I'm not sure what tip you are referring too, but you're welcome;-)
I see no contention in your post. My point was that of those that would/might be inclined to purchase probably won't because the current system available to them lacks immediacy, is a hassle, and necessitates purchasing large (in their view) lumps of credit.
I agree that a lot of people probably would acquire their music through illegal means regardless of the ease of purchase as I noted in the final line of my original reply.
I know that a number of banks offer a "Visa debit"-style card, but as far as I am aware its usually not the default debit card, which are typically just Plus or Maestro/Cirrus style ATM cards. Furthermore, the enhanced debit cards aren't (AFAIK) available to those under 18 and sometimes not available on the basic savings accounts that younger individuals are likely to hold . Regardless, I should have noted this in my original post:)
Of course some banks, like the NAB (my bank), don't even offer this style of card, instead preferring to push such "innovations" are Visa Mini *sigh*. Must get around to switching to a different bank...
I just checked on the Australian iTunes Store* and the options listed are Visa, Mastercard or American Express. No debit card option that I can see. I would also point out that whilst teens don't have credit cards because they can't, I would estimate a reasonable percentage in their late teens and early-20s also don't either because they have no great need or don't trust themselves not to get themselves in to debt (like me!).
Just as in the UK and US, iTunes Store cards are easily available in Australia (in Coles supermarkets no less). There are two problems I see with the cards though: 1) You can't just pay for the songs you want as you basically are buying store credit. Cards are available in A$20, $50 and $100 which makes perfect sense as a gift, but if one only have a small amount of disposable income (as most teenagers do) the idea of having to expend what s/he might consider a reasonably large amount in one go to buy the couple of songs s/he wants is probably less appealing than the individual song purchase system available to credit card holders.
2) Having to buy a "music card" takes away from the immediacy of a purchase. One has to get off one's backside and go and get a card. Why wouldn't I just go to the record store and buy a CD single (or album) instead (particularly given point 1) since the effort is about the same?
Basically I think it makes the barriers just high enough that even those within the teen demographic that would go to the effort of purchasing the music if they had a credit card, are more likely to opt for the illegal download because they can have it Right Now and not have to worry about expending a large (in their eyes) amount of capital.
Two quick provisos: I'm not endorsing this behaviour and excusing copyright infringement, and I certainly don't believe that every teenager -- even if they did have access to a credit card or the above two issues were not evident -- would purchase music rather than illegally download it (but that holds for all ages, to varying degrees).
That's nice, but price and DRM remain issues.
on
Info on Intel's Viiv DRM
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I was at the Intel Viiv launch yesterday. It was a reasonably interesting launch although I will forever have the jargon "the new normal" burned in to me brain.
Whilst the talk of making "content easier to buy than it is to pirate" is nice, you have to remember that Intel is only providing the platform to access the content and not the content itself. This is clearly different from Apple's iTunes/iPod/Frontrow strategy of controlling the software and hardware platform(s) for viewing content *and* being the distributor/supplier of content. Hence Intel itself doesn't have much to say on the crucial issue of the cost of content (in fact, to the best of my knowledge, cost -- in comparison to existing distribution points/media types -- was not mentioned once during the presentation). Its all very well to make content easy to access, but it also has to be priced correctly. Intel is obviously hoping the market and competition (between content suppliers) will take care of pricing. I guess time will tell, but its a far cry from the simple easy-to-remember 99c-a-song (in the US, $1.29 here) model of the iTMS.
Whilst its nice that Viiv won't apply DRM restrictions to content that enters into the system without DRM, that doesn't mean that the content provided through the Viiv platform won't be ladden with DRM. Again, as Intel doesn't control the supply of content supply the best they can 'promise'(as per the Cnet article) is to "[encourage] Viiv content providers to allow users to pass their media to other devices". Personally I would prefer a stated policy rather than some airy-fairy promise about encouraging fair(er) use for consumers.
