* no tabbed browsing - wtf? * no way to import bookmarks - got a hundred in chimera, time to poke around and see if I can figure a way to do it * nice default fonts * respects internet preferences like homepage * nice brused look * looks clean
17" AlBook: * what's up with the keyboard. they're using the same sized keyboard for the 12" and 17" models. wtf? the 17" has so much more space, and a bigger keyboard would be a great feature.... much better than backlighting!
I've always loved the fact that hitting the tilde (~) key would bring a semi-transparent console down over the top half of the screen when playing Quake engine games. I think this is one of the smartest features of the product.
It has made me wonder why nobody has implemented this on an OS level. Mac OS X would be perfect for it for example. To just hit a key and have a console drop down from the top menu bar would rock. Frankly, if I had the programming skill, this would be the first thing I'd want to write.
I totally agree that CLI and GUI should be designed to work together. It really shouldn't be an 'either/or' consideration.
Could someone explain why the GNU-Darwin people think Apple will care what they do? I'm not against the protest per-se, in fact I think they're protesting some valid issues. But really, why would Apple pay any notice?
It's great to see people trying to hold companies to account for their actions. This is a bit silly though because they run the risk of becoming irrelevant by not supporting PPC and not including certain packages.
If this is good for anyone, it's the folks at Fink.
I've said it before here, and I'll say it again now: I think it's a disgrace that we've not been back to the Moon in 30 years.
I find it really annoying to read about these chicken-shit science experiments they conduct on the Shuttle or ISS about things like plant reproduction in zero gravity. Whoop-dee-do. If we had made a concerted effort to build and maintain a moon base over the past 30 years, I bet we'd have learned way more than we have so far.
The moon is there. It's an island in the sky. It's a natural satellite of our planet. It's begging to be populated.
I will be very excited the day I see another man step foot on the moon. I hope I live that long.
You can play the tracks as much as you like on your PC, burn to CD as many tracks as you want, copy the burned CDs, and use the CD to make MP3s. Keep in mind there is supposed to be some form of digital watermarking on the tracks though. So if you give the music to anyone else, they (UMG) are supposed to be able to know it was you who violated their copyright.
I'd be interested to know how anybody could tell if you've shared the music and what this 'digital watermarking' is all about. If you made MP3s from the CD you make, how would UMG know you violated the copyright? Is my iTunes gonna email them when I play the pirated MP3?
This sounds dubious but will no doubt be tested by tons of people to see if it's true.
It also begs the question of what consititutes illegal sharing and fair use. Shouldn't I be able to listen to this stuff on my iPod? Would UMG know?
I looked at some dirty emails once and now I get messages all day asking if I want a larger penis, hot slutty teens. Sometimes it even bugs me to lower my mortgage payments or get deals on toner! Help! The Internet thinks I'm some kind of impoverished sex maniac!
The Segway has been criticized mercilessly since it was first revealed. I think this is largely the result of the secrecy surround its development. A great deal of speculation ensued about what it could be, and then when it was launched, people felt let down because they had imagined something more.
Where else have I seen this? Oh yeah, it happens before every Macworld Expo. It's some kind of clinical condition that relates to people never being satisfied and the grass always looking greener elsewhere.
Anyway, I think it is pretty stupid to call it overhyped.
Firstly, the rampant speculation was NOT hype. It was speculation. Hype is when you talk about the great features of a product and how much you want one. Anticipation of the next LoTR movie is hype. Speculation about "IT" or "Ginger" was more like wondering about whether aliens exist.
Secondly, I think hype can only really be determined after the product is launched to see if it fails to live upto expectations. We have no idea how well the Segway will do. How can we tell whether or not it was overhyped?
This kind of shooting-from-the-hip editorial commentary fundamentally lowers the level of discussion around here sometimes.
1) Profitability in something like software is tough to gauge from looking at a balance sheet. Productivity is notoriously hard to quantify and the cumulative R&D costs that represent Windows are probably not represented in the same sense as sales and profit for a given year. It's no surprise they lose money on other products, but the fact that Windows in profitable allows them to do so. I suspect the same economics govern other R&D heavy companies: like Intel, Motorola, IBM etc.
2) Even in non-R&D heavy companies, many products have massive profits. How much do you think a cup of coffee costs for Starbucks to brew? There are plenty of products that produce well in excess of 100% profit margin. Why should Microsoft be criticized for margins over 70% on two products?
In general I find it pretty repulsive when people bash Microsoft for making money. If you don't like it, buy a Mac or use Linux. It's really not hard to Microsoft free. It's your choice.
