So I don't feel bad about saying: Oh my god, what's up with this interface?
Immediately Noticable Bad things:
1) Close icon 2x the size of minimise and maximise, yet should be used far less. Accidentally hitting close is far more likely than accidentally hitting maximise or minimise. I hope that all applications have warning dialogs. Also these buttons seem to be perched in the top part of the titlebar. So they're thin, vertically, and I imagine most mouse movement to reach them will incorporate vertical movement, so they'll be hard to hit quickly. This may reduce the effect of the larger close button.
2) Large window borders around application content. Again, this looks ugly, serves no purpose.
3) Translucent titlebar with blurring effect. This looks nice until you have to use it. The titles have a white halo around them to make them more readable - but how about just having non-translucent titlebars?
4) The colour scheme and overall effect is very 'gamey'. It's less 'duplo' than XP though, apart from the frosted glass duplo window borders. Will people really want to use a glassy black desktop?
I worry that all the glitz will actually disturb the user when they're using the computer, rather than working as a visual aid to enhance their usage. Microsoft have a long history of putting worthless graphical effects into their desktop - expanding pop-up menus for example - and I don't see them stopping this trend. It will be configurable I'm sure - I hope that Glass has enough configurability to set the translucency of the window borders to 'none' and to shrink the window border (in particular the left and right borders).
There are nice things however. The 'Start' button looks very nice. The desktop widgets look nicely integrated.
AMD will be releasing 25W Dual-Core Turions in May, running with DDR2 memory (which will save a few Watts over DDR memory).
Yonah is 31W (TDP, actual power consumption is lower. Same goes for AMD of course.). AMD includes half of a northbridge on their processor as well.
Of course, AMD's 25W Turion X2s only come in 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz variants. The 2.0GHz and 2.2GHz versions are 35W, but still comparable in power consumption to Yonah. The interesting thing is that this is at 90nm. If AMD has any of the hi-speed, low-power-consumption features of IBM's 65mn process, then next year could be very interesting however.
Doesn't negate the fact that Intel was there first, nor that AMD isn't overtaking them but merely having a competitive offering in the mobile arena.
I can't see Microsoft veering away from that aspect, this will be x86 based, unless they're planning on using Windows Mobile running on a next generation StrongARM + third party 3D graphics accellerator (ATI Imageon?).
In a year's time the PSP's hardware will have gone through at least one process shrink - it'll be cheaper and it will have a longer battery life.
It will be extremely hard for Microsoft to enter this market, never mind compete. They've got the resources, but unless they can somehow make it play XBox1 games it'll just be ignored. I suppose they could try the classic 'price it $150 under cost' technique.
Last year I had a C115 (IIRC) phone with T-Mobile.
I got it as a temporary solution.
I paid £20 for it on Amazon, and it included £10 free airtime and 1000 texts (before a certain date though). It was also supplied unlocked by default.
It worked very well, it was basic, but it was solid. It's the phone I take abroad still, because I don't want my fancy A1000 phone being stolen like my old Nokia 6230 was.
Idiots. Fancy not even researching the area where a house is!
I don't feel very sorry for these people. They should have known better.
OTOH the people 'flipping' these houses aren't exactly nice people either, and seem little better than scammers. Clearly sales of houses online should be subject to the same laws as selling them elsewhere - i.e,. the description has to be accurate, as the article says.
He should be thankful he is only $30,000 down on the situation. A lot, but not life-changing. If you can't afford the risk, then don't take it.
My theater cost me about $70,000, which certainly isn't super-high-end
Pray tell me about what a super-high-end theatre setup would have!
I was just getting ideas about doing my loft up as a movie room with white paint and all that, comfy sofas, mini fridges... and then you have to throw in that $70k figure.:(
Please get them to make a website detailing everything they did. This is what I want to do, get away from it all.
My ideal of a stony cave-like underground dwelling probably wouldn't pull the chicks though. But an eco-friendly house would. Possible. Even the long-skirted type that don't wash enough. That's what hoses are for. Solar powered hoses.
Why? Because most people with video capable portable players have iPods? Yes, the article sucks massive zedonk choad and is clearly biased, but that was a reasonable assumption.
30 minutes searching for drivers sucks - no CE system should need that. Having to get an MPEG decoder sucks, wasn't one built in? Sucks. Only 2GB of music?
