You can always use a USB based optical drive, potentially more convenient because you don't have to lug it around with you all the time.
On that point, i carry my netbook everywhere and the lack of an optical drive doesnt bother me one bit, having one would have necessitated making it bigger judging from the size and component density (eee 901)... Prior to that, i had a thinkpad with a built in dvd reader which i _NEVER_ used, and a macbook with a built in dvd reader that was broken.
I do not watch DVDs on it, having movies stored on an SD card or the internal storage is far more convenient, much smaller and not vulnerable to sudden movements (i sometimes watch movies while travelling, and sometimes the journey isn't all that smooth)... Also, not having to carry round a big stack of dvd/cd media is a massive advantage, it only gets lost or damaged. The less items you have to carry and worry about when travelling, the better.
I can't remember the last time i installed any software from cd, i bootstrapped ubuntu onto the netbook using an sd card and have used the in built upgrade function to update it since, and any applications i wanted to install were also installed from the network using the standard package manager. I had the option to install from a usb dvd reader, but found using an sd card far more convenient. I would counter that installing software using a package manager is actually much easier than messing around with optical media.
You have been able to get 12" laptops for years, apple used to make 12" ibooks and powerbooks, the idea of a netbook is that its smaller and cheaper... Pretty soon the small cheap ones will be phased out and we'll be back where we were a few years ago.
And in other places, a mcdonalds will sit empty most of the day and only peak at lunch/dinner time... They should just prioritise the tables, ie those who want to eat get them first.
I work away a lot, sometimes i have people with me and sometimes not, but i invariably have to go and eat out somewhere. If i'm with someone else i'm happy to sit in the restaurant and wait for my food etc, since i can talk... If i'm on my own i want my food quickly, or something else to do while i wait.
Fly in business or first class, then you get to use free wifi in the lounge.. Failing that, just get a decent antenna and go sit close to the first class lounge and use it anyway.
Most OSS projects already run on all those platforms and more besides (solaris, bsd etc)... If you write an app for linux it can usually be made to run on other unix systems like osx with little or no effort. It's typically only closed source applications which remain single platform.
Netscape fell very quickly because it was not only crap, but also microsoft played dirty against them...
The difference between current versions of ie and firefox/opera/safari/chrome is actually much greater than the difference between ie/netscape, microsoft's inertia and dirty tricks are the only thing keeping them in the game right now.
If you take away their unfair/illegal advantages, ie would be fading a lot faster than it currently is.
Giving people a selection doesn't work, people are lazy.. You need to not only give them a selection, but also explain the pros and cons of each option, and even then they might still be lazy and stick with what they know...
The damage is already done, if you had given people a choice the first time they ever used a computer, especially with a decent explanation, then the situation would be very different today.
You can also pay 99% of these companies via a direct deposit or standing order... Unlike a direct debit, this has to be initiated by you.. When the bill arrives, you can schedule an online payment to go out on the due date of the bill.
What range do RFID chips have? And if you were to increase the power, how much range could you get? What's to stop someone building a portable high power RFID reader, strapping it round their waist and walking around some crowded places like train stations and taking a small amount from anyone who got within range?
Normally it gives away the branch address for a regular high street bank, i believe smile is an online bank operated by the co-operative and thus only has one "branch"...
Those string processing rules are there because traditionally poorly written webapps would construct an SQL statement using your input, and then feed this to the database... If they didn't filter or appropriately escape the output then symbols like quotes and ticks can be used to alter the query being made to the database with often very dangerous consequences... As a result of this, many places filter out anything which is not alphanumeric... I had a friend who's name was "O'Donnel" who constantly had problems with websites because of this...
The correct thing to do is pass input using prepared statements, where the input will be sent as a null terminated array and not as part of the query string, so regardless of what you enter it goes through whole (worst case is you can truncate your input by sending a null).
And some random craigslist guy wouldn't hand you a car only to have your check bounce... I would never pay for something in advance like that, i would look at the car and then use telephone banking to arrange the transfer, then let the seller call his bank to verify it before handing me the car. Or if your doing the deal during the day, you can just go down to an actual bank and do it.
Not just asking the banker, the bank is also guaranteeing to the recipient that you actually have sufficient funds to pay him and so he'll actually get his money... I could write a check for a million dollars right now, but it would never go through.
Most people won't accept a check until it has cleared, which means you have to hand over the check and then wait 5 days before you can pick up your car. You could always go and arrange an electronic transfer in that time even if you physically go to the bank rather than do it online. There are also other things, like guaranteed checks from banks which will clear immediately. Last time i bought a car, i took the seller with me to the bank and got a guaranteed check, which he then took to his bank several doors down the street.
You get people like that everywhere... People who board a bus or enter a train station, and only when they reach the ticket barrier do they start trying to find their ticket... Some people will stand for quite some time blocking the ticket gate while they sort through their bag looking for the ticket. Getting on the train was not an impulse decision, did you not consider taking your ticket out as you approach the station and have it in hand ready once you reach the gates?
