You are extremely mistaken if you think oil companies could charge 80 cents a gallon. Now, OPEC countries might be able to if it felt like, but the oil companies of the world are forced to buy crude at market price. Some oil companies drill for oil in small quantities, but for all practical purposes they have virtually no input into the price of their own product. And don't laugh away the cost of shipping oil from Kuwait to Chicago. By the time the product gets to a gas station, they can only mark it up something like 1.5-2.5 cents a gallon.
Ever wonder why all gas stations seem to have a mini mart lately? It's their only opportunity to grow their business model in the tight profit margins of the oil business.
Not that I disagree with your general point, but don't just add on something you feel like saying without knowing what you're talking about.
I see a noticable lack of the one true comic(tm)
on
Web-Based Comics
·
· Score: 2
Have you guys thought about the hipzip? It shows up as a USB storage device when you plugging it in -- meaning you mount it, put any file you want on it, and unmount it. That's it. No silly software, no hacking. Did I mention that it's the size of a deck of cards and each 40meg disk for it is $10?
They even have a full set of linux drivers on their page! Stop giving money to companies that obviously aren't willing to work for it. Iomega is. Hell, if you look in the credits on the player, the Red Hat logo comes up;)
PS: Search the Ogg Vorbis mailing lists for 'hipzip'. You'll find that they have a beta version of their player firmware that supports Ogg Vorbis as well!
I agree that dialogic boards are excellent pieces of hardware with great output clarity (something like 16 bit 32kHz last I looked), and the intuitive thing to say is that a $10 rockwell generic voice modem will sound like crap, but I can say from _actual experience_ that MP3's played through the 8-bit 8000Hz rockwell modem interface actually sound surprisingly good. I suspect that having a clear 32khz output of a dialogic automatically compressed down by the phone company's hardware to 9.6kHz isn't as clear as me using sox's highest quality rate change algorithm to go from 44.1khz down to 8000Hz. I've shown my demo off to a number of friends and co-workers and they agreed it sounded a little too good for a generic modem. In any case, you're talking a huge jump in cost(5x at the low end of dialogic's products) for perhaps a 15-30% increase in quality, which of course is subjective.
Also, dialogic's support for linux is brand-new, having only been released about 2-3 months ago. VGetty has been doing this stuff virtually unchanged for about 2 years now, by comparison. This is all to say nothing about the extreme hassle of learning dialogic's C API versus 4 function calls in perl with the Modem::VGetty module.
Although I do concede that if you do plan to house a VERY large music server (say, 256-1024 lines) your best bet will always be the professional IVR boards like the ones Dialogic makes. However, something tells me TMBG's dial-a-song is a little more underground in their funding/interest.;)
I've done a dial-in mp3 server with vgetty before. You typed in the first 4 digits of the band's name, then it used Viavoice Outloud to generate a band list, then you chose the right band, then it would tell you the available songs, then you chose a song, and then it streamed the mp3 out of the phone. It's very trivial to implement. It's a $10 voice modem off eBay, a spare pentium, and 2 hours installing vgetty and writing a 100-line perl script.
If anyone is serious about wanting to do it this way I can provide assistance: bmetz (@) yahoo.com
What's the story on that? From the sound of it, the "GNOME Good 'ol Boys" have already made up their mind about some key GNOME decisions, so why are we even bothering pretending this is gonna be a democratic process? I'm confused about how the role of the GNOME Foundation mixes with the private core developer mailing list mentioned in this article.
I felt people were making the comparison by the stereotype of closed source projects shipping whenever it was in the best interests of the company versus open source's historical "when it's done" ship date. I think a lot of people consider Red Hat 7 to have been knowingly shipped prematurely. I'm not saying I agree, but that is what I gleaned from the discussions that have unfolded on slashdot.
We're still with you, Bob. We believe Red Hat will stay open source and give us power to control our own software. But a lot of people felt profit was driving this release, and that's a small step down the road to the dark side.
