Keep in mind that no new DVD disc format can carry the DVD logo without the DVD Forum adding it to the spec.
The Forum has been resistant to significant changes due to consumer confusion and cost issues. Until then, none of the companies can say they are developing a DVD product. They can only say they are developing additional technology that they will submit to the DVD Forum for consideration.
For example, you'll notice that blank DVD+RW cannot legally display the DVD Logo, as the DVD Forum declined to integrate it in to the DVD spec. They control this the same way Phillips controls the CD format.
I agree wholeheartedly.. in the British version, the goal for both teams seems to be "HAVE FUN"...
Contrast this with the American shows, and you see teams almost attacking each other.
I think you've really identified the issue with the American teams. They're often terribly mean spirited compared to the British teams. One of the worst examples was the American cannon challenge with "The Young Guns", one of the worst behaving teams ever fielded. Their comments to the older opposing team were at their best rude, at the worst inflamatory.
Hopefully, this will be produced in England, as the American-based show was terribly lame. The male hosts were terrible and the American teams too, too, how do I say it --- too American! I'm an American and there is nothing worse than watching a bunch of bozos running around "whoop, whooping" and "raising the roof". Ugh! Additionally, it seemed as though many of the challenges were simply rehashes of British shows.
I'm also not looking forward to this new series because I'm not into monster trucks or demolition derbies, which is the crowd this show seems to be targetting.
Actually, one of the most usefull features of DesqView/X was the ability to remotely access serial ports on another machine. I used to work in a customer service group who's application was only avilable via an RS232 connection. Each workstation was limited to two physical serial lines that had been run from X.25 nodes. A number of us installed DV/X and shared our ports out when we weren't working. This allowed you to grab unused remote ports and open 4 or more serial connections with our mainframe apps. Very handy.
I was sad to see Loki closing its doors, but I had expected it for some time. Porting games really means nothing as far as an operating system is concerned. Having read the interview that this article links to, I would agree with the assessment that something like Wine is the worst enemy of Linux.
OS/2 had this very same problem. With the ability to run Windows apps, why would anyone produce native OS/2 software? To be sure, there were several companies that did but all went the way of the dodo (Describe, Inc.) or retargetted for Windows NT when they saw that they could/might make much more money on a Microsoft platform (Stardock).
We only have to look at the recent past to see the results of something like Wine - WordPerfect Office 2000, MusicMatch, etc. which claimed to be "native" Linux apps but were in fact simply Windows apps running under Wine. They were Windows programs that acted like Windows programs. In fact, in the file save/open dialog in WP you had to deal with drive letters!!!
The other problem with Linux as a game system is that the requirement to run the games can sometimes be very specific. For example, many of Loki's games stated that a 3DFx card was required. Even if other cards would work, most purchasers who didn't own a 3DFx would pass on it. Why couldn't the requirements have been a working OpenGL installation. Wouldn't that have made more sense? I personally own GeForce cards and never bought these games because I didn't want to be stuck with something that wouldn't run on my machine.
In any case, should another company come along and try to do Linux games, don't give us something that we've been playing on Windows for two years.
Look to Aspyr who does games for the Mac. In addition to porting some Windows games, the also make several very fun Mac only games. Ottomatic is a prime example of a great Mac only game. We don't have to have first person shooters or grand strategy games. Just give us a robot that protects earthlings from being abducted!
X Files should have been off the air two years ago.
When they announced that Duchovny was leaving, they had a chance to bring some fresh air to the show. Unfortunately, they blew the opportunity by letting Duchovny hang around with Mulder casting a shadow on the last two seasons. Patrick, unfortunately, never really had a chance to do much with his role.
I guess this was a pretty good deal for Duchovny who mistakenly thought he was good enough for movies just because his wooden delivery worked on the small screen. Now without X Files, the frightening thought is that we'll get more Duchovny movies. So long as he sticks with roles like that which he had in Zoolander (the wacky conspiracy nut), he'll be OK.
