"What can I do with it that I can't do with a free Linux distro, or the Windows that I already have? Tell me why I should drop $100 on this."
I cannot speak from experience, but I've heard that BeOS was quite responsive. I also heard it was good in the UI department. Me, personally, I think user interaction is very important with an OS.
Honestly, I don't know enough about it to tell you why it'd be worth $100. I can tell you that from what I've heard of people who've used it, I'm curious.
If you consider sifting through hundreds of submissions to get to it, yes it is.
"They don't need to write the interesting content: someone else does that. They don't need to find or summarize the content: the submitter does that."
I think you'd be surprised at how much editor intervention it is. I'm not claiming it's a lot, but it could easily soak up 10 minutes.
" Other commercial media sources don't find it so difficult."
Other commercial media sources go get the stories by people specialized in the area that the story resides in. They don't sift through user-generated crap to get to it.
"There is nothing uniquely difficult about editing Slashdot."
Wrong.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's impossible for them to do. I don't think, however, the effort they'd put into it would yield much reward. I'm just not sold on this particular argument of the debate.
"By the way, I've never done a dupe-complaining post myself."
I apologize for mis-labeling you. I don't agree with you, but I certainly do not intend disrespect.
"Plugging in might not be the advantage everyone thinks. How much electricity does it take to charge the car? Are electricity rates cheap enough so that it makes more sense to plug in the car, versus just fill up?"
Alternatively, it makes purchasing of solar equipment more attractive. Maybe in the not-too-distant future, people will buy fuel cell generators or something like that that generates energy more cheaply.
"When something like this happens it becomes amazingly clear that an industry can die."
Boo-hoo.
What really irks me about industries dying is when radical changes occur because of it. In Oregon, for example, you have to pay more to register your hybrid car. Why? Because they tax the shit out of gas. More hybrids means less tax revenue.
Okay, that's not the oil industry's fault, but it still bugs me. Frankly, I do think that it's not going anywhere anytime soon. They'll lower prices when demand goes down. They'll shrink. They'll find new ways to make their oil interesting. But I doubt it'll actually die quickly. Heck, they'll probably try to get legislation in place to secure their business.
"Exactly. They're taking advantage of a second energy supply and only claiming the cost of the first."
Though I agree with you, please don't discount the idea that it's still interesting even if the costs come out to be roughly the same. Fewer trips to the gas station is nice.
"I'm not trying to bash what these guys have done - but isn't plugging it in and then looking at MPG very decieving?"
Sorta. On the other hand, a lot of people have an outlet near their car. So by plugging it in late at night, it's possible that a tank of gas lasts 1,800 miles. For me, that'd be great, because I find going to the gas station inconvenient. I wouldn't save much money (well, I guess I'd save some...) but it'd mean far less trips to the station.
A few years ago, anyway, that was one of the BFD's about electric cars. Home recharging. Today, with gas prices going up, motives have shifted. So, yeah, I can see how it's both decieving and not decieving. Depends on what your values are.
"Destroying the world's greatest scientific instrument of our time because it *might* be dangerous to fix it? Life is dangerous, and I'm positive if they made an X-Prize to fix Hubble, it could be done by 2008."
I'd rather they put an X-Prize out to make a new modern telescope and replace Hubble with it.
Frankly, though, I don't see how you can talk an astronaut mechanic to ride in a vehicle containing thousands of moving parts built with the lowest costs in mind.
"Apologies to all who loved Hubble, and maybe this is a bit to early to ask, but are they gonna get that crap outta the ocean afterwards? Or is the ocean going to become a graveyard for things that get temporarily sent in to space. I'm not a trolling hippie, just curious."
Not to worry! Taco Bell is already making efforts to catch the Hubble.
"3. one hand operation. It is a lot easier to turn pages one-handed on an PDA. I can generally be more comfortable, and have good posture longer when reading off a PDA than with a book."
