for downstream processing, as the serial number is one of the keys for Nikon's lame encryption scheme that 'protects' white balance data.
Welcome to a future where every photo you take can be uniquely attributed to the device used to produce it, registered to you.
Nikon and Canon SLRs have had 'image authentication' for a while now. A supposedly secret private key embedded in the camera's firmware may be used to sign each image file, which can then be validated with a public key (generally using an expensive software package sold mainly to forensics people). Camera serial numbers (probably recorded with your purchase) are also embedded in the files (at least in Nikon raw files), so the original images are intended to be verifiably traceable as well as tamper-evident. However, the authentication feature is optional (off by default) and both Nikon and Canon's systems have now been cracked wide open:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/05/nikon_image_aut.html
You can't stop the serial number being embedded in the file, though (verifiable or not), so be careful who you give original images to...
As the official spokesmen for [insert name of multi billion dollar bailed-out bank here], can you confirm that all executive bonus payments for the next financial year will be returned to the taxpayer as a gesture of gratitude and goodwill?
Something to do with the Olympics, wasn't it?:
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/43006000/jpg/_43006883_sean_stayte_416.jpg
Every time they've 'tweaked the algorithm' in the last few years, the quality of the default results seems to have gone down. They're already swamped by transient material whenever a search term gets attached to something newsworthy (If I wanted this stuff, I'd use their 'news' or 'blogs' or 'groups' search). Google routinely assumes I've made a typo whenever a query is close to a more popular search with similar spelling, and has the cheek to search for their alternative first. And of course quotes, which rarely used to be necessary, now seem to be vital to get any sort of specificity (Google assumes I'd rather see a more popular site containing some of my terms, rather than a more obscure site containing all of them). All this sophisticated second guessing has made Google a blunter instrument, and I have to resort to the same sort of tricks I needed to get useful stuff out of AltaVista back in the 90s.
Someone did:
https://github.com/Perberos/Mate-Desktop-Environment
http://k3rnel.net/2011/06/22/bluebubble-the-fine-manual/
Not sure how much mileage there is in these, though. Working on upgrading the crippled 'fallback' mode of Gnome 3 to something a bit closer to the Gnome 2 Panel might be more worthwhile in the long run. Meanwhile, there's Xfce.
That's harsh. Just a few months ago, Blackberry's unique social networking features played an important role in facilitating the high profile collaborative activities of many members of the key under-25 demographic!:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/08/london-riots-facebook-twitter-blackberry
At St. Paul's Cathedral, London, there is no elaborate memorial for its architect, Christopher Wren, who is buried there. Instead there's a simple Latin inscription that notes that he lived 'not for his own profit but for the public good' and ends with 'Reader, if you seek his monument - look around you.'
as for TFA whomever came up with a camera dock so you can work your iPod from across the room? A little too much time on their hands methinks.
I think the prize for 'gratuitous use of an iPod when there's more appropriate technology' must go the Ion Torrent DNA sequencer, a $50,000 piece of lab equipment that incorporates a dock for an iPod Touch (which supposedly runs a status monitoring app, though the machine itself has a perfectly good screen for this):
http://www.slashgear.com/ion-torrent-personal-genome-machine-has-an-ipod-dock-23120950/
But from a 2011 perspective, maybe the most curious artefact in iPod history is the HP-branded version, which it's very hard to imagine Apple allowing now:
http://www.onedigitallife.com/2004/08/31/hp-introduces-re-branded-ipod/
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2345
no xorg changes don't screw with KDE. I'm happily running it from 11.10 .
No problem running Xfce either.
Like a lot of other Ubuntu users, I cast about for alternatives as soon as Unity reared its ugly head as the default interface, and installed a few VMs to try out various Debian and Ubuntu derivatives running the obvious desktops. I wasn't mad on KDE, found the 'fallback' mode of Gnome 3 lacking, but rather liked Xfce and LXDE (though I missed some of the Gnome applications). It turned out that, for me at least, the best solution was very simple - a standard Ubuntu installation with the xfce4 meta-package added later (not Xubuntu, which comes with a rather different selection of default software). No need to change distribution or struggle with a 'new interface paradigm', and everything Just Works (including the useful Gnome stuff).
"Starting with", yes; "committing to", not even close.
'Default choices', not 'eternally set in stone choices'. The point is that (e.g.) the Xubuntu vs Ubuntu maintainers have made many arbitrarily different and not always obvious decisions about what should be included in the default installation that have nothing to do with Xfce and Unity. If a novice user wants 'everything in Ubuntu, only with an Xfce desktop', they might assume that Xubuntu is the best option (it's the only one offered by WUBI). In fact, in this case it's rather less hassle to start with Ubuntu and grapple with Unity just long enough to install Xfce.
With WUBI, you're just choosing between complete Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Mythbuntu installations, and the appropriate ISO is downloaded. Although the distro selector is labelled 'desktop environment', you're really committing to all the default choices made by the maintainers of each of the derivative distributions.Choose 'Ubuntu' and you'll get Unity, Libreoffice and so on.
It has rounded corners -> fail.
Yes, but wait till you see the Samsung Galactica Tab:
http://kabohemi.mysite.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/smart-paper.jpg
I have no idea where you get the idea from that these distros have a hang-up about GUI and OS not being decoupled - you clearly don't know what you're talking about...Ubuntu/Lubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu only differ in the choice of GUI.
I'm not sure that make your point very well. The Ubuntu derivatives use the same packaging system and repositories, but differ a lot in their selection of default software, not just the desktop. Ubuntu could very easily make the choice of desktop an option in the installer, but deliberately doesn't - that would mess with the 'corporate indentity' it's trying to create, which has now become synoymous with Unity. Of course there's nothing to stop an experienced user installing, say, Xfce afterwards, which is simple but (in a subtle way) not exactly encouraged. They'd probably rather you used the Xubuntu-branded derivative to start with (and wonder why it installs Abiword and Gnumeric instead of Libreoffice). Fostering distinct, semi-independent distributions, each coupled by default to a specific desktop, protects the core branding (and its preferred desktop) without limiting choice in an obvious way. But if Unity, Gnome 3, Gnome 2, Xfce and LXDE were all presented as equal choices in mainstream Ubuntu at install time (like the MS browser choice screen!) how many people would go for Unity?
How many countries just rely on someone else to do the space thing for them?
Well, they certainly have some catching up to do. The first 5 US missions of this type didn't exactly end well for the passengers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkeys_in_space#United_States
and the first 'successful' Soviet dog in orbit trip didn't even include 'bring it back alive' as a mission objective:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika#Controversy
You can write 'Modern Perl' in the sense used here without switching to an entirely different language:
http://www.onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/index.html