Katz is correct, in America mediocrity is king. That's why we use VHS instead of Beta, Windows instead of Mac, and drives Ford Escorts instead of Volvos.
I lament this behavior everyday. If people would just stand up for quality, we wouldn't be dealing with the above "popular" products. We would also have movie theatres with properly focused lenses and clean screens.
The goal shouldn't be (as Katz seems to be saying) to emulate mediocre thinking. It should be to develop the technology to a point where it becomes like a portable radio. You turn it on and it does what it's supposed to do.
And, contrary to what Katz thinks, Apple is the only system vendor that is working toward this goal. Microsoft and Compaq and Ford could care less. They just need to sell a lot of what they make. The user experience matters little to most companies.
Apple has certainly had their share of usability snafus (eg. the stupid thumb-wheel volume control in QT4), but generally respond to user input and change these (the volume control in QT5 is now a slider as it should be). Why does Microsoft still have the Start menu? Many studies have shown that it is non-intuitive and even their inhouse GUI guru thinks it was a bad design. The Start menu is still there because Microsoft doesn't care about the user experience.
I'm sorry Jon, I'll take a well designed "cool" product over a lackluster offering any day.
The SuperDrive (Pioneer DVR-A03) handles the following formats:
CD-R
CD-RW
DVD-R
DVD-RW
I'm not sure why Apple doesn't play up the DVD-RW feature, since it's nice to burn a test of your DVD before committing it to a DVD-R.
Note neither iDVD or DVD Studio Pro support DVD-RW. You basically save your DVD to a local drive in DSP and then use Toast to burn the DVD on DVD-RW media. Maybe this is why Apple doesn't talk about it, since their tools don't yet recognize the DVD-RW media as being valid.
Additionally, Apple was smart and is going with the recordable/rewriteable format (DVD-R/DVD-RW) santioned by the DVD Forum. Many of the PC manufacturers are going for the non-endorsed DVD+RW.
Heaven only knows why, since manufacturers won't be required to support the format in order to get the DVD logo licensed (unless and until the DVD Forum is persuaded to adopt an additional write/rewrite standard which is highly unikely). Ie., the discs may play in PC drives, but won't necessarily work in licensed players (particularly set top). If I'm only worried about backups, then DVD+RW has a couple of features that help, but if I'm interested in making standard video DVDs that play on the widest possible range of players, then DVD-R and DVD-RW are the way to go.
DVD-RAM is an even worse proposition, since it is designed for forward compatibility only and concentrates on data storage.
I wouldn't expect anything significant in February re: the G4 towers.
My guess is that we won't have a major tower announcement until the Apple show this summer. At that time, I would expect the G4 towers to become the G5 tower, as Motorola will be ready to ship in quantity during that timeframe. Why spend cycles updating the towers for faster G4s when new G5 models are just around the corner?
Part of the problem is that some devices assume that the '0' always refers to the network itself. Your biggest problem is generally caused by entering a network like 10.0.0.0/24. Some devices inexplicably ignore the netmask and assume you're referring to all the networks in 10.*, rather than just the single "class c" '10.0.0.*'.
Re:Use the correct tool for Copy Protection...
on
New iMac Announced
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· Score: 1
You're correct, there is more control over the encoding rate in DVD Studio Pro, but it is not VBR. It is a straight bitrate that you set. I've encoded three hours of footage for a DVD-R with acceptable results (appr. 2.8 Mbps). Basically, you subtract the size of your menu files (Photoshop format), audio files (compressed with Dolby Digital to save space), etc., from 4700000. The remainder is the space you have left for the encoded video. A couple of simple calculations based on the length of your video footage gives you the highest bitrate you can use and still fit everything.
VBR would be a nice addition to the QuickTime MPEG2 encoder that Apple includes in DSP.
Another item that Apple needs to add is support for DTS audio streams.