I thought the whole idea of the GPL was that you could take a program and modify it to your own needs so long as you release the source back to the community under the same license.
With your background across different systems you sound like a good candidate for getting into the security game. As you might expect, this is becoming big business at the moment.
Security is a process, so you wouldn't really have to learn much new technology. There's a lot of value in talking to someone rich in experience when it comes to security, especially if you're trying to secure legacy platforms.
If that doesn't sound like fun and you want to stick with programming, I'd suggest picking up either Java, C#/.NET, or Obj-C/Cocoa. Learning these technologies will certainly keep you relevant and will probably be fun too!
(Since you already know C, Obj-C/Cocoa would be really straight forward, and we can't have too many Mac developers you know.)
I've been using the Tote and Tilt handle for months. Ever since I bought my TiBook.
I really wish Apple included a handle like this with the product. The cooling benefit alone is worth it. I guess it's also useful for carrying the thing, but mainly it's the heat problem that makes it worthwhile.
I wonder when they iBook is gonna be given the dignity of a G4 processor. The life of the G3 has been remarkable but I can't help thinking that it has been stretched out not by virtue of the chip itself but rather because Apple is having trouble getting better and faster chips from Moto (hence the IBM PPC rumors recently).
This is pretty cool, especially for the TiBook. I'm sure video houses will appreciate the superdive to let them make rough cuts on the road and share them.
Now, sadly, my TiBook is no longer state-of-the-art. I can tell its feelings were hurt: this morning it ask me if it looked fat.
UDP and firewalls
on
Gnutella2?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I wonder how this client will perform for people behind firewalls? Many firewalls are setup to deny UDP traffic because most Internet activity is TCP and having UDP open has been unnecessary up to this point.
I wonder if this will halt the spread of Gnutella2? With P2P, it's all about getting as many people online as possible.
MS is to Netscape as Apple is to Adobe
on
Microsoft takes on PDF
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
So comparisons are being made between Adobe and Netscape. Let's compare apples to apples then.
Netscape was a program for working with HTML files. MSIE did the same thing for free. MSIE was NOT trying to introduce a new document standard, it was intended to render the same web pages that Netscape could render (yes, yes, I know they did mean and evil things that made being a webmaster shitty because of having to code for both platforms, but for the most part this is correct.)
Acrobat is a program for working with PDF files. OS X does the same thing for free. You an render a PDF from any application and view it using the "Preview" program.
In the sense of giving away what someone else is selling, Apple is to Adobe as MS was to Netscape. Netscape failed because they couldn't get revenue selling what the other guy was offering for free. But Apple isn't really a threat to Adobe because the Mac is such a small share of the market. Adobe must make the lion's share of their Acrobat Distiller revenues from Windows users.
MS won't be the threat to Adobe that they were to Netscape if their new product doesn't use the PDF format. This is more apples and oranges because PDF is already a very strong standard that will be hard to displace, and MS isn't just offering PDF manipulation software for free.
People buy OS X for different reasons than they do Linux. The fact that OS X has comparable performance is great news for the Mac platform.
I love OS X for my desktop. I don't think I'd use it on a server because I can build a cheaper server using Linux to do everything OS X does and better. But from a desktop standpoint I find the GUI and applications a more pleasant experience than what's available for Linux.
So the fact that I can run Apache, PERL, PHP, MySQL, GNU tools, BSD userland, AND Office X, Photoshop, RTCW, Jedi Knight etc on the same laptop makes me very happy. And it beats the hell out of dual-booting.
So this is great for OS X. And great for Linux too I guess. Yay, everyone wins!
I'm not trying to troll here, this is an actual question because I don't know.
Is DHTML still as relevant as it used to be? Aren't people using server side scripting (perl, php, asp, etc) for truly interactive sites and things like DHTML are little more than nice HTML enhancements for doing the odd neat thing?
I just wondered what the perception was? I'm not anti-DHTML by any means, I'm just interested in where the general trend of web development is going.
where are the efficiencies for Dell in a PDA
on
Dell To Enter PDA Market
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
You can build a PDA like a PC or a pizza. Dell has enjoyed tremendous success by having super-efficient supply chain management. They're able to build PCs using off-the-shelf parts cheaper than anyone else. It's all because they keep inventories low and have tried to make every step as efficient as possible.
For this to work in a PDA, they only thing they can realistically do is co-brand someone else's device. If that happens they won't be much more than a sales force for the other person's technology.
If they decide to actually design and build one themselves, I think it would be a major shift in corporate strategy.
