Fahrenheit 9/11 suggests that at least part of the motivation of the attack on Afghanistan was to lay a natural gas pipeline.
The entire film portrays Bush as a businessman, more interested in money than anything else, and draws ties between the gas pipeline and Bush's own business interests.
Are you sure we saw the same film?
The film also pointed out the Bin Laden family members flown out of the USA despite the FAA's grounding of flights in the days that followed 9/11. Oh and let's not forget how much time was allowed for Osama himself to escape Afghanistan before any bombs were dropped. Smoked out of his cave, indeed.
Interestingly, most "masters" are at least 24 bit, 96 kHz (and in the future we could see 32 bit, 192 kHz become more common). This must be downsampled to 44.1 kHz and reduced to 16-bit resolution for CD.
While "encoding to PCM" is a misleading choice of words, if going to a lossy format it is much better to encode directly from the higher-resolution master in one step than it is to first reduce to CD resolution and THEN encode to AAC/MP3/OGG/whatever.
This is probably what makes those 128-bit Apple AAC's sound so good.
What counts as a browser accessing google? Does that mean that the browser loaded the Google home page, or that the browser loaded *any* page from the Google site... ? Or the browser executed a search?
Since the introduction of Safari (I guess that's about a year ago?), Macs should load roughly 50% fewer pages from Google, because you can enter a search string right in the browser without having to load the Google home page.
Of particular interest to audio professionals, this update includes native mLAN support.
mLAN is a standard developed by Yamaha which allows lots of audio and MIDI info to travel over FireWire.
Yamaha's hottest new box, the 01X, has been without OS X drivers since it began shipping a month ago, and as of today it will finally work (in theory anyway)...
Of course time will tell how effective this new version of mLAN will be in terms of latency and stability. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some downloading to do!
That sounds right. It would certainly explain why offboard analyzers such as the Cadex unit I referred to seems to have trouble reading Li-ion batteries, because there is always a little circuit board in the battery pack with an IC on it... it probably fools the analyzer a lot of the time because it prevents it from seeing the cells directly.
Another interesting factoid: Lithium based cells are 3.6 volts, while NiCD and NiMH are 1.2 volts. Why ask why?:)
Where I work I need to know a lot about rechargeable batteries. My impression of Li-ion / Li-Polymer is that they don't mind having a "float charge" at all... what the previous posts fail to mention is that for safety reasons, all Li-based chargers are intelligent enough to not overcharge the batteries (except cheap offshore chargers and car adapters, but you won't likely find anything like that for your ipod). In other words, I believe it is safe to leave an ipod plugged in indefinitely.
We picked up a battery analyzer from Cadex, which is really cool, and I use it every day.
But the really cool thing is that the charger came with a little paperback book called "Batteries in a Portable World", which offers a lot of insight into varying battery chemistries, even though it is sort of a pitch for Cadex products.
Nevertheless there is an online version of this book. Go to chapter 2 and read up! There is some very valuable battery maintenance info in there -- if you own a single rechargeable battery it is a very good read. (The website asks for your email address, but you can probably just use a fake one).
There's a point to it though, you see: so often a small problem gets blown out of proportion when a very small number of people raise a really big stink. $99 is not bad for a complete battery replacement in a shop, particularly when the battery can reasonably be expected to last 2-3 years.
It's not like everybody's battery went at the same time. iPod battery failures are in fact just beginning to trickle in, and Apple for the first few weeks (?) just didn't have their shit together on the phone support end.
Remember as well that the earliest iPods were Mac-only. Those early Apple product adopters are people who are probably creative/artsy/subversive types who have all the tools (and a little pizzazz) at their disposal to create a well-produced video such as "iPods Dirty Secret", which has fast action, good camera work and catchy music - just enough to capture the eyes and ears of net junkies and the press.
People are here saying "my iPod is x years old and is still working fine" are basically saying that there is no real problem. Li-Ion batteries typically last 2-3 years in normal use. When my iPod battery fails to hold a charge I will replace it myself. It's not rocket science. If there's anything else wrong with it I'll send it to Apple, because they will replace the whole unit for the price of a battery replacement!