Use the correct tool for Copy Protection...
on
New iMac Announced
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Gilmore was not correct (as well as misleading) when he said that the drive prevented you from copy protecting your media. So far as I can tell, it's only with the free iDVD that you can't set these features (MacroVision, CSS, region, etc.)
I own DVD Studio Pro and I have access to all of the features that Gilmore says aren't available.
The main difference between the DVD-R for General and DVD-R for Authoring drives is that the DVD-R for Authoring writes an additional lead-in that is required at the duplication plant. With this extra info on the DVD, a DVD-R can be used as the master rather than a DLT.
Note also that Apple did the right thing by using the Pioneer drive as DVD-R and DVD-RW are the only writeable formats endorsed by the DVD Forum. DVD+R and DVD+RW are not sanctioned.
The author of the article writes
"I'd assume that someone, somewhere, at some point wrote a story about how Momaw was finally allowed back onto his home planet of Ithor."
Hopefully he's wrong, since that would mean Momaw Nadow is most likely a dead man (rather Ithorian), as Ithor was one of the many planets destroyed, or laid waste, by the Yuuzhan Vong.
I have to admit that I agree with part of your statement. There has been a movement over the last 15-20 years to lump science fiction and fantasy together, when they are in fact distinctly different genres. Nothing was more irritating for me than when I subscribed to the Science Fiction Book Club and would end up with some pointless fantasy book (Robert Asprin comes to mind as one of the authors whose fantasy books regularly showed up in the SFBC.)
Book stores have even been shelving the fantasy books in with the SF books for a number of years now. It's really irritating when I'm trying to browse SF and have to pass through three hundred Kor books. I'm sure it's just as aggravating for the fantasy reader.
Why would Star Trek be considered low budget? Its original pilot (The Cage) was one of the most expensive pilots ever given the green light. The second pilot wasn't significantly cheaper. And the first season of the series was very expensive for Desilu. It wasn't until the third season that they were on a woefully limited budget that meant most episodes that season had to take place onboard using the standing sets.
Even the third season looks very good, due to the work of the lighting and camera crews.
I doubt you'll find a show that was costing the studio as much during the same time period.
My group switched to the "binary" nomenclature about two years ago in order to prevent miscommunication with other parts of the company. Each group interpreted MB, GB, etc., differently depending on that their background was.
For some reason, people who grew up in router land use GB to mean 10^6, while most software developers use GB to mean 2^20.
To resolve this, my group prepared a document that explains the use of the binary nomemclature and we refer readers to this base document in all of our prepared documentation. The document also explicitly states what the accepted abbreviations are (KiB, MiB, GiB, etc.). We also explicity define the capital B to mean byte, while a lower case 'b' is a bit. Therefore, Mib means mebibit.
This has reduced confusion to a great amount and now various groups looking at our performance testing results can make an accurate assesment.
There has been a persistent rumor that you were up for the role of Batman before Burton was brought in (and subsequently selected the lamentable Michael Keaton). Is there any truth to this, or was it all wishful thinking on the part of your fans?
How good do you want it?
on
8mm Film Transfer?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
You have several options for doing this. Ranked in order of ascending quality are:
Front project the footage on a screen and record it with a video camera.
Purchase a rear projection film transfer unit (basically a front surface mirror with a condenser lens and frosted screen) and record it wih a video camera.
Have the film transferred by a reputable local processing company using a CCD linked projector.
Have the film tranferred at a professional facility using a flying spot scanner (eg. Rank Cintel).
Options 1 & 2 are avenues of last resort, as they will yield very bad results. In addition to the lack of resolution of most consumer projectors, the flicker will be very noticeable on video since you can't sync most consumer level video equipment to the shutter of consumer projectors.
Option 3 is slightly better because the CCD linked system is synchronized with the shutter and removes the annoying flicker. Transfers are acceptable, though generally soft and the color balance can vary. Note that man camera shops will actually transfer your film using method 2. Don't pay for a service like this.