Boy, I whole-heartedly agree with this one. Not only is this a lot easier to hold, but with AvantGo or wireless connectivity, you can also get news on it. I can't speak for anybody else, but I enjoy laying down and reading both news as well as fiction.
I also wanted to mention bookmarking. MS's reader program does a nice job of remembering where you were and bringing you back there. Also, you can highlight text and 'bookmark' it. Me personally, I sometimes dog-ear pages if a particular line in the book interested me or if it was something I wanted to go back and look up later.
I do have one question, though: I had a PocketPC shortly after they first came out. Back then, e-books were rather scarce. Has that changed a lot, or am I going to continue finding myself preferring to browse Barnes and Noble?
"How to protect your music/lyrics from being stolen. If I have a band and we publish music on the web (for free, or a price, whatever) how can I protect them from being stolen and used by another band?"
I belong to a community of 3D artists and we face a similar problem. Images are very easy to 'steal'. Someone can take an image I made, post it on a forum (most likely under the hope that I don't visit it...) and claim it's theirs.
I've seen it happen. Somebody started a thread that said "Show your best work" and he had an image up. Within hours, a number of people were ready to tar and feather him. Why? Because dumb-ass posted something that was recognizable. One person spotted it, told another, told another, etc. The person was banned from that forum, etc.
There are two obvious questions here: 1.) What's the lesson to learn here, 2.) How does that apply to this situation?
1.) Be unique. Be recognizable. In my case, for example, it would be very difficult to take credit for my work because I've posted it on high-profile places and it looked different from other stuff that has been done. If you make music, you will be unique, and your fans will let you know if you've been ripped off. Will that always work? Probably not. But the better your work is, the more this protection will build itself automatically.
2.) I don't have as strong an answer here. The work I'm talking about isn't for making money. If somebody stole my work, for example, they'd really be stealing credit. It is possible, though, that somebody could use my work and try to get a job with it. To that I say: "Good luck on your first week of work." Maybe that would burn me if I tried to get a job at the same place, but I can prove I've done the work that I have. (Perhaps when making music you should keep the individual elements around? "See! Here's all the original channels and some stuff we cut in the final edit!")
Whatever you end up doing, though, keep a couple of things in mind: Audio is extremely easy to duplicate and transmit. You have entered a field that is far from utopic. Your stress level will go down a great deal if you have acceptable goals, as opposed to getting mad when things aren't perfect.
"Did you even read the part of his comment that you quoted? Turning of sigs does nothing to stop this because the signature is fake and is part of the message."
Oops. Retracted.:)
Lots of ppl bitch about sigs with links to them, including mine. It doesn't excuse my error, but at least it explains it.
I still stand by my "Whoop-de-fuck" statement, though.
Slashdot Mirror
"when most of the users don't like WINDOWS !! Then why bother talking about it ?" I imagine because 10s of millions of people use it.
"What can I do with it that I can't do with a free Linux distro, or the Windows that I already have? Tell me why I should drop $100 on this."
I cannot speak from experience, but I've heard that BeOS was quite responsive. I also heard it was good in the UI department. Me, personally, I think user interaction is very important with an OS.
Honestly, I don't know enough about it to tell you why it'd be worth $100. I can tell you that from what I've heard of people who've used it, I'm curious.
"BeOS is/was also advanced in terms of file meta data. That situation is still quite messy in MacOS X."
Apologies in advance for being ignorant, but what is file meta data and how is OSX messy with it?
"And yet another would"
Uh, no, I don't think they'd make a [NO CARRIER] joke then.
Err. Sorry for screwing up the italic tag. Hehe. :)
"Is that what you kids are calling it nowdays?"
Isn't it weird that they don't have fancy slang for recharging a laptop yet?
If you consider sifting through hundreds of submissions to get to it, yes it is.
"They don't need to write the interesting content: someone else does that. They don't need to find or summarize the content: the submitter does that."