BTW that sucks about your PowerBook battery, but 3 years is a reasonable amount of time for your battery to last. You did opt for the 3-year AppleCare on your PowerBook, right??? FWIW there are a few aftermarket batteries available for a little less than Apple's asking price.
One one hand you're saying you'd like Apple to hold off on releasing security patches so that they come out at the same time as other stuff to save you having to reboot your machine.
On the other hand you're saying that you have Software Update checking for updates every day. And you don't want to set it to every week (or every month) because you want to stay current.
I say bite the bullet, Einstein! Set your software update to once a week. Let Apple release updates on their own schedule. Trust me -- it is better for the world when Apple releases updates as they are developed. Stop wasting your bandwidth, as well as Apple's (and Slashdot's).
There are relatively few case mods for Apple stuff compared to the gawdy peecee stuff like neon lights and case windows.
I have owned several Macs, since long before they started coming in coloured plastic/metal textures. Remember when Macs were beige boxes? While I do love the look of new Apple products, it is not the reason I buy and use them.
With regards to your remark about the G5 look being only "necessary" because the CPUs get so hot, I disagree - or at least I don't understand where you are coming from. I could say that the look of a snazzy streamlined sports car is only "necessary" because if it was boxy it would not be aerodynamic... but that would not negate the fact that the streamlined car could look beautiful (think Sebring) or could look ridiculous (think Sunfire).
As a side note: I can think of two Apple case mods so far on/. (iBook and G4), and both were appallingly ugly in my opinion. This Cube with G5 motif is the best looking Apple mod I've ever seen, by leaps and bounds. It's the first one I've liked.
- Steve.
p.s. Sorry Sunfire owners - I know, I know... I'm an insensitive clod:)
There is no doubt that Apple pays really close attention to function and aesthetics in their product design. The G5 enclosure and internal layout is simply awesome - one only needs to look at the Bill Noll G5 photo gallery (posted a few months ago on slashdot) to realize that this is simply one of the most beautiful personal computers ever to exist.
Still, I wonder about a few things -- most specifically the large number of fans and the 3-zone cooling. I don't personally own a G5 and have never seen one outside of a store so I can't really vouch for how loud or quiet it is, so G5 owners -- how are you finding the noise level? Do you find that the fans ramp up very often, and if they do, do you notice a big difference in volume?
Also, I'd like to see some real rationality about that 3-zone cooling system... obviously the PPC 970 runs hot, but how hot does it run compared to a modern Pentium / Xeon / Athlon processor? Would the x86 boxes benefit from that kind of enclosure as well? Are we likely to see the "multiple zone" principle copied into cheap Wintel enclosures?
I'm not doubting Apple, but I wonder about the validity of the G5 cooling design. I'd like to read some/. opinions as to whether it's overkill, or if it's truly revolutionary, or if perhaps there might be a better approach.
You have a good point, but I think the law is even more tricky here:
Parking (and in some areas photo-radar) are considered the most petty of offences, such that no permanent record needs to be kept. So in this case just bill the vehicle owner and let him sort it out with whoever was driving his car. Simple.
Moving violations are another matter, though, because generally this will go down on a permanent record, and you will lose your licence after enough of them. So in these cases it is the driver of the vehicle, not the owner, who commits an offence.
More complex? Consider narcotics. Let's say you and I are driving around one day in my car and you inadvertently forget and leave your stash in my glovebox. The next day I lend my car to my sister, who gets pulled over (or tries to cross the border) and the car gets searched. The authorities find the drugs. Who is guilty of possession? Is it (a) the vehicle owner, (b) the owner of the substances, or (c) your sister?
For those just joining this thread, is the guilty party in the case of these lawsuits: (a) the PC owner, (b) the person who bought and ripped the music in the first place, or (c) the person downloading via Kaazaa? Yes (b) and (c) are often the same people, but they don't have to be! What has to be proven to the court?