I've long felt that human progress into space has been on some form of hold since the 1960s. JFK announced that we would goto the moon not many years before we actually did. Then we went back a couple of times. Then not much.
The major achievement of the late 70s was the Space Shuttle. The major achievement of the turn of the century will be the ISS. Obviously these are significant achievements but why we haven't been back to the moon in 40 years is baffling.
I'm very happy to see a station being considered that won't just be in orbit. I hope it is a sign of things to come. I'd really like to see a moon base in my lifetime. I don't know much about space but I'd expect it must be easier to build a big station if you build it on something.
We need to be up there. In large numbers. We need private industry up there. NASA should be focussing on putting human living quarters in space and providing transportation up there. I think there should be some kind of space oriented general contracting agency focussing on getting as many people up there for as long as possible. We need scientists, professors, entrepeneurs, the media...all sorts of people to go up and see what we can make of it.
If space really is the new frontier, it should be accesible. I hope this is a step in the right direction.
ok, so I can update my MICROSOFT Internet Explorer using APPLE'S Software Update in OS X, but I can't update my APPLE iPod using Software Update. Instead I have to download it from their website?
They used to post iPod updates on Software Update. Whats up?
will the jail time stop you from pirating software, or do you think you'll be back at it upon your release? (after all, in 33 months, everything you currently run will have a new version and you might want to get everything up to date)
I'd settle for something to sync Outlook w/ Entourage. They're both MS PIMs so you'd think....
I'd love to have an OS X native Exchange server client too, but for some reason MS doesn't want me to have one. Wonder why.
Getting contact | calendar etc apps to play nicely across windows and OS X borders on impossible from what I've seen. Hopefully someone has had some success, but I haven't.
I setup a WIFI net at home recently and have found that the coverage I get inside the house is amazing. Outside it's a different story. I'm pretty sure that the aluminum siding is blocking the signal from leaving the building because I do get limited reception if I'm lined up with a window.
Basically this stops any war drivers from seeing my network unless they get really lucky and creep up to the bushes outside one of the few windows that faces the street. If they do that I'm more at risk that they see ME naked than my network!
Anybody else notice specific physical obstacles that clobber reception?
Slashdot Mirror
first impressions:
.... much better than backlighting!
* no tabbed browsing - wtf?
* no way to import bookmarks - got a hundred in chimera, time to poke around and see if I can figure a way to do it
* nice default fonts
* respects internet preferences like homepage
* nice brused look
* looks clean
17" AlBook:
* what's up with the keyboard. they're using the same sized keyboard for the 12" and 17" models. wtf? the 17" has so much more space, and a bigger keyboard would be a great feature
I've always loved the fact that hitting the tilde (~) key would bring a semi-transparent console down over the top half of the screen when playing Quake engine games. I think this is one of the smartest features of the product.
It has made me wonder why nobody has implemented this on an OS level. Mac OS X would be perfect for it for example. To just hit a key and have a console drop down from the top menu bar would rock. Frankly, if I had the programming skill, this would be the first thing I'd want to write.
I totally agree that CLI and GUI should be designed to work together. It really shouldn't be an 'either/or' consideration.
use "Track Changes"
(oh crap! this is slashdot...wait a minute, don't use MS Word!)
for 802.11xp!
Could someone explain why the GNU-Darwin people think Apple will care what they do? I'm not against the protest per-se, in fact I think they're protesting some valid issues. But really, why would Apple pay any notice?
It's great to see people trying to hold companies to account for their actions. This is a bit silly though because they run the risk of becoming irrelevant by not supporting PPC and not including certain packages.
If this is good for anyone, it's the folks at Fink.
I've said it before here, and I'll say it again now: I think it's a disgrace that we've not been back to the Moon in 30 years.
I find it really annoying to read about these chicken-shit science experiments they conduct on the Shuttle or ISS about things like plant reproduction in zero gravity. Whoop-dee-do. If we had made a concerted effort to build and maintain a moon base over the past 30 years, I bet we'd have learned way more than we have so far.
The moon is there. It's an island in the sky. It's a natural satellite of our planet. It's begging to be populated.
I will be very excited the day I see another man step foot on the moon. I hope I live that long.
You can play the tracks as much as you like on your PC, burn to CD as many tracks as you want, copy the burned CDs, and use the CD to make MP3s. Keep in mind there is supposed to be some form of digital watermarking on the tracks though. So if you give the music to anyone else, they (UMG) are supposed to be able to know it was you who violated their copyright.