On a related issue, Dan Warne of APC raised an interesting point during the panel discussion regarding billing. Unlike Apple's system (where, obviously, they are the only supply point through iTunes), because there will be multiple content providers and there is no centralised billing system its likely you will have to provide your credit card details to each content provider seperately (at least for the time being, although MacDonald made some soothing noises about investigating a more centralised model... grain of salt, etc). Ironically, despite making much of the fact that you won't need a keyboard with Viiv for complex tasks (such as networking, etc), some on the panel noted it would be cumbersome to have to enter your credit card details through the Viiv interface with the remote and suggest hooking up a keyboard or visiting the content providers website on another computer.
In case you hadn't guessed, whilst I think Viiv has some interesting uses, I remain very sceptical that this is anything more than a flash in the pan despite Intel's claims of this being the (wait for it) "new normal" and hoping in 50 years time it will be remembered like the introduction of television. It may have more impact in other markets, but given the lack of interest in such basic technologies as Standard Definition Digital TV, trying to get consumers to spend thousands on a PC for the living room (without the buzz of the iPod/iTunes duo) seems like a hard sell to me.
And yet Gmail has no facility to retrieve email from *other* POP3 accounts, whilst Yahoo and Hotmail have had this service for years (admittedly I haven't used either service for awhile, so they may have changed). To me this seems like a huge oversight given Gmail seems to be targetted as some sort of email centralisation service (hence the huge space, search functionality, etc), so being able to check other accounts (and obviously grab the email) through Gmail seems like a no-brainer to me.
The workaround -- i.e. to run a process on your local machine that forwards all email to one's Gmail account -- is a nasty kludge. What happens if my forwarding machine goes down? What happens if that machine's net connection dies? Etc etc etc.
Please Gmail developers, could you consider adding this functionality:-)
"... rather than adopting technological methods to try to stop unauthorized copying of music, record companies need to do more to remove the incentive for piracy."
I do find it rather ironic that I was, not five minutes ago, looking for an Oasis song (forgive me, its stuck in my head) on iTunes music store to purchase legally only to find out they are published by Sony-BMG who, in their infinite wisdom, have declined to be involved with the Australian iTunes music store.
Given their current predilication for sticking DRM crap on CDs and the fact I only want one or two specific tracks, no sale for you. Good going Sony. What's a possible customer meant to do if you insist on treating us like (potential) criminals?
I'm currently in the process of writing my honours thesis, so I have used hundred and hunreds of lengthy PDFs this year (as most journal access is electronic this day). I completely agree with you that PDFs make for crappy screen reading, but used for certain purposes PDF make a lot of sense. I would make two points:
1) When writing an academic text you invariable reference your sources (otherwise its, obviously, plagarism). PDF is useful because you (usually) get a scan of the original article, with the original formatting. Often when articles are presented in other formats -- html and text -- you loose the formatting, and vitally, the page numbers which makes referencing that much more difficult.
2) Consider the context in which MS is adopting PDF: Office. The main use, I would assume, will be for people who are writing documents -- be they spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations or word documents. PDF will enable Office users to be sure that their document will display properly on other machines. I can't tell you the number of issues there are with ensuring correct display and print out of MS Word documents across multiple machines. I often print articles out on the Uni machines before handing them in, but because of different MS Word versions, software and hardware setup, your perfectly formatted essay (on your home machine) can look bizarre on the Uni computer. Saving it as a PDF means that I can be sure that when I come to print it at Uni, all my formatting stays the way I intended it. The more complex the document -- different margins, footnotes, bullet lists, etc -- the more these issues crop up. If you're just writting a letter it may be irrelevant if the formatting is slightly changed; if you suddenly find your footnotes gobbled its a major issue.
In that respect PDF can be a godsend as far as portablilty goes, and that's not even considering the cross platform issues (i.e. not having access to a machine with MS Office). To some of us, the tree is still vital;-)
It might just be me -- and this might sound like a personal whinge -- but I am interested to here what other people have to say.
I find these AJAX applications very impressive, even if - according to the endless/. posts - the technology is nothing new and its just a silly acronym. But I digress. My biggest problem is that I like my major applications -- email, word processor, spreadsheet, html editor, whatever - to a seperate *unique* presence on the (*hides head in shame*) Windows task bar. It is so much easier to recognise the application on the taskbar when it has its own entry invariably with a unique icon, rather than just being one of possibly tens of browser windows. Invariably I end up loosing my web application in a jumble of other browser windows and/or tabs, or thinking its just another browser windows, accidently close it. Then there is always the problem of the browser crashing, often because I am also browsering, and thus loosing whatever important documents or email I also have open.