I think you'd be surprised at how much editor intervention it is. I'm not claiming it's a lot, but it could easily soak up 10 minutes.
" Other commercial media sources don't find it so difficult."
Other commercial media sources go get the stories by people specialized in the area that the story resides in. They don't sift through user-generated crap to get to it.
"There is nothing uniquely difficult about editing Slashdot."
Wrong.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's impossible for them to do. I don't think, however, the effort they'd put into it would yield much reward. I'm just not sold on this particular argument of the debate.
"By the way, I've never done a dupe-complaining post myself."
I apologize for mis-labeling you. I don't agree with you, but I certainly do not intend disrespect.
"How hard is it going to be to forge these things?"
Doesn't matter. There's still the whole issue of who was driving the car. Seperate topic.
"What's to prevent the state from putting up a reader on the street corner? On every street corner? On every mile marker sign on the highway?"
A.) The sheer number of street corners and marker signs.
B.) The communications facilities to transmit this data to somewhere useful.
C.) The processing power to do something useful with all this data.
D.) The lack of benefit to warrant that much expense.
"do you really want the state tracking every location where you drive your vehicle?"
Ask anybody who's had their car stolen or a loved one abducted.
"The privacy implications are mind boggling...."
I wonder what Slashdot would have said if it had been around for the invention of the license plate.
"Plugging in might not be the advantage everyone thinks. How much electricity does it take to charge the car? Are electricity rates cheap enough so that it makes more sense to plug in the car, versus just fill up?"
Alternatively, it makes purchasing of solar equipment more attractive. Maybe in the not-too-distant future, people will buy fuel cell generators or something like that that generates energy more cheaply.
"It's idiotic to give a "miles per gallon" figure when you don't include the cost of producing the electricity you use to recharge the battery."/I.
It's also idiotic to assume that cost savings is the only factor in this discussion. Fewer trips to the gas station mean greater convenience.
"When something like this happens it becomes amazingly clear that an industry can die."
Boo-hoo.
What really irks me about industries dying is when radical changes occur because of it. In Oregon, for example, you have to pay more to register your hybrid car. Why? Because they tax the shit out of gas. More hybrids means less tax revenue.
Okay, that's not the oil industry's fault, but it still bugs me. Frankly, I do think that it's not going anywhere anytime soon. They'll lower prices when demand goes down. They'll shrink. They'll find new ways to make their oil interesting. But I doubt it'll actually die quickly. Heck, they'll probably try to get legislation in place to secure their business.
"Exactly. They're taking advantage of a second energy supply and only claiming the cost of the first."
Though I agree with you, please don't discount the idea that it's still interesting even if the costs come out to be roughly the same. Fewer trips to the gas station is nice.
"as with "The IQ of Slashdot users is as high as 300." ........
300? Then why is it that when I think of Slashdotters, I picture the bridge of Spaceball One?
"I'm not trying to bash what these guys have done - but isn't plugging it in and then looking at MPG very decieving?"
Sorta. On the other hand, a lot of people have an outlet near their car. So by plugging it in late at night, it's possible that a tank of gas lasts 1,800 miles. For me, that'd be great, because I find going to the gas station inconvenient. I wouldn't save much money (well, I guess I'd save some...) but it'd mean far less trips to the station.
A few years ago, anyway, that was one of the BFD's about electric cars. Home recharging. Today, with gas prices going up, motives have shifted. So, yeah, I can see how it's both decieving and not decieving. Depends on what your values are.
"Ahhh...so you'll be asking your boss to provide power for your car. Wish we could all get that good a deal."
Why not? My boss already recharges my laptop!
"Electricity ranges from about 5 - 10 cents per kW, so a gallon of gas (more than $2) has as much energy as $1.65 - $3.30 of electricity."
On the one hand: "Doh!"
On the other hand: "Ha! My office has an electric plug outside!"
"Destroying the world's greatest scientific instrument of our time because it *might* be dangerous to fix it? Life is dangerous, and I'm positive if they made an X-Prize to fix Hubble, it could be done by 2008."
