I thought it was something slightly different... that they don't tend to pitch their voices differently at all when they are being sarcastic
Ok I think you've actually hit on it there. Tough to pitch your voice when you're typing.
For example, am I being sarcastic with the following:
"That's a good idea."
Now, there's at least two ways to say the above. Stress the "good" and you're being positive. Stress the "That's" and you could sound sarcastic.
Unfortunately... both look the same when you type.
As for the whole Americans and sarcasm thing, well...maybe you've just gotten an unlucky sample of Americans. We're actually a pretty sarcastic lot. Watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for an example of American sarcasm in action.:)
SCO Group Inc's attempt to change its legal case against IBM Corp for the third time has been denied by the judge, who has also set the two companies a deadline to present their respective evidence with specificity. **snip** Bad news all around, lately.
Ok, why exactly is this bad news? Sounds like what we've all been screaming for. The judge finally says "put up or shut up - no more delays!"
While I'm sure their numbers are pretty much correct, it's worth noting that Sophos sells a network anti-virus product and that may be coloring their findings.
Only fair to mention it, just like it's fair when some company says Windows NT has a lower TCO than Linux...and the funding for the study came from Microsoft.
I used to work at a company that ported WinCE and Linux to StrongARM devices. Our last project was a webpad. We went out of business shortly after that.
If I had any advice to offer it would be this. Drop your price. By a lot. It's been said in this thread before a few times but your price point is all wrong. For that cash you could get a laptop. That's what sunk us. People think that a few hundred bucks is a PDA, and anything over about $500 is a laptop. So if you fall in the laptop range, you have to provide laptop functionality.
Would you buy a laptop that ran at 624Mhz with no math coprocessor or video acceleration for $850?
Another point is the hardware. Don't know much about PXA270, but the PXA255 wasn't up to video. Getting video to run on it was my job, and best I could manage was 2 or 3 frames per second. We advertised that it could run video...and in a way it could. But it totally sucked and that put customers off. If it doesn't perform well you're better off simply not promoting it as a video player.
Microsoft will pay IBM $775 million cash in addition to $75 million in credit.
To MS, $775M is not that big of a deal. But having IBM get $75M worth of stuff from them is. Even if it's on credit. Remember - MS makes it's money off of mindshare. And having IBM who has rather recently and somewhat famously embraced Linux suddenly get $75M of free MS stuff is a huge win for MS.
I'll bet if the deal had been on the table to simply pay IBM $775M to accept $75M in MS products, MS would have gone for it. They'd pay that much to have $75M worth of mindshare suddenly implanted into one of the largest Linux players out there.
Two way communication with the prosthetic is a huge breakthrough! Glad to see this is becoming possible.
Without this kind of feedback, control becomes...very difficult. For example, think of the cruise control in a car. You can make a decent one with a pair of opamps. The (oversimplified) way it works is that it takes the speed you're going and finds the difference between that and the speed you'd like to be going and uses that difference to work out how much to push in your accelerator.
Now try to work out how to do one if you're not allowed to know how fast the car is already going. Cut the two way communication, and it becomes much harder to do.
I'd love it if there was some other Paypal-like entity out there. Paypal is convenient, but after getting shafted by them I avoid them like the plague.
Apple wants you to run whatever software you want, on their PC's.
Because we could be seeing the next big blow to Microsoft. Apple is already Unix-ish. Now it'll be x86-ish...
...and suddenly without too much fanfare, Wine becomes a do-able port. Look out Bill! Imagine being able to buy an OSX box and run Windows apps on it.
Drop that in the next Mac Mini and it'll seriously change things. Unix stability with Windows compatibility. Coupled with Mac reliability. I'd buy one in a heartbeat.
Last September, the company unveiled its MSN-branded music site but it didn't have a subscription plan.
Nothing like launching a boat before the bottom is in to inspire customer confidence. Free copy of Duke Nukem Forever with every subscription, btw.