And I'm sure that a Core Duo at 1.66GHz is a 'slow computer'. It handles 1080p, it is fast enough for the task. Is it ideal? Not on its own - too small a hard drive (although external Firewire or USB2 drives could work). With Bonjour media sharing though, then it is interesting.
For now I'll continue with burning media onto DVDs and using a disc folder as my library. I can probably find stuff in there as quickly as selecting it on a fancy interface, stuff it into the DVD drive and be done. Media centers solve a problem that isn't really there, it's just nice to have the functions. Is that really worth $500+? Just my opinion, of course.
I have a Samsung laser printer. When it broke, it was repaired on-site (i.e., home) for free (as you'd expect). None of this 'package it up and send it to us' crap.
I'll be buying Samsung stuff in the future when I need new stuff. I just hope that they don't all break once requiring on-site repairs!
What you describe is an optional module for EFI already.
Apple just chose not to include it, for the obvious reason that they don't need it.
I expect standard bootloaders in the free software world will all support EFI by the end of this year, if they don't already. I don't know if you'd need an EFI-specific live-CD / install CD too for CD installs.
With OpenFirmware, any addin card with a ROM would have the initialisation, etc, code written in Forth. The OpenFirmware would then execute the Forth, and setup the card, regardless of the processor architecture.
The BIOS is 25 years old. It's 'proven' vs. 'ancient cruft'. It's hardly used as a Basic Input Output System now, just as a system configuration pre-boot interface. Possibly it doesn't even matter about what the pre-boot software is, as long as it boots afterwards!
Apple somehow managed to get their OS booting on EFI without much trouble, during a transition to a new architecture. Microsoft have had twice the time to get it booting on EFI, without that transition, and it still doesn't work. It makes me wonder how tied in to the BIOS current Windows actually is.
I've got too many games from last year (and before) that I haven't got around to playing seriously.
Why would I buy more now?
Let me get through those games, or at least get my money's worth from them. Then I'll think about new games. By that time the Revolution will be out anyway, and I'll only have time for games that provide immediate fun.
The K8 core is as similar to the K7 core as the conroe core is to a PIII core.
I.e., at first glance there are similarities which can lead to the obvious thought that the K8 core is just a K7 core with memory controller, but actually they're completely revamped, overhauled, enhanced and redone.
I agree that it is time for AMD to get a "K9" out of the door as the K8 as it is won't compete against Intel's offerings unless AMD somehow get 3.6GHz out of 65nm at launch (which is extremely unlikely). Of course, K8L will probably put AMD back into the lead in terms of floating point anyway, but integer is going to be very weak.
Unless AMD is sandbagging - but that's a faint hope for even the most ardent AMD fanboy. I think they miscalculated Intel this time around.
From the reviews I've seen it isn't any worse than the previous Mac Mini's performance. Indeed the Intel GMA950 has quite good specs (for integrated graphics) on paper, but typical reviews on Windows have shown the real world performance (drivers?) to suck. Are the drivers Apple's created/adapted just as bad though?
However for most uses beyond a surf/email box, it seems the 1GB upgrade is a must now, as the GPU will eat quite a bit.
And for 720p/1080i/1080p the Core Duo variant seems to be a safer choice than the Core Solo, which barely coped with 720p. Shame really, as the integrated graphics are meant to accellerate this type of functionality - but maybe Apple haven't implemented that yet in their drivers. It would have been nice to see some tests with VLC rather than Quicktime too.
And the TV companies know this, hence they love to dredge up anti-game news whenever they can.
When I was a kid, I didn't have a computer or console until I was 11, and that was a second hand 8-bit CPC464. My mum played Stockmarket with me but that's about it.
And it is good to have your parents play games with you, it makes it more social, it stops them watching TV (oooh, Timeteam is on, must speed this post up) and probably sharpens their mind a little, counteracting the gradual decline due to everyday life they otherwise suffer.
It's good for bonding too, too few parents do this. And the parents can see what the games are like and if they're suitable.
I'm sure it will lead to more rounded teenagers and adults, better able to cope with problem solving and jumping from ledge to ledge, as you do.
1) Yes. Namely Apple's 30th anniversary on the 1st April. MacBook ($849 Core Solo / $999 Core Duo), Video iPod for sure (4" 16:9). Mac Pro won't be done until later this year, I expect a Q3 outing for this, at the earliest.