As I said, it may well just be me, but perhaps I'm not alone:) I'd much rather download a small executable that embeds a browser window within some sort of unique container (if that's the right terminology) that runs as a unique program, with its own task bar entry, and its own icon. So, for example, I could launch gmail.exe and it would have its own presence on the task bar even though it was essentially just gecko rending the gmail website. It could even extend functionality, allowing one to minimise it to tray and so forth.
Are those figures for actual sales to end customers? According to this1UP article, Sony has an interesting sales counting methodology:
"As a rule, Sony prefers to release "sell-in" figures, or "units shipped" figures -- for instance, it recently announced that it "shipped" 70 million PlayStation 2s worldwide. What that means is that retailers have ordered and received 70 million PS2s, not that consumers have bought 70 million PS2s. Many of those 70 million PS2s have already been bought by consumers, and all of them may eventually be bought, but for now, the "shipped" figure is more impressive."
And also...
"Sony is going against type here. Though it's rounding off its sales figures, at least it is releasing genuine sales figures, a practice to which it is generally averse."
Though its not directly related to the Mozilla Suite (sorry, I tried to RTFA, but its down) my biggest wish is to see the Gecko Rendering Engine (GRE) finally split from the Mozilla/Firefox/et al code base. This seems to have completely dropped off the road map despite being discussed for months (years?).
The idea of running the GRE as a service (started at boot) and then simply launching the frontends for the various Mozilla apps (in my case, Firefox and possibly Thunderbird) appeals to me immensely.
I value "snapiness" greatly when it comes to my web browser and email apps. Having to run multiple instances of the same rendering engine is a bit of a downer IMHO. (Yes, I realise there are some benefits. Yes, I realise we all tend to have ample computing power.)
The author mentions having Ad-Aware installed, but I assume the s/he is referring to the 'standard' (free) version?
If you go for the payed version it comes with an app called Ad-Watch which actively monitors your machine for spyware installs. See: http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adwatch/
see what sort of hole-in-the-wall refugee from 1999 this company is
I think you mean "illegal immigrant", and you would have to make a visit your local detention centre;-)
(For those that don't get this, Australia under little Johnny has largely abandoned its responsibilities to refugees, and now treats them as criminals and "queue jumpers" until proven innocent:( ).
Interesting -- admittedly I was not aware of this -- but until its as easy I my original idea I don't think it will be seen as suitable for a business environment.
Perhaps I am just beating my own drum, but simplicity and elegance does have it benefits (as Gentoo as a concept shows, IMHO), and its unlikely that secretary (by way of example) is going to be running emerge tasks.
What I would love to see in Gentoo, or any other distro that is source-based really, is a way of setting up the system from binaries and then have the system transmogrify itself.
What do I mean? Well, after the initial install the distro could start to compile the optimised packages with a preset set of flags and "replace" the existing pre-compiled binaries as it finishes the optimisations.
Why? Well I think this would offer the absolute best of both worlds. It would allow you to get a Gentoo-based system up quickly without waiting hours and hours for compilation. It would then take advantage of unused CPU cycles (and lets face it, I doubt most machines use a large amount of resources more than 5-10% of their operating lives) to compile optimised packages, thus giving the benefits that everyone loves about source-based distros?
Is it possible? I have no idea. Frankly, I don't use Gentoo or even Linux all that often, but it strikes me as very neat solution for the one weakness present in distros that have to be compiled from source.
I think it might also be quite useful in getting acceptence in the business world. Being able to get a system up and customised quickly could be an important selling point, particularly in SME business where there is a diverse range of hardware (and thus ghosting is not necessarily a good option). It such a networked environment, it might even be possible to use a distributed compilation system.