...to give subscribers a new, Microsoft-formatted version of any song they've purchased from the iTunes store so those songs can be played on devices other than an iPod.
"Hey Bill, let's be sure to not target the single most popular portable player just because we don't get a cut of the hardware sales. Nevermind the fact that we are only selling downloads and not hardware, let's place severe restrictions on our customer base. Just because we don't like Apple."
This whole scheme really sets the bar on shortsightedness.
All kidding aside, Cygwin rocks. Microsoft can promise me MSH in 3 to 5 years, but that doesn't mean that you can't have an excellent shell today. I use Cygwin every day and can't imagine using my W2K box without it.
The Linux Desktop Community must encourage such initatives massively to compete against Mac OSX and Windows.
Why?
Maybe I'm missing something and/. can enlighten me. I use Linux. OSX gets a lot of fans.
So, exactly how does this involve me at all?
I keep seeing that OSX might become a "threat". How exactly? Will OSX suddenly become self-aware and begin deleting Linux from the entire Internet or something?
Maybe it's just me, but I just don't feel a threat here. They're both fairly posix/unix, so I'm reallly seeing a potential ally here more than anything else.
Because it could be argued that email is not a 100% guaranteed transmission. You could have ignored it and claimed your spam filter must have erased it, and gone on about your business.
IANAL, but don't you have to serve someone papers in a traceable way, like a registered letter or some such? And if so, I think these guys are probably not the brightest lawyers around. So I wouldn't worry.
Slashdot Mirror
The press release is in Japanese; as of this writing, IBM has not released an English version.
Assembly is bad enough. I can't imagine assembly in Kanji.
I thought it was something slightly different... that they don't tend to pitch their voices differently at all when they are being sarcastic
Ok I think you've actually hit on it there. Tough to pitch your voice when you're typing.
For example, am I being sarcastic with the following:
"That's a good idea."
Now, there's at least two ways to say the above. Stress the "good" and you're being positive. Stress the "That's" and you could sound sarcastic.
Unfortunately... both look the same when you type.
As for the whole Americans and sarcasm thing, well...maybe you've just gotten an unlucky sample of Americans. We're actually a pretty sarcastic lot. Watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for an example of American sarcasm in action. :)
SCO Group Inc's attempt to change its legal case against IBM Corp for the third time has been denied by the judge, who has also set the two companies a deadline to present their respective evidence with specificity. **snip** Bad news all around, lately.
Ok, why exactly is this bad news? Sounds like what we've all been screaming for. The judge finally says "put up or shut up - no more delays!"
Unless I'm reading it wrong. Am I?
While I'm sure their numbers are pretty much correct, it's worth noting that Sophos sells a network anti-virus product and that may be coloring their findings.
Only fair to mention it, just like it's fair when some company says Windows NT has a lower TCO than Linux...and the funding for the study came from Microsoft.
I used to work at a company that ported WinCE and Linux to StrongARM devices. Our last project was a webpad. We went out of business shortly after that.
If I had any advice to offer it would be this. Drop your price. By a lot. It's been said in this thread before a few times but your price point is all wrong. For that cash you could get a laptop. That's what sunk us. People think that a few hundred bucks is a PDA, and anything over about $500 is a laptop. So if you fall in the laptop range, you have to provide laptop functionality.
Would you buy a laptop that ran at 624Mhz with no math coprocessor or video acceleration for $850?
Another point is the hardware. Don't know much about PXA270, but the PXA255 wasn't up to video. Getting video to run on it was my job, and best I could manage was 2 or 3 frames per second. We advertised that it could run video...and in a way it could. But it totally sucked and that put customers off. If it doesn't perform well you're better off simply not promoting it as a video player.
It does.
Ok that's about the best laugh I've had on Slashdot in a *long* time. =)
Microsoft will pay IBM $775 million cash in addition to $75 million in credit.