Option 4 is the best method and obviously the most expensive. Results can be astounding, as most professional transfers include cleaning, splice fixing, color correction, etc. Additionally, they can transfer directly to digital tape (many offer multiple tape formats). I would recommend Pro8mm. They do a great job and the results are spectacular. In fact, their facility is often used to transfer 8mm and Super8mm footage for use on television and in theatrical films. Pro8mm also uses a daVinci unit to handle color correction.
This is one of those things where you definitely get what you pay for.
Hmmm, I work for the largest ACE/Server reseller in the world and our experience with the NT product is that it is significantly more prone to failures than the Solaris product. Try pumping thousands of authentications through as fast as you can and see which one grinds down. Of course, shops willing to run Windows for mission critical servers aren't terribly worried about performance in any case, so I guess it's a wash.
The only problem with sdadmin on Solaris is that whoever designed it assumed you would have a screen 50 rows long. Fortunately, the only thing missing from sdadmin are the time-based authentication settings.
The web-based admin tool was a major disappointment for us, as it is primarily just a help desk level "add/remove users" tool. It certainly isn't the "you'll be able to do everything you can do with the GUI" tool that RSA promised.
Frankly, the RSA ACE/Server (SecurID tokens) is about the best there is. Additionally, the newest versions include a Linux client that can be integrated into a Linux system via PAM, which should mean you can token authenticate just about anything PAM handles.
Drawbacks to ACE/Server include:
No Linux server
Do not use the Windows-based server. It is terribly unstable compared to the Solaris version, but what else is new.
Solaris admin tool (sdadmin) no longer fully controls the ACE/Server Solaris product. For full administration, you must use a Windows-based GUI. Ugh!
Price
The odd thing we've seen is that many companies are getting rid of their token-based systems and moving to static password protected certificates in a PKI scenario. For some reason, they think the static password is more secure than a token!
Nomad: No Firewire, enormous form factor - lame.
on
Apple releases iPod
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· Score: 1
Aside from the usual pointless editorial comments, Taco's comments don't make any sense. Does the Nomad have some type of wireless module? Not that I can find. Additionally, the form factor of the nomad makes it virtually useless as a "portable" MP3 player.
As for the storage size, big deal. The need to use USB makes the storage space irrelevant. At the blazing 3.2Mbps provided by the Nomad's USB port, it would take you about, oh, 15 hours to load it. Sounds like a fun time. If they weren't stuck in the past and condescended to give their users a modern connection like IEEE1394, it would only take about 6 minutes load their drive.
I think Apple has reached a good compromise in size versus storage. The use of Firewire makes sense because the Apple platform is basically built around Firewire. Also, it's getting tough to find a new Intel system without IEEE1394 ports. Every PC vendor wants to be part of the digital production movement, and that can't be done without IEEE1394.
All that being said, it would behoove Apple to ensure that people using PCs can use the iPod. It may be as simple as plugging it in to your PC-based IEEE1394 port and copying your MP3s to it with a simple drag and drop operation.
I'm pretty tired of Slashdot's constant editorial asides. If you don't think it matters, CmdrTaco, why bother to post it?
I thought this was news for nerds, not CmdrTaco's Soapbox. Maybe it's time to add someone to the Slashdot team that can evaluate news stories that don't have anything to do with CmdrTaco's favorite subjects. Maybe they would have a better chance of being posted without the pithy remarks.
If you didn't enoy the jiggle factor of Voyager, give this one a pass. It bears even less relation to the original Star Trek than the previous series have had and there was a pointless "ointment" scene that definitely places this series in the T&A column.
In fact, about the only thing this series will be good for is as a lead in to SU2.
Frankly, ext3 is the better thought out of the journalling filesystems for Linux, simply because you can turn it on or off, just like logging on Solaris.