Anyway, that's my little suggestion. As I said, it may not even be practical let alone possible, but it might stimulate further ideas that make Gentoo (and perhaps linux in general) an even better solution. Again, I don't even use Linux (well, only very infrequently) but I strongly support the underlying philosophy behind much of the OSS movement./rant mode:)
I can't speak for the other cars, but my family has always been Citroen enthusiasts. The article states that the SM had a "bizarre air/water suspension was years ahead of its time, it was poorly engineered and designed" which is completely incorrect.
For starters, the suspension system is not water based at all, but a hydraulic system which using an oil-based product (LHM) in conjunction with gas 'spheres'. The suspension system was not new by the time the SM arrived on the market, in fact, it was largely a carryover item from the Citroen DS and by the 70's was largely trouble-free and quite robust.
I also find the claim that "[h]ad you pressed the car to its absolute limits, the SM might have ended up riding on its axles" quite amusing considering the DS -- and thus the SM -- are actually able to be driven with only three wheels thanks to their unique suspension.
If there was one weak spot on the SM, it had nothing to do with its suspension, but rather its engine, sourced from Maserti. The time-chain that came equipped with the SM wear prone to letting go ; a fault easily corrected today.
Anyway, that's my rant for the day -- if I can be bothered I might email forbes.
"Why in the world introduce an AthlonFX based on Socket 940, especially at the outrageous price, when you're moving to socket 939 imminently?"
Simple really. AMD feared that Intel was about to release the next revision of the P4 aka. Prescott. The 940-pin FX was an attempt to get something out the door ASAP.
Unfortunately that means that some people might be caught at a loose end when it comes to upgrade time, but that is not clear cut at this stage to my knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure what tip you are referring too, but you're welcome ;-)
I see no contention in your post. My point was that of those that would/might be inclined to purchase probably won't because the current system available to them lacks immediacy, is a hassle, and necessitates purchasing large (in their view) lumps of credit.
I agree that a lot of people probably would acquire their music through illegal means regardless of the ease of purchase as I noted in the final line of my original reply.
I know that a number of banks offer a "Visa debit"-style card, but as far as I am aware its usually not the default debit card, which are typically just Plus or Maestro/Cirrus style ATM cards. Furthermore, the enhanced debit cards aren't (AFAIK) available to those under 18 and sometimes not available on the basic savings accounts that younger individuals are likely to hold . Regardless, I should have noted this in my original post :)
Of course some banks, like the NAB (my bank), don't even offer this style of card, instead preferring to push such "innovations" are Visa Mini *sigh*. Must get around to switching to a different bank...
I just checked on the Australian iTunes Store* and the options listed are Visa, Mastercard or American Express. No debit card option that I can see. I would also point out that whilst teens don't have credit cards because they can't, I would estimate a reasonable percentage in their late teens and early-20s also don't either because they have no great need or don't trust themselves not to get themselves in to debt (like me!).
Just as in the UK and US, iTunes Store cards are easily available in Australia (in Coles supermarkets no less). There are two problems I see with the cards though:
1) You can't just pay for the songs you want as you basically are buying store credit. Cards are available in A$20, $50 and $100 which makes perfect sense as a gift, but if one only have a small amount of disposable income (as most teenagers do) the idea of having to expend what s/he might consider a reasonably large amount in one go to buy the couple of songs s/he wants is probably less appealing than the individual song purchase system available to credit card holders.
2) Having to buy a "music card" takes away from the immediacy of a purchase. One has to get off one's backside and go and get a card. Why wouldn't I just go to the record store and buy a CD single (or album) instead (particularly given point 1) since the effort is about the same?
Basically I think it makes the barriers just high enough that even those within the teen demographic that would go to the effort of purchasing the music if they had a credit card, are more likely to opt for the illegal download because they can have it Right Now and not have to worry about expending a large (in their eyes) amount of capital.
Two quick provisos: I'm not endorsing this behaviour and excusing copyright infringement, and I certainly don't believe that every teenager -- even if they did have access to a credit card or the above two issues were not evident -- would purchase music rather than illegally download it (but that holds for all ages, to varying degrees).
I was at the Intel Viiv launch yesterday. It was a reasonably interesting launch although I will forever have the jargon "the new normal" burned in to me brain.