All across the country, people with more desire to be different than actual business knowledge are starting companies with this too-hip-for-you attitude. I'm sick of hearing about companies that refuse to follow normal business structures ("I'm not a boss, I'm a team coordinator") pull this crap and then wonder why they fall on their face when the VC runs out.
Big companies don't use cubicles and prefab offices for some evil corporate keep-down-the-worker-bee agenda. They use them because they keep people productive and sane. 9 times out of 10, those 'cool' offices you hear about end up being nothing more than a novelty that soon wears off when you remember just because you work in a bright happy shiny office doesn't mean you aren't working. And then you are left with an office that distracts the mind and just plain isn't designed to get work done.
I've personally caught people breaking into my machines with software I wrote that they wouldn't ever think to check for. I have no doubt that security through obscurity works in the real world, where 99% of the attacks people get are from people who figured out how to break into people's machines by reading the INSTALL file of some gnu-autoconf-powered-auto-think-for-them package. If you happened to be running Red Hat lately, you might have noticed that barring an update of your FTP server software you are vulnerable to a very bad security hole. I know 3 people who have had their machines broken into in this way. Do you think every time it was someone with a deep knowledge of how to detect buffer overflows? Of course not! Someone audited wuftpd's source code, found a security hole, and some guy made an automated solution for lazy people to use. Does obscurity give you the ability to be secure without properly thinking through all your protocol designs and security procedures? Of course not. But in the real world, where I happen to live, it will save your ass much more often than it will burn you. So if you are tired of getting broken into, write something weird on your own nobody in their right mind could figure out without your help, and keep your mouth shut about it.
Napster will (and from what I hear, is about to deploy) have technology to filter out losers who pull stuff like this. It's just a matter of establishing who is a trustable source of music and who isn't.
First and foremost: USB, USB, USB. You will regret it if you go for a camera that uses a serial link to connect to your computer. Your only hope then is usually a CompactFlash card reader that you can hook up to your PC/laptop.
Speaking of CompactFlash, the camera you're looking at uses it, right? Unless you enjoy proprietary ripoff memory you want to stick to CF memory. Besides, if you ever feel the urge, IBM's MicroDrive is CompactFlash..how does a 340 meg hard drive sound in your camera?
Another big issue is Linux compatibility. Your first stop is to www.gphoto.org to check their list of supported camera models. Their list is NOT the definitive list, however! If you can put up with closed-source software, JCam (www.jcam.com) has a huge list of supported cameras.
And one last note..the Kodak guys have been VERY nice to me and from the sound of it most other vendors have been pretty secretive about their specs/transfer protocols. If you want to support companies that treat you right, keep the linux-friendly-support factor in mind.
It gets clearer and clearer to me every day that Slashdot is practicallg BEGGING for someone to compete with them. Where else could you laugh in the face of 'the customer is always right' for so long like this and still stay in business?
Doesn't this sound a little old? I think I've heard the "500 billion trillion gigabytes per square millimeter cube" thing one too many times. Has one of these technologies ever seen the light of day? What makes everyone so certain this will, either?
Anyway, back in reality, I'll stick to getting excited about actual product shipments.
Get a faster machine. After you get a really fast box there really isn't any need to worry about the performance of the desktop. Bzzt, unacceptable. Try again. I know the last person who said this got moderated down to zero, but I totally agree: if one (x) is slower on your machine than another (x), then it's the (x)'s fault, not your machine's fault. Think third world, think poor college student. Not everyone can just wait until they have enough money to buy another computer. Most people have to deal with what they have right now for at least a few years. If you're gonna take the attitude "well if your machine can't handle our desktop, then we don't want you," then you're just driving that user into Microsoft's welcoming arms.
Slashdot Mirror
You are extremely mistaken if you think oil companies could charge 80 cents a gallon. Now, OPEC countries might be able to if it felt like, but the oil companies of the world are forced to buy crude at market price. Some oil companies drill for oil in small quantities, but for all practical purposes they have virtually no input into the price of their own product. And don't laugh away the cost of shipping oil from Kuwait to Chicago. By the time the product gets to a gas station, they can only mark it up something like 1.5-2.5 cents a gallon.