To MS, $775M is not that big of a deal. But having IBM get $75M worth of stuff from them is. Even if it's on credit. Remember - MS makes it's money off of mindshare. And having IBM who has rather recently and somewhat famously embraced Linux suddenly get $75M of free MS stuff is a huge win for MS.
I'll bet if the deal had been on the table to simply pay IBM $775M to accept $75M in MS products, MS would have gone for it. They'd pay that much to have $75M worth of mindshare suddenly implanted into one of the largest Linux players out there.
Namely, your meds. You're frothing.
We've heard it before. They had cellphones on Star Trek, and now we have them. 3 1/2 disks come from there too, I'm told.
But HOLY CRAP, do we have to try to use the plot to Highlander 2 to actually try to save the world???
I believe the term you're looking for is a Stranger. =)
Two way communication with the prosthetic is a huge breakthrough! Glad to see this is becoming possible.
Without this kind of feedback, control becomes...very difficult. For example, think of the cruise control in a car. You can make a decent one with a pair of opamps. The (oversimplified) way it works is that it takes the speed you're going and finds the difference between that and the speed you'd like to be going and uses that difference to work out how much to push in your accelerator.
Now try to work out how to do one if you're not allowed to know how fast the car is already going. Cut the two way communication, and it becomes much harder to do.
Surely you exaggerate. I mean, when was the last time you actually had to avoid the plague?
The last time I bought something off eBay. And stop calling me Shirley. *rimshot*
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
Replace them.
I'd love it if there was some other Paypal-like entity out there. Paypal is convenient, but after getting shafted by them I avoid them like the plague.
Choice is good.
Ok, that was really damn funny. You got me good on that one. =)
Is there any good reason for a web startup to not be open about what it is doing?
Because Jeff Bezos is still out there. Watching.
Apple wants you to run whatever software you want, on their PC's.
Because we could be seeing the next big blow to Microsoft. Apple is already Unix-ish. Now it'll be x86-ish...
...and suddenly without too much fanfare, Wine becomes a do-able port. Look out Bill! Imagine being able to buy an OSX box and run Windows apps on it.
Drop that in the next Mac Mini and it'll seriously change things. Unix stability with Windows compatibility. Coupled with Mac reliability. I'd buy one in a heartbeat.
...even for Microsoft.
Last September, the company unveiled its MSN-branded music site but it didn't have a subscription plan.
Nothing like launching a boat before the bottom is in to inspire customer confidence. Free copy of Duke Nukem Forever with every subscription, btw.
"Hey Bill, let's be sure to not target the single most popular portable player just because we don't get a cut of the hardware sales. Nevermind the fact that we are only selling downloads and not hardware, let's place severe restrictions on our customer base. Just because we don't like Apple."
This whole scheme really sets the bar on shortsightedness.
Y'know, I'm glad someone else noticed that.
All kidding aside, Cygwin rocks. Microsoft can promise me MSH in 3 to 5 years, but that doesn't mean that you can't have an excellent shell today. I use Cygwin every day and can't imagine using my W2K box without it.
...you just gotta go download it from here.
Apparently he broke into US military computers to hunt for evidence of a UFO cover-up.
Did he find any?
The Linux Desktop Community must encourage such initatives massively to compete against Mac OSX and Windows.
Why?
Maybe I'm missing something and /. can enlighten me. I use Linux. OSX gets a lot of fans.
So, exactly how does this involve me at all?
I keep seeing that OSX might become a "threat". How exactly? Will OSX suddenly become self-aware and begin deleting Linux from the entire Internet or something?
Maybe it's just me, but I just don't feel a threat here. They're both fairly posix/unix, so I'm reallly seeing a potential ally here more than anything else.
1) Do something.
2) ???
3) Profit!
Because it could be argued that email is not a 100% guaranteed transmission. You could have ignored it and claimed your spam filter must have erased it, and gone on about your business.
IANAL, but don't you have to serve someone papers in a traceable way, like a registered letter or some such? And if so, I think these guys are probably not the brightest lawyers around. So I wouldn't worry.