Slashdot Mirror
The Forum has been resistant to significant changes due to consumer confusion and cost issues. Until then, none of the companies can say they are developing a DVD product. They can only say they are developing additional technology that they will submit to the DVD Forum for consideration.
For example, you'll notice that blank DVD+RW cannot legally display the DVD Logo, as the DVD Forum declined to integrate it in to the DVD spec. They control this the same way Phillips controls the CD format.
I think you've really identified the issue with the American teams. They're often terribly mean spirited compared to the British teams. One of the worst examples was the American cannon challenge with "The Young Guns", one of the worst behaving teams ever fielded. Their comments to the older opposing team were at their best rude, at the worst inflamatory.
I'm also not looking forward to this new series because I'm not into monster trucks or demolition derbies, which is the crowd this show seems to be targetting.
Actually, one of the most usefull features of DesqView/X was the ability to remotely access serial ports on another machine. I used to work in a customer service group who's application was only avilable via an RS232 connection. Each workstation was limited to two physical serial lines that had been run from X.25 nodes. A number of us installed DV/X and shared our ports out when we weren't working. This allowed you to grab unused remote ports and open 4 or more serial connections with our mainframe apps. Very handy.
OS/2 had this very same problem. With the ability to run Windows apps, why would anyone produce native OS/2 software? To be sure, there were several companies that did but all went the way of the dodo (Describe, Inc.) or retargetted for Windows NT when they saw that they could/might make much more money on a Microsoft platform (Stardock).
We only have to look at the recent past to see the results of something like Wine - WordPerfect Office 2000, MusicMatch, etc. which claimed to be "native" Linux apps but were in fact simply Windows apps running under Wine. They were Windows programs that acted like Windows programs. In fact, in the file save/open dialog in WP you had to deal with drive letters !!!
The other problem with Linux as a game system is that the requirement to run the games can sometimes be very specific. For example, many of Loki's games stated that a 3DFx card was required. Even if other cards would work, most purchasers who didn't own a 3DFx would pass on it. Why couldn't the requirements have been a working OpenGL installation. Wouldn't that have made more sense? I personally own GeForce cards and never bought these games because I didn't want to be stuck with something that wouldn't run on my machine.
In any case, should another company come along and try to do Linux games, don't give us something that we've been playing on Windows for two years.
Look to Aspyr who does games for the Mac. In addition to porting some Windows games, the also make several very fun Mac only games. Ottomatic is a prime example of a great Mac only game. We don't have to have first person shooters or grand strategy games. Just give us a robot that protects earthlings from being abducted!
When they announced that Duchovny was leaving, they had a chance to bring some fresh air to the show. Unfortunately, they blew the opportunity by letting Duchovny hang around with Mulder casting a shadow on the last two seasons. Patrick, unfortunately, never really had a chance to do much with his role.
I guess this was a pretty good deal for Duchovny who mistakenly thought he was good enough for movies just because his wooden delivery worked on the small screen. Now without X Files, the frightening thought is that we'll get more Duchovny movies. So long as he sticks with roles like that which he had in Zoolander (the wacky conspiracy nut), he'll be OK.
I lament this behavior everyday. If people would just stand up for quality, we wouldn't be dealing with the above "popular" products. We would also have movie theatres with properly focused lenses and clean screens.
The goal shouldn't be (as Katz seems to be saying) to emulate mediocre thinking. It should be to develop the technology to a point where it becomes like a portable radio. You turn it on and it does what it's supposed to do.
And, contrary to what Katz thinks, Apple is the only system vendor that is working toward this goal. Microsoft and Compaq and Ford could care less. They just need to sell a lot of what they make. The user experience matters little to most companies.
Apple has certainly had their share of usability snafus (eg. the stupid thumb-wheel volume control in QT4), but generally respond to user input and change these (the volume control in QT5 is now a slider as it should be). Why does Microsoft still have the Start menu? Many studies have shown that it is non-intuitive and even their inhouse GUI guru thinks it was a bad design. The Start menu is still there because Microsoft doesn't care about the user experience.