Whilst the talk of making "content easier to buy than it is to pirate" is nice, you have to remember that Intel is only providing the platform to access the content and not the content itself. This is clearly different from Apple's iTunes/iPod/Frontrow strategy of controlling the software and hardware platform(s) for viewing content *and* being the distributor/supplier of content. Hence Intel itself doesn't have much to say on the crucial issue of the cost of content (in fact, to the best of my knowledge, cost -- in comparison to existing distribution points/media types -- was not mentioned once during the presentation). Its all very well to make content easy to access, but it also has to be priced correctly. Intel is obviously hoping the market and competition (between content suppliers) will take care of pricing. I guess time will tell, but its a far cry from the simple easy-to-remember 99c-a-song (in the US, $1.29 here) model of the iTMS.
Whilst its nice that Viiv won't apply DRM restrictions to content that enters into the system without DRM, that doesn't mean that the content provided through the Viiv platform won't be ladden with DRM. Again, as Intel doesn't control the supply of content supply the best they can 'promise'(as per the Cnet article) is to "[encourage] Viiv content providers to allow users to pass their media to other devices". Personally I would prefer a stated policy rather than some airy-fairy promise about encouraging fair(er) use for consumers.
On a related issue, Dan Warne of APC raised an interesting point during the panel discussion regarding billing. Unlike Apple's system (where, obviously, they are the only supply point through iTunes), because there will be multiple content providers and there is no centralised billing system its likely you will have to provide your credit card details to each content provider seperately (at least for the time being, although MacDonald made some soothing noises about investigating a more centralised model... grain of salt, etc). Ironically, despite making much of the fact that you won't need a keyboard with Viiv for complex tasks (such as networking, etc), some on the panel noted it would be cumbersome to have to enter your credit card details through the Viiv interface with the remote and suggest hooking up a keyboard or visiting the content providers website on another computer.
In case you hadn't guessed, whilst I think Viiv has some interesting uses, I remain very sceptical that this is anything more than a flash in the pan despite Intel's claims of this being the (wait for it) "new normal" and hoping in 50 years time it will be remembered like the introduction of television. It may have more impact in other markets, but given the lack of interest in such basic technologies as Standard Definition Digital TV, trying to get consumers to spend thousands on a PC for the living room (without the buzz of the iPod/iTunes duo) seems like a hard sell to me.
And yet Gmail has no facility to retrieve email from *other* POP3 accounts, whilst Yahoo and Hotmail have had this service for years (admittedly I haven't used either service for awhile, so they may have changed). To me this seems like a huge oversight given Gmail seems to be targetted as some sort of email centralisation service (hence the huge space, search functionality, etc), so being able to check other accounts (and obviously grab the email) through Gmail seems like a no-brainer to me.
:-)
The workaround -- i.e. to run a process on your local machine that forwards all email to one's Gmail account -- is a nasty kludge. What happens if my forwarding machine goes down? What happens if that machine's net connection dies? Etc etc etc.
Please Gmail developers, could you consider adding this functionality
"... rather than adopting technological methods to try to stop unauthorized copying of music, record companies need to do more to remove the incentive for piracy."
I do find it rather ironic that I was, not five minutes ago, looking for an Oasis song (forgive me, its stuck in my head) on iTunes music store to purchase legally only to find out they are published by Sony-BMG who, in their infinite wisdom, have declined to be involved with the Australian iTunes music store.
Given their current predilication for sticking DRM crap on CDs and the fact I only want one or two specific tracks, no sale for you. Good going Sony. What's a possible customer meant to do if you insist on treating us like (potential) criminals?
I'm currently in the process of writing my honours thesis, so I have used hundred and hunreds of lengthy PDFs this year (as most journal access is electronic this day). I completely agree with you that PDFs make for crappy screen reading, but used for certain purposes PDF make a lot of sense. I would make two points:
;-)
1) When writing an academic text you invariable reference your sources (otherwise its, obviously, plagarism). PDF is useful because you (usually) get a scan of the original article, with the original formatting. Often when articles are presented in other formats -- html and text -- you loose the formatting, and vitally, the page numbers which makes referencing that much more difficult.
