I'd guess the DVD is only viewable by one single make of player, enabled by having a special CSS key unique to the player and the discs that run on it.
You probably can't even run DeCSS on the disc, because the disc will only be decodable by the single special DVD player.
Alternatively the DVD player and disc are completely non-DVD conformant. e.g., different codec, different encryption. But as it was created at a generic DVD pressing facility, I doubt this.
I didn't know he bought a PowerBook and thus couldn't advice him to wait, and as for the iMac, they were the recently updated G5s, the ones with Frontrow. I doubt that the newer of the two has been in use more than a month, and that includes time off at Christmas!
Anyway, even the PowerBook G4 was a step up from the old iBook 12" he was using.
I don't think I'll be mentioning the new systems however, not for a while...
Submitting a story to Slashdot isn't worth while, all you see is (Rejected) for a story you think might have been worthwhile. No reason.
So now we have a collection of near-first-post 'correct the story' whores, and near-first-post 'post better links' whores (like me). People who see the story early, and try and fix it or provide better links.
As a matter of interest, how many submissions do you get in a day?
Do you have a submission management system that works like, e.g,. Bugzilla. Submission 15167 is a duplicate of 14599. That sounds like a useful thing to add to Slashcode, to prevent the almost-legendary Slashdot dupe.
At least the submitter will get (Rejected, Duplicate) instead of (Rejected, you'll never know why! hahahaha! HAHAHA!)
Then when it comes to forming a story from the submission you can use editorial skills to form a story from the best few submissions, ignoring the submissions from people who have had clearlytoomuchcaffienetodaydidimentionilikecoffeea ndcoke...
Sorry. I see lots of stories with oddly linked articles, text ripped from the article, or linking to a meta-article. I'd say this happened between 25% and 50% of the time.
I think that Slashdot needs to aggregate submissions. E.g., if there are 10 submissions regarding the FX60 processor, each with a different link, then make a single story linking to all of the sites, mention all of the people who submitted it (or the first one) and flesh it out a bit.
Make it look like you at least read the links.
And hey, having some more content of your own wouldn't hurt either. Besides the book and game reviews.
Even just attaching a longer opinion piece or editorial piece to a story.
What if you buy the lower power processor AND turn off that 60W lightbulb that you leave on all the time for no reason at all? What if the cost of electricity goes up (which with all those oil and gas power stations it will inevitably do)?
That's if you have any old-style lightbulbs still, except in rooms where the on-off frequency is quite high (bathrooms).
And to the parent's parent poster, the FX60 system used 60W less than Intel system fairly consistently - idle and under load. If you overclock the Intel system to gain comparable performance then it was more like 100W difference at load though.
I do think that taking running costs into account when buying something is sensible.
It takes a year or two for these things to filter through to end users buying machines. Notice how long it took AMD to start regaining market share with the K8.
The goodness that is Conroe won't factor into peoples perceptions until late 2007. The best thing that Intel can hope for is that they are far enough ahead of AMD for enough time that they'll change people's perceptions.
At the worst, AMD will have a competitively fast processor when they move to 65nm that has roughly the same power consumption figures and cost.
In the shorter term, AMD's F Stepping on 90nm is meant to reduce power consumption further (or increase clock speed), and adds in DDR2 (667MHz and 800MHz) which some people say will increase performance by between 5% and 15%. However Socket AM2 is a good reason to not buy any high-performance AMD processor at the moment, because better is coming relatively soon (and what games coming out this quarter will really benefit from a brand new rig anyway?).
Tech Report (FX60 beats out 955 in most of the benchmarks, if not by a large margin then at least consistently).
Also check out AMDZone, AnandTech, Björn3D, FiringSquad, HEXUS, HotHardware, LostCircuits, PC Perspective, t-break, and TrustedReviews who all have reviews as well.