Ever wonder why all gas stations seem to have a mini mart lately? It's their only opportunity to grow their business model in the tight profit margins of the oil business.
Not that I disagree with your general point, but don't just add on something you feel like saying without knowing what you're talking about.
http://www.yellow5.com/pokey/ and since pokey is updated about once a month these days, keep an eye on: http://www.bitterfilms.com/anesthetics.html for pokey-meets-redmeat fun.
Here. In terms of code, this is how a start up runs:
if (Money Out > Money In && Stupid_Venture_Capitalists == 0)
decrease_money_out();
else
buy_superbowl_ads();
They even have a full set of linux drivers on their page! Stop giving money to companies that obviously aren't willing to work for it. Iomega is. Hell, if you look in the credits on the player, the Red Hat logo comes up ;)
PS: Search the Ogg Vorbis mailing lists for 'hipzip'. You'll find that they have a beta version of their player firmware that supports Ogg Vorbis as well!
s-video is NOT digital. It simply splits the analog signals in a different way to help minimize distortion compared with RCA or coax.
No Patrick Stewart!
The speed of life is a bitch, ain't it?
I agree that dialogic boards are excellent pieces of hardware with great output clarity (something like 16 bit 32kHz last I looked), and the intuitive thing to say is that a $10 rockwell generic voice modem will sound like crap, but I can say from _actual experience_ that MP3's played through the 8-bit 8000Hz rockwell modem interface actually sound surprisingly good. I suspect that having a clear 32khz output of a dialogic automatically compressed down by the phone company's hardware to 9.6kHz isn't as clear as me using sox's highest quality rate change algorithm to go from 44.1khz down to 8000Hz. I've shown my demo off to a number of friends and co-workers and they agreed it sounded a little too good for a generic modem. In any case, you're talking a huge jump in cost(5x at the low end of dialogic's products) for perhaps a 15-30% increase in quality, which of course is subjective.
;)
Also, dialogic's support for linux is brand-new, having only been released about 2-3 months ago. VGetty has been doing this stuff virtually unchanged for about 2 years now, by comparison. This is all to say nothing about the extreme hassle of learning dialogic's C API versus 4 function calls in perl with the Modem::VGetty module.
Although I do concede that if you do plan to house a VERY large music server (say, 256-1024 lines) your best bet will always be the professional IVR boards like the ones Dialogic makes. However, something tells me TMBG's dial-a-song is a little more underground in their funding/interest.
I've done a dial-in mp3 server with vgetty before. You typed in the first 4 digits of the band's name, then it used Viavoice Outloud to generate a band list, then you chose the right band, then it would tell you the available songs, then you chose a song, and then it streamed the mp3 out of the phone. It's very trivial to implement. It's a $10 voice modem off eBay, a spare pentium, and 2 hours installing vgetty and writing a 100-line perl script.
If anyone is serious about wanting to do it this way I can provide assistance: bmetz (@) yahoo.com
LET US HAVE FUN AND LEARNING IN THE ARTIC CIRCLE
Did you know: Slashdot's lameness filter
10 Sin
20 Go To Hell
sorry Futurama eating away at my brain
LWN highlighted an article that I'm surprised didn't get posted to slashdot:
http://www. zdn et.com/enterprise/stories/main/0,10228,2644950,00. html
What's the story on that? From the sound of it, the "GNOME Good 'ol Boys" have already made up their mind about some key GNOME decisions, so why are we even bothering pretending this is gonna be a democratic process? I'm confused about how the role of the GNOME Foundation mixes with the private core developer mailing list mentioned in this article.
I felt people were making the comparison by the stereotype of closed source projects shipping whenever it was in the best interests of the company versus open source's historical "when it's done" ship date. I think a lot of people consider Red Hat 7 to have been knowingly shipped prematurely. I'm not saying I agree, but that is what I gleaned from the discussions that have unfolded on slashdot.
