Just imagine if instead of "file sharing," it was "beard sharing". And someone could come along and just get exactly the same length beard as you, just by wanting it! Now who's feeling threatened, not just by Alan Moore, but by all potential beardos everywhere. Now who's livelihood is under attack. Why, we'd probably be so hungry, we'd have to eat things right off our own feet.
I suggest anyone who has interest is seeing what is possible with universal access, check out the iOS's "VoiceOver" mode (triple-click by default in iOS4).
VoiceOver speaks out loud whatever the sight-disabled user hovers over onscreen, then registers the choice via double-click. It's a tremendously effective system and I'm impressed at how universal it is throughout the iOS. Apple is doing some good work here that the rest of the industry would do well to pay close attention to
I love Apple's products as much as anyone, but the above comment's assessment of the situation is dead-on. They *could* make it happen, they certainly could make it an imperfect option, but the real fact is that Apple wants to keep a tight control the delivery of downloadable music, video and games on this platform.
That is ok-- choice is good, and it's not a zero-sum game. Put another way: Some people do not want to install the projector, screen, soundsystem and seats of a home theater. Some people just want to watch a freakin' movie.
Check out the MSI media live bareBones. My daughter is watching Backyardigans right now via Ubuntu/Boxee. TV out has always worked, even 'out of the box.'
Seriously, they missed the boat on faster chips by about a generation, chips that would have been 'good enough' to do web browsing and video playback at a low power draw. The Geode (right?) in the XO is just too slow.
I once wrote an AppleScript bundle.app that moves Comic Sans to the trash, then emails itself out to everyone in the user's Mac OS X Address Book. In fact, I still keep it around. Enjoy.
Back when Mac OS 9 had kind-of-sort-of voice control, you could launch programs by putting them in a specific folder. I made an alias for "Unreal" -- which took up 190 MB of RAM and took about 3 minutes to load on my PM 7500. Whenever someone would come over my dorm room to use my computer, I made a point of mentioning very loudly how something was "UNREAL!" -- and then they got to sit there while 'Unreal' loaded, very, very slowly.
The article linked is incredibly vague and seems to presuppose that the trajectory of all open-source projects is up, up, up. While this is possible -- if Google puts the resources into constant improvement, Android certainly will improve -- it presupposes that Apple is going to be standing still. Not so. Apple's iPhone platform is now a moving target, and the year to two-year market advantage is going to be difficult for Android to top.
Google, as much as I love some of their products, has shown themselves to be a bit spotty with support and improvements to many of their initiatives. Everyone understands that mobile is a big deal, but if Google's decides that they can dominate search just as much on the iPhone than on their own platform, it's possible their drive to improve Android will wither.
The fact that the platform is open-source means virtually nothing to consumers, by the way. They simply want to make calls, surf the web and play games.
Apple customers buy new OS upgrades in droves. Seriously, check out some stats. And with good reason; each upgrade offers clear advantages over the last, well-communicated by Apple to their customer base.
It's those last two tricks that MS has failed to do with Vista, both in the consumer space and the enterprise market. It will be interesting to see how they/if they iterate and improve for Windows 7. My bet is "nope".
I would argue that it's not a slight difference, but past that: There's a time for idealism and a time for pragmatism. In 2000, I went idealism and voted Nader. I won't be making that mistake this time around.
What this project needs is an on-screen keyboard/text entry method of roughly the same type and quality as the iPhone's keyboard. Until there's something like that in the linux world, using devices like this will be a pretty clunky affair.
This is a serious question: Imagine you had an old or ailing pet, and you loved them very much indeed, and so when they died you wanted to maintain the (infinitesimally slim) possibility that the pet could be successfully cloned sometime in the future.
What would you need of the pet's... remains... in order to produce a successful clone? Fur? Saliva? Blood cells? Seriously, I'm asking.
Maybe this is just a cultural difference between the UK and the USA, but I can't stand the Reg house writing style. Most pieces consist of a meandering, rambling narrative with tedious in-joke acronyms and what I can only describe as linguistic cruft splayed out over three ugly pages. I used to enjoy the Reg (a while ago, when I was more heavily invested in "IT" as a career) but I can't say I've made it to the end of an article in years.
Sure, it shows the accessories, but no dice on buying them. I have to imagine Asus is rolling out an online store Real Soon Now because having no extra charger is a real deal-breaker for a bunch of folks out there.
Why the Eee? I reviewed one for the local alt-monthly newspaper, and even after I was done with the review, I wound up keeping it. In a nutshell: it's nifty to have an inexpensive, super light, teeny wifi laptop with a crisp, bright screen -- I've been using it primarily for a RSS/CBR reader myself. My advice is ditch the standard OS, which is lovely but would never fully satisfy most slashdot readers and install Ubuntu 7.10. It's easy enough to do and works great after a few tweaks.
One caveat to keep in mind is that I can't seem to find any place that sells additional power adapters (yet) so the portability is slightly diminished by having to lug around the adapter too. but I'm sure that will be rectified soon, as Asus has done a great job so far responding to customer complaints and suggestions.
Slashdot Mirror
Just imagine if instead of "file sharing," it was "beard sharing". And someone could come along and just get exactly the same length beard as you, just by wanting it! Now who's feeling threatened, not just by Alan Moore, but by all potential beardos everywhere. Now who's livelihood is under attack. Why, we'd probably be so hungry, we'd have to eat things right off our own feet.
I suggest anyone who has interest is seeing what is possible with universal access, check out the iOS's "VoiceOver" mode (triple-click by default in iOS4).