I accidentally modded you down when I meant to mod you up as "insightful". I think my scrollwheel must have changed the option when I wasn't looking at it.
By posting in this topic my mistaken moderation should be undone.
Anyway, somebody has to be plugged into your LAN before they can take advantage of this security hole, i.e. they must be on your subnet. If you are behind a NAT device you are safe, unless somebody can get in via wireless or by plugging in.
Yep. Forgive me for not hunting for backup documentation, but I'm lazy.
This stuff was all described as part of the upcoming "Copland" at right around the same time Be came to, uh, be. It's worth noting that Be was the brainchild of a former top-level Apple development guy (Jean-Louis Gasse).
Personally I've never used BeOS, but also don't forget that it came out first for PowerPC hardware - gee I wonder why.
However, it seems like one of the big things in Longhorn will be the WinFS--which I understand to the the database-as-a-filesystem. Yes, I think I've read that Be did something like this, but I'm betting M$ will take it further... That's a great idea: why should I care where I save things? Why can't I have a NASA movie clip from the Galileo mission appear when I'm looking thru my movies (next to whatever Simpsons clips or whatever else) and when I'm looking thru my space files (next to images or articles)?
For the record: this was Apple's vaporware long before it was Microsoft's vaporware. You see, the successor to classic Mac OS was to be Copland, which (among many other things) promised saved searches.
Naturally the OS would come bundled with certain saved searches, which would essentially open up from your desktop just like folders.
One such example might be "open a window with a list of files I can open using QuickTime player which contain video and are greater than 10 megs in size".
Alas, Copland never came to be, but we still haven't seen Longhorn yet either! Longhorn already borrows from Mac OS X concepts, and we have seen Mac OS X borrow stuff from Windows too. It ain't over, not by a longshot.
Slashdot Mirror
"Middle mouse button" (often pressing scroll wheel) opens link in a new tab. Works in Safari, too.
Fahrenheit 9/11 suggests that at least part of the motivation of the attack on Afghanistan was to lay a natural gas pipeline.
The entire film portrays Bush as a businessman, more interested in money than anything else, and draws ties between the gas pipeline and Bush's own business interests.
Are you sure we saw the same film?
The film also pointed out the Bin Laden family members flown out of the USA despite the FAA's grounding of flights in the days that followed 9/11. Oh and let's not forget how much time was allowed for Osama himself to escape Afghanistan before any bombs were dropped. Smoked out of his cave, indeed.
Interestingly, most "masters" are at least 24 bit, 96 kHz (and in the future we could see 32 bit, 192 kHz become more common). This must be downsampled to 44.1 kHz and reduced to 16-bit resolution for CD.
While "encoding to PCM" is a misleading choice of words, if going to a lossy format it is much better to encode directly from the higher-resolution master in one step than it is to first reduce to CD resolution and THEN encode to AAC/MP3/OGG/whatever.
This is probably what makes those 128-bit Apple AAC's sound so good.
Good call. That's exactly the type of thing it's meant for.
What counts as a browser accessing google? Does that mean that the browser loaded the Google home page, or that the browser loaded *any* page from the Google site... ? Or the browser executed a search?
Since the introduction of Safari (I guess that's about a year ago?), Macs should load roughly 50% fewer pages from Google, because you can enter a search string right in the browser without having to load the Google home page.
have you got a link to any good pr0n?
Another great site with up-to-date user reports is www.macintouch.com
Of particular interest to audio professionals, this update includes native mLAN support.
mLAN is a standard developed by Yamaha which allows lots of audio and MIDI info to travel over FireWire.
Yamaha's hottest new box, the 01X, has been without OS X drivers since it began shipping a month ago, and as of today it will finally work (in theory anyway)...
Of course time will tell how effective this new version of mLAN will be in terms of latency and stability. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some downloading to do!
Apple will announce a mini-iPod. It will be crippled compared to standard iPods in that it will only play .AAC files.
That sounds right. It would certainly explain why offboard analyzers such as the Cadex unit I referred to seems to have trouble reading Li-ion batteries, because there is always a little circuit board in the battery pack with an IC on it... it probably fools the analyzer a lot of the time because it prevents it from seeing the cells directly.