Some people get away with under 6 hours sleep a night. Especially as teenagers. I did, I usually slept from 1am to 7am then. Now I'm irritable and have aching eyes and slightly blurry vision if I do a few nights like that these days. Now I try to get 8 hours a night regularly (difficult because of mild insomnia).
Also for the reading, try to do it away from the computer. Do it in a comfy chair. Do it in the middle of the day in a park.
Fix your room's lighting. Dark rooms with bright screens lead to eyestrain in my experience. Bright screens should be in brightly lit rooms.
Limit your computing time to under 12 hours a day, including breaks. 15 hours is too much on a regular basis.
Get out a lot more. The same environment all day every day will eventually get you down.
Yeah, but there are ten Windows magazines to each Linux magazine, and the latter are more 1337 than the Windows magazines as well, some of which cater for the really incapable.
Every distribution should have at least a high quality PDF book included, readable, with screenshots, and up to date for that distribution. The more user-friendly it is meant to be, the more important having this is. Put it on the desktop. "Click Me To Learn Ubuntu!"
Hell, even cheesy videos/animations of how to do certain things.
(translation: surely you know someone who does have an iPod, and can thus listen to it. Okay, they might not have a 5G iPod with video, but it's worth a try)
Oh, and maybe Apple will release something new this week, so wait for that. Probably just a new smaller Shuffle however. Chances of a big-screen designed-for-video iPod aren't high:(
Seriously, are you going to be attaching one to a $10,000 hifi system?
Okay, I know that's a bit much, but it's probably good enough for most people who have a portable player. I expect it beats out anything that you could buy in the 90s. Maybe with high-end headphones there'd be a quality difference, and even then it could be subjective.
Suggestion: Take your headphones down to the electronics store and ask to listen to a comparison. If it is an option, it'd beat out any amount of third party reviews, and comments here intended to misguide you deliberately!
Disclaimer: I own a nano, it's scratched a lot, but I think the sound quality is pretty decent, even when played through my (admittedly not $10,000) hifi separates system. I can't vouch for it comparitively though.
It's a triple star system if they're all rotating around a common centre of gravity, even if PolarisB seems to be quite an outsider (although on the scale they're showing it is probably still at a distance similar to a Kuiper belt object (rough guess) whilst this Ab star is at Saturn distance from A.
I suppose it is possible that Ab is behind A and thus appears further away, but I'm sure they've done their maths and checked it over a lot before releasing the PR.
I'm amazed that Hubble can resolve two objects that close together, at such a distance, and quite distinctly too! Yes, I know they're both stars and emit light, but even so.
There's life in the old girl yet:)
And imagine what the next generation will be able to resolve, if it has improved optics over Hubble, and greater resolution.
As the FA points out: "it is the nearest Cepheid variable star. Cepheids' brightness variations are used to measure the distances of galaxies and the expansion rate of the universe"
Maybe we could get the cops onto him for harassment?
I agree. Nintendo is doing just well. No loss on the hardware, massive portable game system sales, interesting concepts and more mean they'll do fine. It's as if people think that selling the same number of consoles as the XBox (~20m) is crap, even though the XBox made a loss on every console, and the Gamecube arguably made a profit on every console.
The Revolution may be a lot of peoples first choice of console, with many people growing tired of more of the same from Sony and Microsoft. It certainly is the second choice of a lot of people, and even then the lower price tag may encourage an earlier purchase. It might suck for the 'ooh, another racing game' or the 'ahh, another sports game' crowd, especially as they'll probably want Racing Game 2k7 or Madden '07 in HD, as that'll be the only real difference from the previous 5 versions of the game.
Otherwise it'd have included weird pong controllers, 1 button atari joysticks and so on.
It just says how the controller is being adapted by the revolution to handle things more gracefully and naturally, and that this is the end result of simplicity.
The examples he gives are interesting though. e.g., Up being move forward, tilt l/r being strafe, speed of movement determined by angle of controller. I don't know if that is better than an analogue stick though. The fighting example was better.