We're still with you, Bob. We believe Red Hat will stay open source and give us power to control our own software. But a lot of people felt profit was driving this release, and that's a small step down the road to the dark side.
If you're miffed, try using ShowStopper : a free PTV system for your computer. And it works well, even in its beta state.
As I understood it, Glide was already out the door.
Yeah, obscuring your identity on domain records is great and all..
Until someone takes your domain and you can't prove you used to own it.
IMNSHO, you can't hide from legal stuff. So don't bother trying, it'll only make things worse.
Yet _another_ reason I will be ignoring Intel's offerings next time I buy a CPU.
Big companies don't use cubicles and prefab offices for some evil corporate keep-down-the-worker-bee agenda. They use them because they keep people productive and sane. 9 times out of 10, those 'cool' offices you hear about end up being nothing more than a novelty that soon wears off when you remember just because you work in a bright happy shiny office doesn't mean you aren't working. And then you are left with an office that distracts the mind and just plain isn't designed to get work done.
I've personally caught people breaking into my machines with software I wrote that they wouldn't ever think to check for. I have no doubt that security through obscurity works in the real world, where 99% of the attacks people get are from people who figured out how to break into people's machines by reading the INSTALL file of some gnu-autoconf-powered-auto-think-for-them package. If you happened to be running Red Hat lately, you might have noticed that barring an update of your FTP server software you are vulnerable to a very bad security hole. I know 3 people who have had their machines broken into in this way. Do you think every time it was someone with a deep knowledge of how to detect buffer overflows? Of course not! Someone audited wuftpd's source code, found a security hole, and some guy made an automated solution for lazy people to use. Does obscurity give you the ability to be secure without properly thinking through all your protocol designs and security procedures? Of course not. But in the real world, where I happen to live, it will save your ass much more often than it will burn you. So if you are tired of getting broken into, write something weird on your own nobody in their right mind could figure out without your help, and keep your mouth shut about it.
Napster will (and from what I hear, is about to deploy) have technology to filter out losers who pull stuff like this. It's just a matter of establishing who is a trustable source of music and who isn't.
The answer's simple: A redundant website!
First and foremost: USB, USB, USB. You will regret
it if you go for a camera that uses a serial link
to connect to your computer. Your only hope then
is usually a CompactFlash card reader that you can
hook up to your PC/laptop.
Speaking of CompactFlash, the camera you're looking at uses it, right? Unless you enjoy proprietary ripoff memory you want to stick to
CF memory. Besides, if you ever feel the urge,
IBM's MicroDrive is CompactFlash..how does a
340 meg hard drive sound in your camera?
Another big issue is Linux compatibility. Your
first stop is to www.gphoto.org to check their
list of supported camera models. Their list is
NOT the definitive list, however! If you can put
up with closed-source software, JCam (www.jcam.com) has a huge list of supported cameras.
And one last note..the Kodak guys have been VERY
nice to me and from the sound of it most other
vendors have been pretty secretive about their
specs/transfer protocols. If you want to support companies that treat you right, keep the linux-friendly-support factor in mind.
Typical behavior of a monopoly, if you ask me.
It gets clearer and clearer to me every day that
Slashdot is practicallg BEGGING for someone to
compete with them. Where else could you laugh in
the face of 'the customer is always right' for
so long like this and still stay in business?
Anyway, back in reality, I'll stick to getting excited about actual product shipments.
Get a faster machine. After you get a really fast box there really isn't any need to worry about the performance of the desktop. Bzzt, unacceptable. Try again. I know the last person who said this got moderated down to zero, but I totally agree: if one (x) is slower on your machine than another (x), then it's the (x)'s fault, not your machine's fault. Think third world, think poor college student. Not everyone can just wait until they have enough money to buy another computer. Most people have to deal with what they have right now for at least a few years. If you're gonna take the attitude "well if your machine can't handle our desktop, then we don't want you," then you're just driving that user into Microsoft's welcoming arms.