I'd rather they put an X-Prize out to make a new modern telescope and replace Hubble with it.
Frankly, though, I don't see how you can talk an astronaut mechanic to ride in a vehicle containing thousands of moving parts built with the lowest costs in mind.
"Apologies to all who loved Hubble, and maybe this is a bit to early to ask, but are they gonna get that crap outta the ocean afterwards?
Or is the ocean going to become a graveyard for things that get temporarily sent in to space. I'm not a trolling hippie, just curious."
Not to worry! Taco Bell is already making efforts to catch the Hubble.
"Why not just blast it off into space and see what it finds until we lose communicaiton? "
A.) Probably because it won't take long to lose communication.
B.) We don't want more junk in space.
C.) It would likely take a great deal more energy to do. At least Earth can pull on it.
"3. one hand operation. It is a lot easier to turn pages one-handed on an PDA. I can generally be more comfortable, and have good posture longer when reading off a PDA than with a book."
Boy, I whole-heartedly agree with this one. Not only is this a lot easier to hold, but with AvantGo or wireless connectivity, you can also get news on it. I can't speak for anybody else, but I enjoy laying down and reading both news as well as fiction.
I also wanted to mention bookmarking. MS's reader program does a nice job of remembering where you were and bringing you back there. Also, you can highlight text and 'bookmark' it. Me personally, I sometimes dog-ear pages if a particular line in the book interested me or if it was something I wanted to go back and look up later.
I do have one question, though: I had a PocketPC shortly after they first came out. Back then, e-books were rather scarce. Has that changed a lot, or am I going to continue finding myself preferring to browse Barnes and Noble?
"How to protect your music/lyrics from being stolen. If I have a band and we publish music on the web (for free, or a price, whatever) how can I protect them from being stolen and used by another band?"
I belong to a community of 3D artists and we face a similar problem. Images are very easy to 'steal'. Someone can take an image I made, post it on a forum (most likely under the hope that I don't visit it...) and claim it's theirs.
I've seen it happen. Somebody started a thread that said "Show your best work" and he had an image up. Within hours, a number of people were ready to tar and feather him. Why? Because dumb-ass posted something that was recognizable. One person spotted it, told another, told another, etc. The person was banned from that forum, etc.
There are two obvious questions here: 1.) What's the lesson to learn here, 2.) How does that apply to this situation?
1.) Be unique. Be recognizable. In my case, for example, it would be very difficult to take credit for my work because I've posted it on high-profile places and it looked different from other stuff that has been done. If you make music, you will be unique, and your fans will let you know if you've been ripped off. Will that always work? Probably not. But the better your work is, the more this protection will build itself automatically.
2.) I don't have as strong an answer here. The work I'm talking about isn't for making money. If somebody stole my work, for example, they'd really be stealing credit. It is possible, though, that somebody could use my work and try to get a job with it. To that I say: "Good luck on your first week of work." Maybe that would burn me if I tried to get a job at the same place, but I can prove I've done the work that I have. (Perhaps when making music you should keep the individual elements around? "See! Here's all the original channels and some stuff we cut in the final edit!")
Whatever you end up doing, though, keep a couple of things in mind: Audio is extremely easy to duplicate and transmit. You have entered a field that is far from utopic. Your stress level will go down a great deal if you have acceptable goals, as opposed to getting mad when things aren't perfect.
"Did you even read the part of his comment that you quoted? Turning of sigs does nothing to stop this because the signature is fake and is part of the message."
:)
Oops. Retracted.
Lots of ppl bitch about sigs with links to them, including mine. It doesn't excuse my error, but at least it explains it.
I still stand by my "Whoop-de-fuck" statement, though.
"Considering this is a /. article, I figured the perfect method to do so would be installing Linux. It fits the description perfectly!"
Dammit. I just tried that and now my games don't work! grr