I'd be interested to know how anybody could tell if you've shared the music and what this 'digital watermarking' is all about. If you made MP3s from the CD you make, how would UMG know you violated the copyright? Is my iTunes gonna email them when I play the pirated MP3?
This sounds dubious but will no doubt be tested by tons of people to see if it's true.
It also begs the question of what consititutes illegal sharing and fair use. Shouldn't I be able to listen to this stuff on my iPod? Would UMG know?
I looked at some dirty emails once and now I get messages all day asking if I want a larger penis, hot slutty teens. Sometimes it even bugs me to lower my mortgage payments or get deals on toner! Help! The Internet thinks I'm some kind of impoverished sex maniac!
The Segway has been criticized mercilessly since it was first revealed. I think this is largely the result of the secrecy surround its development. A great deal of speculation ensued about what it could be, and then when it was launched, people felt let down because they had imagined something more.
Where else have I seen this? Oh yeah, it happens before every Macworld Expo. It's some kind of clinical condition that relates to people never being satisfied and the grass always looking greener elsewhere.
Anyway, I think it is pretty stupid to call it overhyped.
Firstly, the rampant speculation was NOT hype. It was speculation. Hype is when you talk about the great features of a product and how much you want one. Anticipation of the next LoTR movie is hype. Speculation about "IT" or "Ginger" was more like wondering about whether aliens exist.
Secondly, I think hype can only really be determined after the product is launched to see if it fails to live upto expectations. We have no idea how well the Segway will do. How can we tell whether or not it was overhyped?
This kind of shooting-from-the-hip editorial commentary fundamentally lowers the level of discussion around here sometimes.
I have a problem with this for 2 reasons:
1) Profitability in something like software is tough to gauge from looking at a balance sheet. Productivity is notoriously hard to quantify and the cumulative R&D costs that represent Windows are probably not represented in the same sense as sales and profit for a given year. It's no surprise they lose money on other products, but the fact that Windows in profitable allows them to do so. I suspect the same economics govern other R&D heavy companies: like Intel, Motorola, IBM etc.
2) Even in non-R&D heavy companies, many products have massive profits. How much do you think a cup of coffee costs for Starbucks to brew? There are plenty of products that produce well in excess of 100% profit margin. Why should Microsoft be criticized for margins over 70% on two products?
In general I find it pretty repulsive when people bash Microsoft for making money. If you don't like it, buy a Mac or use Linux. It's really not hard to Microsoft free. It's your choice.
I thought the whole idea of the GPL was that you could take a program and modify it to your own needs so long as you release the source back to the community under the same license.
Sounds like that's what happened here!
With your background across different systems you sound like a good candidate for getting into the security game. As you might expect, this is becoming big business at the moment.
Security is a process, so you wouldn't really have to learn much new technology. There's a lot of value in talking to someone rich in experience when it comes to security, especially if you're trying to secure legacy platforms.
If that doesn't sound like fun and you want to stick with programming, I'd suggest picking up either Java, C#/.NET, or Obj-C/Cocoa. Learning these technologies will certainly keep you relevant and will probably be fun too!
(Since you already know C, Obj-C/Cocoa would be really straight forward, and we can't have too many Mac developers you know.)
I've been using the Tote and Tilt handle for months. Ever since I bought my TiBook.
I really wish Apple included a handle like this with the product. The cooling benefit alone is worth it. I guess it's also useful for carrying the thing, but mainly it's the heat problem that makes it worthwhile.
This new handle looks good too I guess.
I wonder when they iBook is gonna be given the dignity of a G4 processor. The life of the G3 has been remarkable but I can't help thinking that it has been stretched out not by virtue of the chip itself but rather because Apple is having trouble getting better and faster chips from Moto (hence the IBM PPC rumors recently).
This is pretty cool, especially for the TiBook. I'm sure video houses will appreciate the superdive to let them make rough cuts on the road and share them.
Now, sadly, my TiBook is no longer state-of-the-art. I can tell its feelings were hurt: this morning it ask me if it looked fat.
I wonder how this client will perform for people behind firewalls? Many firewalls are setup to deny UDP traffic because most Internet activity is TCP and having UDP open has been unnecessary up to this point.
I wonder if this will halt the spread of Gnutella2? With P2P, it's all about getting as many people online as possible.
So comparisons are being made between Adobe and Netscape. Let's compare apples to apples then.
Netscape was a program for working with HTML files. MSIE did the same thing for free. MSIE was NOT trying to introduce a new document standard, it was intended to render the same web pages that Netscape could render (yes, yes, I know they did mean and evil things that made being a webmaster shitty because of having to code for both platforms, but for the most part this is correct.)