2) No. They may create a $499 pricepoint Mac Mini though, without Wireless and Bluetooth, possible a Celeron M based around a Yonah core (due out in a month or two).
3) Who cares? But low sales will probably force this action at some point.
He could keep quiet, and thus be breaking the law by being complicit in the crime.
Or he could notify the people (who were paying for the systems via their taxes) that this was going on, even if that meant breaking the law.
Sure, he could have gone through government, but what if he believed that the government was also complicit with the situation? He wouldn't have had a choice.
So he broke one law to uncloak a far greater law breaking. He should be protected under whistleblower laws, and I hope the court and/or jury think the same.
There is no way that this case is in the public interest as far as I can see, based upon the knowledge of the case that I have to hand.
I guess this will test whether Apple's approach to security (i.e., pretty much like Unix's) is better or worse than Microsoft's.
I.e., will these worms affect the whole computer because of a fault in the operating system, or will they affect only a single user on the computer because of a software issue that let the worm in to play in that user's space, or will it affect people only because of user stupidity ('ooh, really, clicking on this will make my pen0r bigger!')?
Note that Microsoft gets critical security issues fairly often with their approach.
The recent Apple issues have been lowest rated security issues.
Certainly I think that not having users run as root by default will help Mac OS X, but that doesn't stop them entering their password when prompted.
You can't secure against user stupidity except by scanning each file that they try to execute for viruses. And that means virus checkers, and the associated slowdowns they bring.
I've still got to be sold on Vista. It seems to offer less new stuff than XP, and at least most people got a benefit from going from 9x to XP, in that it was a far better OS underneath.
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So I don't feel bad about saying: Oh my god, what's up with this interface?
Immediately Noticable Bad things:
1) Close icon 2x the size of minimise and maximise, yet should be used far less. Accidentally hitting close is far more likely than accidentally hitting maximise or minimise. I hope that all applications have warning dialogs. Also these buttons seem to be perched in the top part of the titlebar. So they're thin, vertically, and I imagine most mouse movement to reach them will incorporate vertical movement, so they'll be hard to hit quickly. This may reduce the effect of the larger close button.
2) Large window borders around application content. Again, this looks ugly, serves no purpose.
3) Translucent titlebar with blurring effect. This looks nice until you have to use it. The titles have a white halo around them to make them more readable - but how about just having non-translucent titlebars?
4) The colour scheme and overall effect is very 'gamey'. It's less 'duplo' than XP though, apart from the frosted glass duplo window borders. Will people really want to use a glassy black desktop?
I worry that all the glitz will actually disturb the user when they're using the computer, rather than working as a visual aid to enhance their usage. Microsoft have a long history of putting worthless graphical effects into their desktop - expanding pop-up menus for example - and I don't see them stopping this trend. It will be configurable I'm sure - I hope that Glass has enough configurability to set the translucency of the window borders to 'none' and to shrink the window border (in particular the left and right borders).
There are nice things however. The 'Start' button looks very nice. The desktop widgets look nicely integrated.
Current Core Duo (Yonah) is 32-bits only.
AMD will be releasing 25W Dual-Core Turions in May, running with DDR2 memory (which will save a few Watts over DDR memory).
Yonah is 31W (TDP, actual power consumption is lower. Same goes for AMD of course.). AMD includes half of a northbridge on their processor as well.
Of course, AMD's 25W Turion X2s only come in 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz variants. The 2.0GHz and 2.2GHz versions are 35W, but still comparable in power consumption to Yonah. The interesting thing is that this is at 90nm. If AMD has any of the hi-speed, low-power-consumption features of IBM's 65mn process, then next year could be very interesting however.
Doesn't negate the fact that Intel was there first, nor that AMD isn't overtaking them but merely having a competitive offering in the mobile arena.
I can't see Microsoft veering away from that aspect, this will be x86 based, unless they're planning on using Windows Mobile running on a next generation StrongARM + third party 3D graphics accellerator (ATI Imageon?).
In a year's time the PSP's hardware will have gone through at least one process shrink - it'll be cheaper and it will have a longer battery life.
It will be extremely hard for Microsoft to enter this market, never mind compete. They've got the resources, but unless they can somehow make it play XBox1 games it'll just be ignored. I suppose they could try the classic 'price it $150 under cost' technique.
Last year I had a C115 (IIRC) phone with T-Mobile.