VoiceOver speaks out loud whatever the sight-disabled user hovers over onscreen, then registers the choice via double-click. It's a tremendously effective system and I'm impressed at how universal it is throughout the iOS. Apple is doing some good work here that the rest of the industry would do well to pay close attention to
Without a tuner? No HDMI inputs? No remote? That's the lamest, most expensive HDTV ever.
This is the same guy who says Apple is going to put out an HDTV, too.
He's like a stopped clock that tweets two times a day -- everyone should stop paying any attention to him. Just don't look!
Ding ding ding ding ding ding!
I love Apple's products as much as anyone, but the above comment's assessment of the situation is dead-on. They *could* make it happen, they certainly could make it an imperfect option, but the real fact is that Apple wants to keep a tight control the delivery of downloadable music, video and games on this platform.
That is ok-- choice is good, and it's not a zero-sum game. Put another way: Some people do not want to install the projector, screen, soundsystem and seats of a home theater. Some people just want to watch a freakin' movie.
I second this (DNS-323 myself). Runs like a champ, very low-power, files
available to every machine (and a WD TV Live) from any room in the house.
I dunno, that dangling L shape has given me some pretty salacious ideas from time to time. Just to be safe, I'd ban Tetris too.
No filesystem access. Less space than a hard drive. Lame. :)
(For the record, I think this sounds very exciting -- the first truly new OS idea in a decade).
Check out the MSI media live bareBones. My daughter is watching Backyardigans right now via Ubuntu/Boxee. TV out has always worked, even 'out of the box.'
...followed quickly by the hardware at #2.
Seriously, they missed the boat on faster chips by about a generation, chips that would have been 'good enough' to do web browsing and video playback at a low power draw. The Geode (right?) in the XO is just too slow.
I once wrote an AppleScript bundle .app that moves Comic Sans to the trash, then emails itself out to everyone in the user's Mac OS X Address Book. In fact, I still keep it around. Enjoy.
Back when Mac OS 9 had kind-of-sort-of voice control, you could launch programs by putting them in a specific folder. I made an alias for "Unreal" -- which took up 190 MB of RAM and took about 3 minutes to load on my PM 7500. Whenever someone would come over my dorm room to use my computer, I made a point of mentioning very loudly how something was "UNREAL!" -- and then they got to sit there while 'Unreal' loaded, very, very slowly.
The article linked is incredibly vague and seems to presuppose that the trajectory of all open-source projects is up, up, up. While this is possible -- if Google puts the resources into constant improvement, Android certainly will improve -- it presupposes that Apple is going to be standing still. Not so. Apple's iPhone platform is now a moving target, and the year to two-year market advantage is going to be difficult for Android to top.
Google, as much as I love some of their products, has shown themselves to be a bit spotty with support and improvements to many of their initiatives. Everyone understands that mobile is a big deal, but if Google's decides that they can dominate search just as much on the iPhone than on their own platform, it's possible their drive to improve Android will wither.
The fact that the platform is open-source means virtually nothing to consumers, by the way. They simply want to make calls, surf the web and play games.
If you're running boxee, you can help me test my GPL'd boxee web remote here:
http://code.google.com/p/boxee-web-remote/
Works with iPhone, or any wifi device on the same network as your boxee unit, really.
Apple customers buy new OS upgrades in droves. Seriously, check out some stats. And with good reason; each upgrade offers clear advantages over the last, well-communicated by Apple to their customer base. It's those last two tricks that MS has failed to do with Vista, both in the consumer space and the enterprise market. It will be interesting to see how they/if they iterate and improve for Windows 7. My bet is "nope".
I would argue that it's not a slight difference, but past that: There's a time for idealism and a time for pragmatism. In 2000, I went idealism and voted Nader. I won't be making that mistake this time around.
If the only alternative is McCain and $haircut, then Obama and LITERALLY WHOEVER gets my vote.
This is the power and the glory of the two party system at work.
What this project needs is an on-screen keyboard/text entry method of roughly the same type and quality as the iPhone's keyboard. Until there's something like that in the linux world, using devices like this will be a pretty clunky affair.
This is a serious question: Imagine you had an old or ailing pet, and you loved them very much indeed, and so when they died you wanted to maintain the (infinitesimally slim) possibility that the pet could be successfully cloned sometime in the future.
What would you need of the pet's... remains... in order to produce a successful clone? Fur? Saliva? Blood cells? Seriously, I'm asking.
Maybe this is just a cultural difference between the UK and the USA, but I can't stand the Reg house writing style. Most pieces consist of a meandering, rambling narrative with tedious in-joke acronyms and what I can only describe as linguistic cruft splayed out over three ugly pages. I used to enjoy the Reg (a while ago, when I was more heavily invested in "IT" as a career) but I can't say I've made it to the end of an article in years.
Sure, it shows the accessories, but no dice on buying them. I have to imagine Asus is rolling out an online store Real Soon Now because having no extra charger is a real deal-breaker for a bunch of folks out there.
Why the Eee? I reviewed one for the local alt-monthly newspaper, and even after I was done with the review, I wound up keeping it. In a nutshell: it's nifty to have an inexpensive, super light, teeny wifi laptop with a crisp, bright screen -- I've been using it primarily for a RSS/CBR reader myself. My advice is ditch the standard OS, which is lovely but would never fully satisfy most slashdot readers and install Ubuntu 7.10. It's easy enough to do and works great after a few tweaks. One caveat to keep in mind is that I can't seem to find any place that sells additional power adapters (yet) so the portability is slightly diminished by having to lug around the adapter too. but I'm sure that will be rectified soon, as Asus has done a great job so far responding to customer complaints and suggestions.
Sometimes you need small, small hands for that kind of delicate work.