Great if the controller has a lot of sensitivity and resolution.
Too many people think they're hard nuts when they're at the keyboard online.
Certainly if you had a blog which was getting consistent abuse from someone, it'd be nice to be able to stop it by law.
However the harassment factor is a lot lower than with telephone calls, as they're much more liable to annoy in a proactive manner (ringing phone calls every half hour, etc, and I guess that abuse over the phone does affect someone a lot more than words on a webpage). Then again someone anonymous commenting 'wanker' would make most bloggers laugh and think that at least they had something worthwhile to wank with.
You shouldn't be allowed to stalk/harass/abuse someone via any medium.
Windows is a PITA to install, compared to many Linux distributions.
However most people get Windows pre-installed, so it isn't an issue.
A computer newbie would probably find a decent Linux desktop as easy or difficult to use as Windows however. But there is a lot more help available for Windows, from books to online. There are probably Windows Computing Made Easy type magazines too.
Macs are the other option. I think that Mac OS X would beat both the above in terms of ease of use for the newbie.
Linux does have a fair distance to go, but in many areas it is already ahead, just that other areas need action. Good simple desktops that allow the user to learn new features as they use it, and provide advanced options to advanced users. Non-cluttered interfaces. Dare I say it, but a Managed Filesystem so the user doesn't have to worry about files, naming files, accessing files, renaming files. I've noticed with newbies that file management can confuse them, leading to mess.
I'm sure that there are hundreds of other things that can be done to make Linux desktops (KDE, Gnome) into a user-friendly environment that beats Windows in all areas for your average computer user.
However a decently configured Linux PC (i.e., not this one as it runs Linspire, the screenshots didn't look like an easy-to-use desktop OS) would come with all the software you'd need, without limitations. How many users would know to find Adium X for chatting on their Mac Mini? At least until iChat does MSN anyway... On the other hand iPod owners would prefer the Mac Mini because of iTunes and support.
At least a Mac comes with far more software by default than a Windows PC, and the software is arguably easier to use - iTunes, Safari, Mail...
But if you can only afford $400 then your options are going to be restricted. Arguably you shouldn't be buying a PC if you can't afford more than $400, but say you're a student or something... Hell, then I'd get either a laptop or a Mac Mini because they're easy to transport.
Oh, a new record for me:
Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 51 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Apparently extended technical support is $29. That's probably for a year though. I guess that it is a good option for many people that would be scared by a computer in general.
The best thing these systems could come with is a decent manual. It's been a long time since I've seen a PC with a good manual explaining how to do all the essential stuff you want to/need to/should do. Sadly good quality manuals take time to write and cost money to print.
But the price is compelling, and the hardware specifications don't seem that bad.
The $299 system is pretty good - Sempron 2800+ (S754 variety I suspect), only 256MB RAM, only a CDRW, only a 40GB hard drive. It's the cheap system that few people buy, but gets the eyes onto the site.
The $399 system is much more sensible. Sempron 3000+, 512MB RAM, DVD-RW, 160GB hard drive. That's not a lot of money more, but it gets you essential memory, and decent storage options.
Issues are: 90 day warranty. That's piss poor for an item of consumer electronics.
However it'll outperform today's Mac Mini that costs $499. Will it out-perform the Mac Mini that'll be announced on Tuesday (allegedly)? That might have a dual-core Yonah, and it'll certainly have Apple's industrial design.
As for the OS, I'm sure it works. Hopefully it isn't a cluttered desktop though. That'd scare away users.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd guess the DVD is only viewable by one single make of player, enabled by having a special CSS key unique to the player and the discs that run on it.
You probably can't even run DeCSS on the disc, because the disc will only be decodable by the single special DVD player.
Alternatively the DVD player and disc are completely non-DVD conformant. e.g., different codec, different encryption. But as it was created at a generic DVD pressing facility, I doubt this.