I got it as a temporary solution.
I paid £20 for it on Amazon, and it included £10 free airtime and 1000 texts (before a certain date though). It was also supplied unlocked by default.
It worked very well, it was basic, but it was solid. It's the phone I take abroad still, because I don't want my fancy A1000 phone being stolen like my old Nokia 6230 was.
Idiots. Fancy not even researching the area where a house is!
I don't feel very sorry for these people. They should have known better.
OTOH the people 'flipping' these houses aren't exactly nice people either, and seem little better than scammers. Clearly sales of houses online should be subject to the same laws as selling them elsewhere - i.e,. the description has to be accurate, as the article says.
He should be thankful he is only $30,000 down on the situation. A lot, but not life-changing. If you can't afford the risk, then don't take it.
28 years? fuck-el!
*says me, 20 years away from telling the building society to KMA*
My theater cost me about $70,000, which certainly isn't super-high-end
... and then you have to throw in that $70k figure. :(
Pray tell me about what a super-high-end theatre setup would have!
I was just getting ideas about doing my loft up as a movie room with white paint and all that, comfy sofas, mini fridges
Your idea of a 'small home' is a mansion here in England.
Whole families live in 800sqft properties, and that isn't in the cities.
Feel happy that you've got land aplenty, and don't go wasting it. k?
Please get them to make a website detailing everything they did. This is what I want to do, get away from it all.
My ideal of a stony cave-like underground dwelling probably wouldn't pull the chicks though. But an eco-friendly house would. Possible. Even the long-skirted type that don't wash enough. That's what hoses are for. Solar powered hoses.
God, why am I posting after a night on the tiles?
Why? Because most people with video capable portable players have iPods? Yes, the article sucks massive zedonk choad and is clearly biased, but that was a reasonable assumption.
30 minutes searching for drivers sucks - no CE system should need that. Having to get an MPEG decoder sucks, wasn't one built in? Sucks. Only 2GB of music?
And I'm sure that a Core Duo at 1.66GHz is a 'slow computer'. It handles 1080p, it is fast enough for the task. Is it ideal? Not on its own - too small a hard drive (although external Firewire or USB2 drives could work). With Bonjour media sharing though, then it is interesting.
For now I'll continue with burning media onto DVDs and using a disc folder as my library. I can probably find stuff in there as quickly as selecting it on a fancy interface, stuff it into the DVD drive and be done. Media centers solve a problem that isn't really there, it's just nice to have the functions. Is that really worth $500+? Just my opinion, of course.
We pit a toy poodle against a box full of kittens. WHO WILL EMERGE VICTORIOUS?
This sounds far more interesting than 'Round 1' of a zero-content review.
Not to mention the review itself seems to be firmly in the Apple camp, although the point that it recognised the TV is valid for winning the round.
I then looked for 'Round 2' which was non-forthcoming.
Pointless Waste Of Time. Nothing to see here.
I have a Samsung laser printer. When it broke, it was repaired on-site (i.e., home) for free (as you'd expect). None of this 'package it up and send it to us' crap.
I'll be buying Samsung stuff in the future when I need new stuff. I just hope that they don't all break once requiring on-site repairs!
What you describe is an optional module for EFI already.
Apple just chose not to include it, for the obvious reason that they don't need it.
I expect standard bootloaders in the free software world will all support EFI by the end of this year, if they don't already. I don't know if you'd need an EFI-specific live-CD / install CD too for CD installs.
With OpenFirmware, any addin card with a ROM would have the initialisation, etc, code written in Forth. The OpenFirmware would then execute the Forth, and setup the card, regardless of the processor architecture.
The BIOS is 25 years old. It's 'proven' vs. 'ancient cruft'. It's hardly used as a Basic Input Output System now, just as a system configuration pre-boot interface. Possibly it doesn't even matter about what the pre-boot software is, as long as it boots afterwards!
Apple somehow managed to get their OS booting on EFI without much trouble, during a transition to a new architecture. Microsoft have had twice the time to get it booting on EFI, without that transition, and it still doesn't work. It makes me wonder how tied in to the BIOS current Windows actually is.
Hell, I've still got Icewind Dale to play properly! It's been on the shelf a long time, an initial installation being lost due to a deathstar. :(
Let me kick the internet addiction first...
I've got too many games from last year (and before) that I haven't got around to playing seriously.