:)
Another interesting factoid: Lithium based cells are 3.6 volts, while NiCD and NiMH are 1.2 volts. Why ask why?
Cheers -- happy new year.
Or worse, it will start chasing around a kid named Oliver Wendell Jones...
Where I work I need to know a lot about rechargeable batteries. My impression of Li-ion / Li-Polymer is that they don't mind having a "float charge" at all... what the previous posts fail to mention is that for safety reasons, all Li-based chargers are intelligent enough to not overcharge the batteries (except cheap offshore chargers and car adapters, but you won't likely find anything like that for your ipod). In other words, I believe it is safe to leave an ipod plugged in indefinitely.
We picked up a battery analyzer from Cadex, which is really cool, and I use it every day.
But the really cool thing is that the charger came with a little paperback book called "Batteries in a Portable World", which offers a lot of insight into varying battery chemistries, even though it is sort of a pitch for Cadex products.
Nevertheless there is an online version of this book. Go to chapter 2 and read up! There is some very valuable battery maintenance info in there -- if you own a single rechargeable battery it is a very good read. (The website asks for your email address, but you can probably just use a fake one).
There's a point to it though, you see: so often a small problem gets blown out of proportion when a very small number of people raise a really big stink. $99 is not bad for a complete battery replacement in a shop, particularly when the battery can reasonably be expected to last 2-3 years.
It's not like everybody's battery went at the same time. iPod battery failures are in fact just beginning to trickle in, and Apple for the first few weeks (?) just didn't have their shit together on the phone support end.
Remember as well that the earliest iPods were Mac-only. Those early Apple product adopters are people who are probably creative/artsy/subversive types who have all the tools (and a little pizzazz) at their disposal to create a well-produced video such as "iPods Dirty Secret", which has fast action, good camera work and catchy music - just enough to capture the eyes and ears of net junkies and the press.
People are here saying "my iPod is x years old and is still working fine" are basically saying that there is no real problem. Li-Ion batteries typically last 2-3 years in normal use. When my iPod battery fails to hold a charge I will replace it myself. It's not rocket science. If there's anything else wrong with it I'll send it to Apple, because they will replace the whole unit for the price of a battery replacement!
BTW that sucks about your PowerBook battery, but 3 years is a reasonable amount of time for your battery to last. You did opt for the 3-year AppleCare on your PowerBook, right??? FWIW there are a few aftermarket batteries available for a little less than Apple's asking price.
Um, how old are you?
One one hand you're saying you'd like Apple to hold off on releasing security patches so that they come out at the same time as other stuff to save you having to reboot your machine.
On the other hand you're saying that you have Software Update checking for updates every day. And you don't want to set it to every week (or every month) because you want to stay current.
I say bite the bullet, Einstein! Set your software update to once a week. Let Apple release updates on their own schedule. Trust me -- it is better for the world when Apple releases updates as they are developed. Stop wasting your bandwidth, as well as Apple's (and Slashdot's).
There are relatively few case mods for Apple stuff compared to the gawdy peecee stuff like neon lights and case windows.
/. (iBook and G4), and both were appallingly ugly in my opinion. This Cube with G5 motif is the best looking Apple mod I've ever seen, by leaps and bounds. It's the first one I've liked.
:)
I have owned several Macs, since long before they started coming in coloured plastic/metal textures. Remember when Macs were beige boxes? While I do love the look of new Apple products, it is not the reason I buy and use them.
With regards to your remark about the G5 look being only "necessary" because the CPUs get so hot, I disagree - or at least I don't understand where you are coming from. I could say that the look of a snazzy streamlined sports car is only "necessary" because if it was boxy it would not be aerodynamic... but that would not negate the fact that the streamlined car could look beautiful (think Sebring) or could look ridiculous (think Sunfire).