2) Consider the context in which MS is adopting PDF: Office. The main use, I would assume, will be for people who are writing documents -- be they spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations or word documents. PDF will enable Office users to be sure that their document will display properly on other machines. I can't tell you the number of issues there are with ensuring correct display and print out of MS Word documents across multiple machines. I often print articles out on the Uni machines before handing them in, but because of different MS Word versions, software and hardware setup, your perfectly formatted essay (on your home machine) can look bizarre on the Uni computer. Saving it as a PDF means that I can be sure that when I come to print it at Uni, all my formatting stays the way I intended it. The more complex the document -- different margins, footnotes, bullet lists, etc -- the more these issues crop up. If you're just writting a letter it may be irrelevant if the formatting is slightly changed; if you suddenly find your footnotes gobbled its a major issue.
In that respect PDF can be a godsend as far as portablilty goes, and that's not even considering the cross platform issues (i.e. not having access to a machine with MS Office). To some of us, the tree is still vital
It might just be me -- and this might sound like a personal whinge -- but I am interested to here what other people have to say.
/. posts - the technology is nothing new and its just a silly acronym. But I digress. My biggest problem is that I like my major applications -- email, word processor, spreadsheet, html editor, whatever - to a seperate *unique* presence on the (*hides head in shame*) Windows task bar. It is so much easier to recognise the application on the taskbar when it has its own entry invariably with a unique icon, rather than just being one of possibly tens of browser windows. Invariably I end up loosing my web application in a jumble of other browser windows and/or tabs, or thinking its just another browser windows, accidently close it. Then there is always the problem of the browser crashing, often because I am also browsering, and thus loosing whatever important documents or email I also have open.
:) I'd much rather download a small executable that embeds a browser window within some sort of unique container (if that's the right terminology) that runs as a unique program, with its own task bar entry, and its own icon. So, for example, I could launch gmail.exe and it would have its own presence on the task bar even though it was essentially just gecko rending the gmail website. It could even extend functionality, allowing one to minimise it to tray and so forth.
I find these AJAX applications very impressive, even if - according to the endless
As I said, it may well just be me, but perhaps I'm not alone
Just my 0.02c worth.
Are those figures for actual sales to end customers? According to this1UP article, Sony has an interesting sales counting methodology:
"As a rule, Sony prefers to release "sell-in" figures, or "units shipped" figures -- for instance, it recently announced that it "shipped" 70 million PlayStation 2s worldwide. What that means is that retailers have ordered and received 70 million PS2s, not that consumers have bought 70 million PS2s. Many of those 70 million PS2s have already been bought by consumers, and all of them may eventually be bought, but for now, the "shipped" figure is more impressive."
And also...
"Sony is going against type here. Though it's rounding off its sales figures, at least it is releasing genuine sales figures, a practice to which it is generally averse."
I think you mean he would say "I find your lack of faith disturbing" ;-)
(I thought Bill Gates was evil this month?)
Though its not directly related to the Mozilla Suite (sorry, I tried to RTFA, but its down) my biggest wish is to see the Gecko Rendering Engine (GRE) finally split from the Mozilla/Firefox/et al code base. This seems to have completely dropped off the road map despite being discussed for months (years?).
The idea of running the GRE as a service (started at boot) and then simply launching the frontends for the various Mozilla apps (in my case, Firefox and possibly Thunderbird) appeals to me immensely.
I value "snapiness" greatly when it comes to my web browser and email apps. Having to run multiple instances of the same rendering engine is a bit of a downer IMHO. (Yes, I realise there are some benefits. Yes, I realise we all tend to have ample computing power.)
The author mentions having Ad-Aware installed, but I assume the s/he is referring to the 'standard' (free) version?
If you go for the payed version it comes with an app called Ad-Watch which actively monitors your machine for spyware installs. See: http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adwatch/
I think you mean "illegal immigrant", and you would have to make a visit your local detention centre ;-)
(For those that don't get this, Australia under little Johnny has largely abandoned its responsibilities to refugees, and now treats them as criminals and "queue jumpers" until proven innocent :( ).