A 4 digit pin is pretty insecure, but a signature is even worse, and that's all a check uses. If you steal a check book it's game on for fraud...
Cards when handled right are perfectly quick, sometimes quicker than cash because there is no change counting involved. Of course, some people can screw the whole process up but they can do that regardless of the payment method.
What i want to know is, how to get MKV encapsulated h.264 to use the hardware decode capability of modern macs? I have a current gen macbook pro which should be able to handle this, only it doesn't unless i rip the mkv file apart and put the h.264 stream into a different container format.
No, a review is a comparison by one person of several choices... The price is just another comparison point, how important that point is to the review is up to him.
Personally i consider free (as in freedom) a positive point, as is availability of source code..
As to free (as in monetary price), that is also a beneficial point.. In order for me to consider using something i have to pay for it needs to not only be superior to the free option, but sufficiently superior to justify its price tag, a minor improvement won't do it has to be clearly superior.
Firefox has the option of installing the plugins locally or globally, obviously a global install is only possible if you have a privileged account. It should not be up to individual users to update the program, the admin should do that. There's no reason a schedule task couldn't run to perform necessary updates periodically, and ideally all packages would be updated by a single update system instead of having loads of junk running.
That's because firefox is a cross platform application... On unix systems you have to store data in the user's homedir.. you will find that most cross platform applications behave in this way, and it is pretty much just windows-only applications that have problems in a multiuser environment because they weren't forced to deal with it before.
If you're selling something for a profit, then you damn well better be organised... If you're making money then there are rules and regulations on how you make the money and how you report earnings to the appropriate tax authorities etc. Having to maintain a snapshot of the source which corresponds to each binary you release is not a great imposition when stacked alongside all the other things you need to do.
If you're giving it away free, why not just give away the source alongside it anyway? Whenever you upload a binary, upload a source tarball at the same time.
Leaving stray binary only abandonware out there is somewhat irresponsible, what if people are still using your mod and security holes are found in it? How are they supposed to fix them? They will either have to stop using it (and thus lose whatever functionality it provides), create a new implementation of it themselves from scratch (could be significant work) or live with the risk of being owned.
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You can always use a USB based optical drive, potentially more convenient because you don't have to lug it around with you all the time.
On that point, i carry my netbook everywhere and the lack of an optical drive doesnt bother me one bit, having one would have necessitated making it bigger judging from the size and component density (eee 901)... Prior to that, i had a thinkpad with a built in dvd reader which i _NEVER_ used, and a macbook with a built in dvd reader that was broken.
I do not watch DVDs on it, having movies stored on an SD card or the internal storage is far more convenient, much smaller and not vulnerable to sudden movements (i sometimes watch movies while travelling, and sometimes the journey isn't all that smooth)... Also, not having to carry round a big stack of dvd/cd media is a massive advantage, it only gets lost or damaged. The less items you have to carry and worry about when travelling, the better.
I can't remember the last time i installed any software from cd, i bootstrapped ubuntu onto the netbook using an sd card and have used the in built upgrade function to update it since, and any applications i wanted to install were also installed from the network using the standard package manager. I had the option to install from a usb dvd reader, but found using an sd card far more convenient.
I would counter that installing software using a package manager is actually much easier than messing around with optical media.
You have been able to get 12" laptops for years, apple used to make 12" ibooks and powerbooks, the idea of a netbook is that its smaller and cheaper... Pretty soon the small cheap ones will be phased out and we'll be back where we were a few years ago.
And in other places, a mcdonalds will sit empty most of the day and only peak at lunch/dinner time...
They should just prioritise the tables, ie those who want to eat get them first.
I work away a lot, sometimes i have people with me and sometimes not, but i invariably have to go and eat out somewhere.
If i'm with someone else i'm happy to sit in the restaurant and wait for my food etc, since i can talk... If i'm on my own i want my food quickly, or something else to do while i wait.
Fly in business or first class, then you get to use free wifi in the lounge..
Failing that, just get a decent antenna and go sit close to the first class lounge and use it anyway.
Their fries don't mould, you can leave them for months and they won't rot... Not even the mould wants to eat them!
Most OSS projects already run on all those platforms and more besides (solaris, bsd etc)... If you write an app for linux it can usually be made to run on other unix systems like osx with little or no effort.
It's typically only closed source applications which remain single platform.
Netscape fell very quickly because it was not only crap, but also microsoft played dirty against them...
The difference between current versions of ie and firefox/opera/safari/chrome is actually much greater than the difference between ie/netscape, microsoft's inertia and dirty tricks are the only thing keeping them in the game right now.
If you take away their unfair/illegal advantages, ie would be fading a lot faster than it currently is.
Giving people a selection doesn't work, people are lazy..
You need to not only give them a selection, but also explain the pros and cons of each option, and even then they might still be lazy and stick with what they know...