I didn't know he bought a PowerBook and thus couldn't advice him to wait, and as for the iMac, they were the recently updated G5s, the ones with Frontrow. I doubt that the newer of the two has been in use more than a month, and that includes time off at Christmas!
...
Anyway, even the PowerBook G4 was a step up from the old iBook 12" he was using.
I don't think I'll be mentioning the new systems however, not for a while
Although how many ExpressCards can you buy at the moment?
... okay products I suppose. Sadly my boss, who purchased 2 iMacs and a Powerbook a month ago, will be miffed if he hears of this.
Hope they come out with a Firewire 800 ExpressCard!
Anyway
Submitting a story to Slashdot isn't worth while, all you see is (Rejected) for a story you think might have been worthwhile. No reason.
So now we have a collection of near-first-post 'correct the story' whores, and near-first-post 'post better links' whores (like me). People who see the story early, and try and fix it or provide better links.
As a matter of interest, how many submissions do you get in a day?
a ndcoke...
Do you have a submission management system that works like, e.g,. Bugzilla. Submission 15167 is a duplicate of 14599. That sounds like a useful thing to add to Slashcode, to prevent the almost-legendary Slashdot dupe.
At least the submitter will get (Rejected, Duplicate) instead of (Rejected, you'll never know why! hahahaha! HAHAHA!)
Then when it comes to forming a story from the submission you can use editorial skills to form a story from the best few submissions, ignoring the submissions from people who have had clearlytoomuchcaffienetodaydidimentionilikecoffee
I've never noticed this before.
Sorry. I see lots of stories with oddly linked articles, text ripped from the article, or linking to a meta-article. I'd say this happened between 25% and 50% of the time.
I think that Slashdot needs to aggregate submissions. E.g., if there are 10 submissions regarding the FX60 processor, each with a different link, then make a single story linking to all of the sites, mention all of the people who submitted it (or the first one) and flesh it out a bit.
Make it look like you at least read the links.
And hey, having some more content of your own wouldn't hurt either. Besides the book and game reviews.
Even just attaching a longer opinion piece or editorial piece to a story.
I meant in-house chipset, and discrete graphics chip.
The former is expensive to develop. The latter is expensive in terms of space and being discrete.
Buying a third party chipset with integrated graphics should cut costs considerably.
What if you buy the lower power processor AND turn off that 60W lightbulb that you leave on all the time for no reason at all? What if the cost of electricity goes up (which with all those oil and gas power stations it will inevitably do)?
That's if you have any old-style lightbulbs still, except in rooms where the on-off frequency is quite high (bathrooms).
And to the parent's parent poster, the FX60 system used 60W less than Intel system fairly consistently - idle and under load. If you overclock the Intel system to gain comparable performance then it was more like 100W difference at load though.
I do think that taking running costs into account when buying something is sensible.
It takes a year or two for these things to filter through to end users buying machines. Notice how long it took AMD to start regaining market share with the K8.
The goodness that is Conroe won't factor into peoples perceptions until late 2007. The best thing that Intel can hope for is that they are far enough ahead of AMD for enough time that they'll change people's perceptions.
At the worst, AMD will have a competitively fast processor when they move to 65nm that has roughly the same power consumption figures and cost.
In the shorter term, AMD's F Stepping on 90nm is meant to reduce power consumption further (or increase clock speed), and adds in DDR2 (667MHz and 800MHz) which some people say will increase performance by between 5% and 15%. However Socket AM2 is a good reason to not buy any high-performance AMD processor at the moment, because better is coming relatively soon (and what games coming out this quarter will really benefit from a brand new rig anyway?).
Tech Report (FX60 beats out 955 in most of the benchmarks, if not by a large margin then at least consistently).
Also check out AMDZone, AnandTech, Björn3D, FiringSquad, HEXUS, HotHardware, LostCircuits,
PC Perspective, t-break, and TrustedReviews who all have reviews as well.