I'm sorry Jon, I'll take a well designed "cool" product over a lackluster offering any day.
- CD-R
- CD-RW
- DVD-R
- DVD-RW
I'm not sure why Apple doesn't play up the DVD-RW feature, since it's nice to burn a test of your DVD before committing it to a DVD-R.Note neither iDVD or DVD Studio Pro support DVD-RW. You basically save your DVD to a local drive in DSP and then use Toast to burn the DVD on DVD-RW media. Maybe this is why Apple doesn't talk about it, since their tools don't yet recognize the DVD-RW media as being valid.
Heaven only knows why, since manufacturers won't be required to support the format in order to get the DVD logo licensed (unless and until the DVD Forum is persuaded to adopt an additional write/rewrite standard which is highly unikely). Ie., the discs may play in PC drives, but won't necessarily work in licensed players (particularly set top). If I'm only worried about backups, then DVD+RW has a couple of features that help, but if I'm interested in making standard video DVDs that play on the widest possible range of players, then DVD-R and DVD-RW are the way to go.
DVD-RAM is an even worse proposition, since it is designed for forward compatibility only and concentrates on data storage.
My guess is that we won't have a major tower announcement until the Apple show this summer. At that time, I would expect the G4 towers to become the G5 tower, as Motorola will be ready to ship in quantity during that timeframe. Why spend cycles updating the towers for faster G4s when new G5 models are just around the corner?
Part of the problem is that some devices assume that the '0' always refers to the network itself. Your biggest problem is generally caused by entering a network like 10.0.0.0/24. Some devices inexplicably ignore the netmask and assume you're referring to all the networks in 10.*, rather than just the single "class c" '10.0.0.*'.
VBR would be a nice addition to the QuickTime MPEG2 encoder that Apple includes in DSP.
Another item that Apple needs to add is support for DTS audio streams.
I own DVD Studio Pro and I have access to all of the features that Gilmore says aren't available.
The main difference between the DVD-R for General and DVD-R for Authoring drives is that the DVD-R for Authoring writes an additional lead-in that is required at the duplication plant. With this extra info on the DVD, a DVD-R can be used as the master rather than a DLT.
Note also that Apple did the right thing by using the Pioneer drive as DVD-R and DVD-RW are the only writeable formats endorsed by the DVD Forum. DVD+R and DVD+RW are not sanctioned.
"I'd assume that someone, somewhere, at some point wrote a story about how Momaw was finally allowed back onto his home planet of Ithor."
Hopefully he's wrong, since that would mean Momaw Nadow is most likely a dead man (rather Ithorian), as Ithor was one of the many planets destroyed, or laid waste, by the Yuuzhan Vong.
Book stores have even been shelving the fantasy books in with the SF books for a number of years now. It's really irritating when I'm trying to browse SF and have to pass through three hundred Kor books. I'm sure it's just as aggravating for the fantasy reader.
Even the third season looks very good, due to the work of the lighting and camera crews.
I doubt you'll find a show that was costing the studio as much during the same time period.
For some reason, people who grew up in router land use GB to mean 10^6, while most software developers use GB to mean 2^20.
To resolve this, my group prepared a document that explains the use of the binary nomemclature and we refer readers to this base document in all of our prepared documentation. The document also explicitly states what the accepted abbreviations are (KiB, MiB, GiB, etc.). We also explicity define the capital B to mean byte, while a lower case 'b' is a bit. Therefore, Mib means mebibit.
This has reduced confusion to a great amount and now various groups looking at our performance testing results can make an accurate assesment.
There has been a persistent rumor that you were up for the role of Batman before Burton was brought in (and subsequently selected the lamentable Michael Keaton). Is there any truth to this, or was it all wishful thinking on the part of your fans?
- Front project the footage on a screen and record it with a video camera.