Why would I buy more now?
Let me get through those games, or at least get my money's worth from them. Then I'll think about new games. By that time the Revolution will be out anyway, and I'll only have time for games that provide immediate fun.
That's the system in use in England now, and I believe for a few years in France.
No signatures any more.
The K8 core is as similar to the K7 core as the conroe core is to a PIII core.
I.e., at first glance there are similarities which can lead to the obvious thought that the K8 core is just a K7 core with memory controller, but actually they're completely revamped, overhauled, enhanced and redone.
I agree that it is time for AMD to get a "K9" out of the door as the K8 as it is won't compete against Intel's offerings unless AMD somehow get 3.6GHz out of 65nm at launch (which is extremely unlikely). Of course, K8L will probably put AMD back into the lead in terms of floating point anyway, but integer is going to be very weak.
Unless AMD is sandbagging - but that's a faint hope for even the most ardent AMD fanboy. I think they miscalculated Intel this time around.
Which of AMD or Intel has the most fangirls?
From the reviews I've seen it isn't any worse than the previous Mac Mini's performance. Indeed the Intel GMA950 has quite good specs (for integrated graphics) on paper, but typical reviews on Windows have shown the real world performance (drivers?) to suck. Are the drivers Apple's created/adapted just as bad though?
However for most uses beyond a surf/email box, it seems the 1GB upgrade is a must now, as the GPU will eat quite a bit.
And for 720p/1080i/1080p the Core Duo variant seems to be a safer choice than the Core Solo, which barely coped with 720p. Shame really, as the integrated graphics are meant to accellerate this type of functionality - but maybe Apple haven't implemented that yet in their drivers. It would have been nice to see some tests with VLC rather than Quicktime too.
And the TV companies know this, hence they love to dredge up anti-game news whenever they can.
When I was a kid, I didn't have a computer or console until I was 11, and that was a second hand 8-bit CPC464. My mum played Stockmarket with me but that's about it.
And it is good to have your parents play games with you, it makes it more social, it stops them watching TV (oooh, Timeteam is on, must speed this post up) and probably sharpens their mind a little, counteracting the gradual decline due to everyday life they otherwise suffer.
It's good for bonding too, too few parents do this. And the parents can see what the games are like and if they're suitable.
I'm sure it will lead to more rounded teenagers and adults, better able to cope with problem solving and jumping from ledge to ledge, as you do.
1) Yes. Namely Apple's 30th anniversary on the 1st April. MacBook ($849 Core Solo / $999 Core Duo), Video iPod for sure (4" 16:9). Mac Pro won't be done until later this year, I expect a Q3 outing for this, at the earliest.
2) No. They may create a $499 pricepoint Mac Mini though, without Wireless and Bluetooth, possible a Celeron M based around a Yonah core (due out in a month or two).
3) Who cares? But low sales will probably force this action at some point.
So he was stuck in a bad situation?
He could keep quiet, and thus be breaking the law by being complicit in the crime.
Or he could notify the people (who were paying for the systems via their taxes) that this was going on, even if that meant breaking the law.
Sure, he could have gone through government, but what if he believed that the government was also complicit with the situation? He wouldn't have had a choice.
So he broke one law to uncloak a far greater law breaking. He should be protected under whistleblower laws, and I hope the court and/or jury think the same.
There is no way that this case is in the public interest as far as I can see, based upon the knowledge of the case that I have to hand.
I guess this will test whether Apple's approach to security (i.e., pretty much like Unix's) is better or worse than Microsoft's.
I.e., will these worms affect the whole computer because of a fault in the operating system, or will they affect only a single user on the computer because of a software issue that let the worm in to play in that user's space, or will it affect people only because of user stupidity ('ooh, really, clicking on this will make my pen0r bigger!')?
Note that Microsoft gets critical security issues fairly often with their approach.
The recent Apple issues have been lowest rated security issues.
Certainly I think that not having users run as root by default will help Mac OS X, but that doesn't stop them entering their password when prompted.
You can't secure against user stupidity except by scanning each file that they try to execute for viruses. And that means virus checkers, and the associated slowdowns they bring.
I'm already using it, but thanks. ;)
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
:)
Um, that's not what a vista is
I've still got to be sold on Vista. It seems to offer less new stuff than XP, and at least most people got a benefit from going from 9x to XP, in that it was a far better OS underneath.