Some people get away with under 6 hours sleep a night. Especially as teenagers. I did, I usually slept from 1am to 7am then. Now I'm irritable and have aching eyes and slightly blurry vision if I do a few nights like that these days. Now I try to get 8 hours a night regularly (difficult because of mild insomnia).
Also for the reading, try to do it away from the computer. Do it in a comfy chair. Do it in the middle of the day in a park.
Fix your room's lighting. Dark rooms with bright screens lead to eyestrain in my experience. Bright screens should be in brightly lit rooms.
Limit your computing time to under 12 hours a day, including breaks. 15 hours is too much on a regular basis.
Get out a lot more. The same environment all day every day will eventually get you down.
Yeah, but there are ten Windows magazines to each Linux magazine, and the latter are more 1337 than the Windows magazines as well, some of which cater for the really incapable.
Every distribution should have at least a high quality PDF book included, readable, with screenshots, and up to date for that distribution. The more user-friendly it is meant to be, the more important having this is. Put it on the desktop. "Click Me To Learn Ubuntu!"
Hell, even cheesy videos/animations of how to do certain things.
Ease of learning is as important as ease of use.
Billy No Mates eh?
:(
(translation: surely you know someone who does have an iPod, and can thus listen to it. Okay, they might not have a 5G iPod with video, but it's worth a try)
Oh, and maybe Apple will release something new this week, so wait for that. Probably just a new smaller Shuffle however. Chances of a big-screen designed-for-video iPod aren't high
Seriously, are you going to be attaching one to a $10,000 hifi system?
Okay, I know that's a bit much, but it's probably good enough for most people who have a portable player. I expect it beats out anything that you could buy in the 90s. Maybe with high-end headphones there'd be a quality difference, and even then it could be subjective.
Suggestion: Take your headphones down to the electronics store and ask to listen to a comparison. If it is an option, it'd beat out any amount of third party reviews, and comments here intended to misguide you deliberately!
Disclaimer: I own a nano, it's scratched a lot, but I think the sound quality is pretty decent, even when played through my (admittedly not $10,000) hifi separates system. I can't vouch for it comparitively though.
It's a triple star system if they're all rotating around a common centre of gravity, even if PolarisB seems to be quite an outsider (although on the scale they're showing it is probably still at a distance similar to a Kuiper belt object (rough guess) whilst this Ab star is at Saturn distance from A.
I suppose it is possible that Ab is behind A and thus appears further away, but I'm sure they've done their maths and checked it over a lot before releasing the PR.
I'm amazed that Hubble can resolve two objects that close together, at such a distance, and quite distinctly too! Yes, I know they're both stars and emit light, but even so.
:)
There's life in the old girl yet
And imagine what the next generation will be able to resolve, if it has improved optics over Hubble, and greater resolution.
As the FA points out: "it is the nearest Cepheid variable star. Cepheids' brightness variations are used to measure the distances of galaxies and the expansion rate of the universe"
So quite useful in astronomy.
Maybe we could get the cops onto him for harassment?
I agree. Nintendo is doing just well. No loss on the hardware, massive portable game system sales, interesting concepts and more mean they'll do fine. It's as if people think that selling the same number of consoles as the XBox (~20m) is crap, even though the XBox made a loss on every console, and the Gamecube arguably made a profit on every console.
The Revolution may be a lot of peoples first choice of console, with many people growing tired of more of the same from Sony and Microsoft. It certainly is the second choice of a lot of people, and even then the lower price tag may encourage an earlier purchase. It might suck for the 'ooh, another racing game' or the 'ahh, another sports game' crowd, especially as they'll probably want Racing Game 2k7 or Madden '07 in HD, as that'll be the only real difference from the previous 5 versions of the game.
Otherwise it'd have included weird pong controllers, 1 button atari joysticks and so on.
It just says how the controller is being adapted by the revolution to handle things more gracefully and naturally, and that this is the end result of simplicity.