- Purchase a rear projection film transfer unit (basically a front surface mirror with a condenser lens and frosted screen) and record it wih a video camera.
- Have the film transferred by a reputable local processing company using a CCD linked projector.
- Have the film tranferred at a professional facility using a flying spot scanner (eg. Rank Cintel).
Options 1 & 2 are avenues of last resort, as they will yield very bad results. In addition to the lack of resolution of most consumer projectors, the flicker will be very noticeable on video since you can't sync most consumer level video equipment to the shutter of consumer projectors.Option 3 is slightly better because the CCD linked system is synchronized with the shutter and removes the annoying flicker. Transfers are acceptable, though generally soft and the color balance can vary. Note that man camera shops will actually transfer your film using method 2. Don't pay for a service like this.
Option 4 is the best method and obviously the most expensive. Results can be astounding, as most professional transfers include cleaning, splice fixing, color correction, etc. Additionally, they can transfer directly to digital tape (many offer multiple tape formats). I would recommend Pro8mm. They do a great job and the results are spectacular. In fact, their facility is often used to transfer 8mm and Super8mm footage for use on television and in theatrical films. Pro8mm also uses a daVinci unit to handle color correction.
This is one of those things where you definitely get what you pay for.
The only problem with sdadmin on Solaris is that whoever designed it assumed you would have a screen 50 rows long. Fortunately, the only thing missing from sdadmin are the time-based authentication settings.
The web-based admin tool was a major disappointment for us, as it is primarily just a help desk level "add/remove users" tool. It certainly isn't the "you'll be able to do everything you can do with the GUI" tool that RSA promised.
Drawbacks to ACE/Server include:
- No Linux server
- Solaris admin tool (sdadmin) no longer fully controls the ACE/Server Solaris product. For full administration, you must use a Windows-based GUI. Ugh!
- Price
The odd thing we've seen is that many companies are getting rid of their token-based systems and moving to static password protected certificates in a PKI scenario. For some reason, they think the static password is more secure than a token!Do not use the Windows-based server. It is terribly unstable compared to the Solaris version, but what else is new.
Aside from the usual pointless editorial comments, Taco's comments don't make any sense. Does the Nomad have some type of wireless module? Not that I can find. Additionally, the form factor of the nomad makes it virtually useless as a "portable" MP3 player.
As for the storage size, big deal. The need to use USB makes the storage space irrelevant. At the blazing 3.2Mbps provided by the Nomad's USB port, it would take you about, oh, 15 hours to load it. Sounds like a fun time. If they weren't stuck in the past and condescended to give their users a modern connection like IEEE1394, it would only take about 6 minutes load their drive.
I think Apple has reached a good compromise in size versus storage. The use of Firewire makes sense because the Apple platform is basically built around Firewire. Also, it's getting tough to find a new Intel system without IEEE1394 ports. Every PC vendor wants to be part of the digital production movement, and that can't be done without IEEE1394.
All that being said, it would behoove Apple to ensure that people using PCs can use the iPod. It may be as simple as plugging it in to your PC-based IEEE1394 port and copying your MP3s to it with a simple drag and drop operation.
I'm pretty tired of Slashdot's constant editorial asides. If you don't think it matters, CmdrTaco, why bother to post it?
I thought this was news for nerds, not CmdrTaco's Soapbox. Maybe it's time to add someone to the Slashdot team that can evaluate news stories that don't have anything to do with CmdrTaco's favorite subjects. Maybe they would have a better chance of being posted without the pithy remarks.
If you didn't enoy the jiggle factor of Voyager, give this one a pass. It bears even less relation to the original Star Trek than the previous series have had and there was a pointless "ointment" scene that definitely places this series in the T&A column.
In fact, about the only thing this series will be good for is as a lead in to SU2.
I'll wait patiently. <G>
Frankly, ext3 is the better thought out of the journalling filesystems for Linux, simply because you can turn it on or off, just like logging on Solaris.