As a side note: I can think of two Apple case mods so far on
- Steve.
p.s. Sorry Sunfire owners - I know, I know... I'm an insensitive clod
There is no doubt that Apple pays really close attention to function and aesthetics in their product design. The G5 enclosure and internal layout is simply awesome - one only needs to look at the Bill Noll G5 photo gallery (posted a few months ago on slashdot) to realize that this is simply one of the most beautiful personal computers ever to exist.
/. opinions as to whether it's overkill, or if it's truly revolutionary, or if perhaps there might be a better approach.
Still, I wonder about a few things -- most specifically the large number of fans and the 3-zone cooling. I don't personally own a G5 and have never seen one outside of a store so I can't really vouch for how loud or quiet it is, so G5 owners -- how are you finding the noise level? Do you find that the fans ramp up very often, and if they do, do you notice a big difference in volume?
Also, I'd like to see some real rationality about that 3-zone cooling system... obviously the PPC 970 runs hot, but how hot does it run compared to a modern Pentium / Xeon / Athlon processor? Would the x86 boxes benefit from that kind of enclosure as well? Are we likely to see the "multiple zone" principle copied into cheap Wintel enclosures?
I'm not doubting Apple, but I wonder about the validity of the G5 cooling design. I'd like to read some
Thoughts??
Yes! It is a fun thing, because you chose (c)... the driver. Not the owner, and not the offender - merely the operator.
So is file sharing different here? How does one prove who was using the computer at the time files were being illegally shared?
Doesn't SCO have a patent on this?
You have a good point, but I think the law is even more tricky here:
Parking (and in some areas photo-radar) are considered the most petty of offences, such that no permanent record needs to be kept. So in this case just bill the vehicle owner and let him sort it out with whoever was driving his car. Simple.
Moving violations are another matter, though, because generally this will go down on a permanent record, and you will lose your licence after enough of them. So in these cases it is the driver of the vehicle, not the owner, who commits an offence.
More complex? Consider narcotics. Let's say you and I are driving around one day in my car and you inadvertently forget and leave your stash in my glovebox. The next day I lend my car to my sister, who gets pulled over (or tries to cross the border) and the car gets searched. The authorities find the drugs. Who is guilty of possession? Is it (a) the vehicle owner, (b) the owner of the substances, or (c) your sister?
For those just joining this thread, is the guilty party in the case of these lawsuits: (a) the PC owner, (b) the person who bought and ripped the music in the first place, or (c) the person downloading via Kaazaa? Yes (b) and (c) are often the same people, but they don't have to be! What has to be proven to the court?
I accidentally modded you down when I meant to mod you up as "insightful". I think my scrollwheel must have changed the option when I wasn't looking at it.
By posting in this topic my mistaken moderation should be undone.
"Hundreds of Macs"? Um, troll much?
Anyway, somebody has to be plugged into your LAN before they can take advantage of this security hole, i.e. they must be on your subnet. If you are behind a NAT device you are safe, unless somebody can get in via wireless or by plugging in.
I'm not worried.
Apparently the guy from 419eaters did just that... it really is a nicely put together site, and links directly to this.
Yep. Forgive me for not hunting for backup documentation, but I'm lazy.
This stuff was all described as part of the upcoming "Copland" at right around the same time Be came to, uh, be. It's worth noting that Be was the brainchild of a former top-level Apple development guy (Jean-Louis Gasse).
Personally I've never used BeOS, but also don't forget that it came out first for PowerPC hardware - gee I wonder why.
For the record: this was Apple's vaporware long before it was Microsoft's vaporware. You see, the successor to classic Mac OS was to be Copland, which (among many other things) promised saved searches.
Naturally the OS would come bundled with certain saved searches, which would essentially open up from your desktop just like folders.
One such example might be "open a window with a list of files I can open using QuickTime player which contain video and are greater than 10 megs in size".
Alas, Copland never came to be, but we still haven't seen Longhorn yet either! Longhorn already borrows from Mac OS X concepts, and we have seen Mac OS X borrow stuff from Windows too. It ain't over, not by a longshot.
You should check out Akbar & Jeff's *DIPLOMACY HUT*!