The examples he gives are interesting though. e.g., Up being move forward, tilt l/r being strafe, speed of movement determined by angle of controller. I don't know if that is better than an analogue stick though. The fighting example was better.
Great if the controller has a lot of sensitivity and resolution.
Too many people think they're hard nuts when they're at the keyboard online.
Certainly if you had a blog which was getting consistent abuse from someone, it'd be nice to be able to stop it by law.
However the harassment factor is a lot lower than with telephone calls, as they're much more liable to annoy in a proactive manner (ringing phone calls every half hour, etc, and I guess that abuse over the phone does affect someone a lot more than words on a webpage). Then again someone anonymous commenting 'wanker' would make most bloggers laugh and think that at least they had something worthwhile to wank with.
You shouldn't be allowed to stalk/harass/abuse someone via any medium.
Windows is a PITA to install, compared to many Linux distributions.
However most people get Windows pre-installed, so it isn't an issue.
A computer newbie would probably find a decent Linux desktop as easy or difficult to use as Windows however. But there is a lot more help available for Windows, from books to online. There are probably Windows Computing Made Easy type magazines too.
Macs are the other option. I think that Mac OS X would beat both the above in terms of ease of use for the newbie.
Linux does have a fair distance to go, but in many areas it is already ahead, just that other areas need action. Good simple desktops that allow the user to learn new features as they use it, and provide advanced options to advanced users. Non-cluttered interfaces. Dare I say it, but a Managed Filesystem so the user doesn't have to worry about files, naming files, accessing files, renaming files. I've noticed with newbies that file management can confuse them, leading to mess.
I'm sure that there are hundreds of other things that can be done to make Linux desktops (KDE, Gnome) into a user-friendly environment that beats Windows in all areas for your average computer user.
I have an iBook, so I agree with you totally.
...
However a decently configured Linux PC (i.e., not this one as it runs Linspire, the screenshots didn't look like an easy-to-use desktop OS) would come with all the software you'd need, without limitations. How many users would know to find Adium X for chatting on their Mac Mini? At least until iChat does MSN anyway... On the other hand iPod owners would prefer the Mac Mini because of iTunes and support.
At least a Mac comes with far more software by default than a Windows PC, and the software is arguably easier to use - iTunes, Safari, Mail
But if you can only afford $400 then your options are going to be restricted. Arguably you shouldn't be buying a PC if you can't afford more than $400, but say you're a student or something... Hell, then I'd get either a laptop or a Mac Mini because they're easy to transport.
Oh, a new record for me:
Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 51 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
If Apple users can handle having to type in a password to upgrade the OS, and so on, then anyone can.
It's just that Apple has seamlessly integrated this feature so that the technical bits aren't even visible to the end-user.
Apparently extended technical support is $29. That's probably for a year though. I guess that it is a good option for many people that would be scared by a computer in general.
The best thing these systems could come with is a decent manual. It's been a long time since I've seen a PC with a good manual explaining how to do all the essential stuff you want to/need to/should do. Sadly good quality manuals take time to write and cost money to print.
But the price is compelling, and the hardware specifications don't seem that bad.
The $299 system is pretty good - Sempron 2800+ (S754 variety I suspect), only 256MB RAM, only a CDRW, only a 40GB hard drive. It's the cheap system that few people buy, but gets the eyes onto the site.
The $399 system is much more sensible. Sempron 3000+, 512MB RAM, DVD-RW, 160GB hard drive. That's not a lot of money more, but it gets you essential memory, and decent storage options.
Issues are: 90 day warranty. That's piss poor for an item of consumer electronics.
However it'll outperform today's Mac Mini that costs $499. Will it out-perform the Mac Mini that'll be announced on Tuesday (allegedly)? That might have a dual-core Yonah, and it'll certainly have Apple's industrial design.
As for the OS, I'm sure it works. Hopefully it isn't a cluttered desktop though. That'd scare away users.