Acrobat is a program for working with PDF files. OS X does the same thing for free. You an render a PDF from any application and view it using the "Preview" program.
In the sense of giving away what someone else is selling, Apple is to Adobe as MS was to Netscape. Netscape failed because they couldn't get revenue selling what the other guy was offering for free. But Apple isn't really a threat to Adobe because the Mac is such a small share of the market. Adobe must make the lion's share of their Acrobat Distiller revenues from Windows users.
MS won't be the threat to Adobe that they were to Netscape if their new product doesn't use the PDF format. This is more apples and oranges because PDF is already a very strong standard that will be hard to displace, and MS isn't just offering PDF manipulation software for free.
People buy OS X for different reasons than they do Linux. The fact that OS X has comparable performance is great news for the Mac platform.
I love OS X for my desktop. I don't think I'd use it on a server because I can build a cheaper server using Linux to do everything OS X does and better. But from a desktop standpoint I find the GUI and applications a more pleasant experience than what's available for Linux.
So the fact that I can run Apache, PERL, PHP, MySQL, GNU tools, BSD userland, AND Office X, Photoshop, RTCW, Jedi Knight etc on the same laptop makes me very happy. And it beats the hell out of dual-booting.
So this is great for OS X. And great for Linux too I guess. Yay, everyone wins!
I don't know it's related but I just saw an Ask Slashdot about daylight savings pop up. When I clicked through it gave me an error and now it's gone.
Does this have anything to do with the test? Or with Daylight Savings perhaps?
I'm not trying to troll here, this is an actual question because I don't know.
Is DHTML still as relevant as it used to be? Aren't people using server side scripting (perl, php, asp, etc) for truly interactive sites and things like DHTML are little more than nice HTML enhancements for doing the odd neat thing?
I just wondered what the perception was? I'm not anti-DHTML by any means, I'm just interested in where the general trend of web development is going.
You can build a PDA like a PC or a pizza. Dell has enjoyed tremendous success by having super-efficient supply chain management. They're able to build PCs using off-the-shelf parts cheaper than anyone else. It's all because they keep inventories low and have tried to make every step as efficient as possible.
For this to work in a PDA, they only thing they can realistically do is co-brand someone else's device. If that happens they won't be much more than a sales force for the other person's technology.
If they decide to actually design and build one themselves, I think it would be a major shift in corporate strategy.
I've long felt that human progress into space has been on some form of hold since the 1960s. JFK announced that we would goto the moon not many years before we actually did. Then we went back a couple of times. Then not much.
The major achievement of the late 70s was the Space Shuttle. The major achievement of the turn of the century will be the ISS. Obviously these are significant achievements but why we haven't been back to the moon in 40 years is baffling.
I'm very happy to see a station being considered that won't just be in orbit. I hope it is a sign of things to come. I'd really like to see a moon base in my lifetime. I don't know much about space but I'd expect it must be easier to build a big station if you build it on something.
We need to be up there. In large numbers. We need private industry up there. NASA should be focussing on putting human living quarters in space and providing transportation up there. I think there should be some kind of space oriented general contracting agency focussing on getting as many people up there for as long as possible. We need scientists, professors, entrepeneurs, the media...all sorts of people to go up and see what we can make of it.
If space really is the new frontier, it should be accesible. I hope this is a step in the right direction.
ok, so I can update my MICROSOFT Internet Explorer using APPLE'S Software Update in OS X, but I can't update my APPLE iPod using Software Update. Instead I have to download it from their website?
They used to post iPod updates on Software Update. Whats up?
will the jail time stop you from pirating software, or do you think you'll be back at it upon your release? (after all, in 33 months, everything you currently run will have a new version and you might want to get everything up to date)
I'd settle for something to sync Outlook w/ Entourage. They're both MS PIMs so you'd think....
I'd love to have an OS X native Exchange server client too, but for some reason MS doesn't want me to have one. Wonder why.
Getting contact | calendar etc apps to play nicely across windows and OS X borders on impossible from what I've seen. Hopefully someone has had some success, but I haven't.
I setup a WIFI net at home recently and have found that the coverage I get inside the house is amazing. Outside it's a different story. I'm pretty sure that the aluminum siding is blocking the signal from leaving the building because I do get limited reception if I'm lined up with a window.
Basically this stops any war drivers from seeing my network unless they get really lucky and creep up to the bushes outside one of the few windows that faces the street. If they do that I'm more at risk that they see ME naked than my network!
Anybody else notice specific physical obstacles that clobber reception?