The damage is already done, if you had given people a choice the first time they ever used a computer, especially with a decent explanation, then the situation would be very different today.
You can also pay 99% of these companies via a direct deposit or standing order... Unlike a direct debit, this has to be initiated by you..
When the bill arrives, you can schedule an online payment to go out on the due date of the bill.
What range do RFID chips have?
And if you were to increase the power, how much range could you get?
What's to stop someone building a portable high power RFID reader, strapping it round their waist and walking around some crowded places like train stations and taking a small amount from anyone who got within range?
Well, your email address and domain give away your name address and telephone number for a start, what else would someone need?
It happened to Jeremy Clarkson - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7174760.stm
Would you like to make a charitable donation too?
Your sortcode also gives away which bank you use:
THE CO-OPERATIVE BANK PLC
Smile - Current
WN8 6GF
Normally it gives away the branch address for a regular high street bank, i believe smile is an online bank operated by the co-operative and thus only has one "branch"...
Those string processing rules are there because traditionally poorly written webapps would construct an SQL statement using your input, and then feed this to the database... If they didn't filter or appropriately escape the output then symbols like quotes and ticks can be used to alter the query being made to the database with often very dangerous consequences... As a result of this, many places filter out anything which is not alphanumeric... I had a friend who's name was "O'Donnel" who constantly had problems with websites because of this...
The correct thing to do is pass input using prepared statements, where the input will be sent as a null terminated array and not as part of the query string, so regardless of what you enter it goes through whole (worst case is you can truncate your input by sending a null).
And some random craigslist guy wouldn't hand you a car only to have your check bounce...
I would never pay for something in advance like that, i would look at the car and then use telephone banking to arrange the transfer, then let the seller call his bank to verify it before handing me the car. Or if your doing the deal during the day, you can just go down to an actual bank and do it.
Not just asking the banker, the bank is also guaranteeing to the recipient that you actually have sufficient funds to pay him and so he'll actually get his money...
I could write a check for a million dollars right now, but it would never go through.
Where do you live?
Even my grandparents (80+) have smartphones these days...
Most people won't accept a check until it has cleared, which means you have to hand over the check and then wait 5 days before you can pick up your car. You could always go and arrange an electronic transfer in that time even if you physically go to the bank rather than do it online.
There are also other things, like guaranteed checks from banks which will clear immediately. Last time i bought a car, i took the seller with me to the bank and got a guaranteed check, which he then took to his bank several doors down the street.
You get people like that everywhere...
People who board a bus or enter a train station, and only when they reach the ticket barrier do they start trying to find their ticket... Some people will stand for quite some time blocking the ticket gate while they sort through their bag looking for the ticket.
Getting on the train was not an impulse decision, did you not consider taking your ticket out as you approach the station and have it in hand ready once you reach the gates?
A 4 digit pin is pretty insecure, but a signature is even worse, and that's all a check uses. If you steal a check book it's game on for fraud...
Cards when handled right are perfectly quick, sometimes quicker than cash because there is no change counting involved. Of course, some people can screw the whole process up but they can do that regardless of the payment method.
What i want to know is, how to get MKV encapsulated h.264 to use the hardware decode capability of modern macs? I have a current gen macbook pro which should be able to handle this, only it doesn't unless i rip the mkv file apart and put the h.264 stream into a different container format.
No, a review is a comparison by one person of several choices...
The price is just another comparison point, how important that point is to the review is up to him.
Personally i consider free (as in freedom) a positive point, as is availability of source code..
As to free (as in monetary price), that is also a beneficial point.. In order for me to consider using something i have to pay for it needs to not only be superior to the free option, but sufficiently superior to justify its price tag, a minor improvement won't do it has to be clearly superior.
Firefox has the option of installing the plugins locally or globally, obviously a global install is only possible if you have a privileged account.
It should not be up to individual users to update the program, the admin should do that. There's no reason a schedule task couldn't run to perform necessary updates periodically, and ideally all packages would be updated by a single update system instead of having loads of junk running.
What if multiple people want to play on the same system? Will it clobber each other's settings?
That's because firefox is a cross platform application... On unix systems you have to store data in the user's homedir.. you will find that most cross platform applications behave in this way, and it is pretty much just windows-only applications that have problems in a multiuser environment because they weren't forced to deal with it before.
If you're selling something for a profit, then you damn well better be organised... If you're making money then there are rules and regulations on how you make the money and how you report earnings to the appropriate tax authorities etc. Having to maintain a snapshot of the source which corresponds to each binary you release is not a great imposition when stacked alongside all the other things you need to do.
If you're giving it away free, why not just give away the source alongside it anyway? Whenever you upload a binary, upload a source tarball at the same time.
Leaving stray binary only abandonware out there is somewhat irresponsible, what if people are still using your mod and security holes are found in it? How are they supposed to fix them? They will either have to stop using it (and thus lose whatever functionality it provides), create a new implementation of it themselves from scratch (could be significant work) or live with the risk of being owned.