LW.And you can see who one the civil war. ATRAC3 is used for a reason (ie. you aren't going to be readily trading them with friends).
Lucien.
Are yes, the famous "no underpants" attack...
Interesting -- admittedly I was not aware of this -- but until its as easy I my original idea I don't think it will be seen as suitable for a business environment.
Perhaps I am just beating my own drum, but simplicity and elegance does have it benefits (as Gentoo as a concept shows, IMHO), and its unlikely that secretary (by way of example) is going to be running emerge tasks.
From the "what-I-would-like-to-see" department :)
/rant mode :)
What I would love to see in Gentoo, or any other distro that is source-based really, is a way of setting up the system from binaries and then have the system transmogrify itself.
What do I mean? Well, after the initial install the distro could start to compile the optimised packages with a preset set of flags and "replace" the existing pre-compiled binaries as it finishes the optimisations.
Why? Well I think this would offer the absolute best of both worlds. It would allow you to get a Gentoo-based system up quickly without waiting hours and hours for compilation. It would then take advantage of unused CPU cycles (and lets face it, I doubt most machines use a large amount of resources more than 5-10% of their operating lives) to compile optimised packages, thus giving the benefits that everyone loves about source-based distros?
Is it possible? I have no idea. Frankly, I don't use Gentoo or even Linux all that often, but it strikes me as very neat solution for the one weakness present in distros that have to be compiled from source.
I think it might also be quite useful in getting acceptence in the business world. Being able to get a system up and customised quickly could be an important selling point, particularly in SME business where there is a diverse range of hardware (and thus ghosting is not necessarily a good option). It such a networked environment, it might even be possible to use a distributed compilation system.
Anyway, that's my little suggestion. As I said, it may not even be practical let alone possible, but it might stimulate further ideas that make Gentoo (and perhaps linux in general) an even better solution. Again, I don't even use Linux (well, only very infrequently) but I strongly support the underlying philosophy behind much of the OSS movement.
No. I imagine its a young Anakin come Darth Vader. Obviously something had to happen to him to require the suit.
Neither did I. In fact, I didn't see anything.... wait a minute!
Does anyone know if either 3.3 or 3.4 c/t have had the iswraid patched against their kernel so one can access raid arrays created by the Intel ICH5-R?
;-)
I would check but their forums are kind of slow right now for some reason
LW.
More correctly, Uluru -- Ayers Rock is the name given to Uluru by the white invaders.... errr, settlers.
http://www.deh.gov.au/parks/uluru/
I can't speak for the other cars, but my family has always been Citroen enthusiasts. The article states that the SM had a "bizarre air/water suspension was years ahead of its time, it was poorly engineered and designed" which is completely incorrect.
For starters, the suspension system is not water based at all, but a hydraulic system which using an oil-based product (LHM) in conjunction with gas 'spheres'. The suspension system was not new by the time the SM arrived on the market, in fact, it was largely a carryover item from the Citroen DS and by the 70's was largely trouble-free and quite robust.
I also find the claim that "[h]ad you pressed the car to its absolute limits, the SM might have ended up riding on its axles" quite amusing considering the DS -- and thus the SM -- are actually able to be driven with only three wheels thanks to their unique suspension.
If there was one weak spot on the SM, it had nothing to do with its suspension, but rather its engine, sourced from Maserti. The time-chain that came equipped with the SM wear prone to letting go ; a fault easily corrected today.
Anyway, that's my rant for the day -- if I can be bothered I might email forbes.
LW.
"called the Crew Exploration Vehicle"
I am the only one would immediately thought of cavity searches..?
"Why in the world introduce an AthlonFX based on Socket 940, especially at the outrageous price, when you're moving to socket 939 imminently?"
Simple really. AMD feared that Intel was about to release the next revision of the P4 aka. Prescott. The 940-pin FX was an attempt to get something out the door ASAP.
Unfortunately that means that some people might be caught at a loose end when it comes to upgrade time, but that is not clear cut at this stage to my knowledge.
The voice recorder and image attachments are both third party accessories. See: http://www.belkin.com