A cinch to set up? I think that's a bit of a stretch. I've done dual-monitor in Linux with both dual-view cards and two heterogeneous cards, and it's never been _that_ trivial. It takes maybe 15 minutes of Googling and man pages for me, which is not too bad, but it's not "a cinch", at least compared to WindowsME.
The biggest argument in favor of multiple monitors is that you don't have to play software games to make windows behave in a logical fashion - they won't maximize to the entire combined frame-buffer, for instance, just to the physical monitor. nVidia's Windows drivers have some sort of grid tool that you can use to alter that behavior, though, and simulate it on a single monitor.
However, if I just needed a lot of real estate for _one_ application, the 30 inch Apple monitor would be heavenly, I'm sure. Actually, I wouldn't mind buying two and getting the best of both worlds, either!
(side note: lots of Windows games don't like to play nice with two monitors, and don't lock the mouse to the window in full screen games)
The problems with the US patent office are two-fold: 1. Patent examiners are EXTREMELY over-worked. My future brother-in-law is a patent examiner, and he's often told me of a draconian quota system that rewards being quick and sloppy. 2. The US government is pro-business (as it should be, IMHO). However, this translates into the default standing order at the USPTO being "accept", and not "reject" (whereas most/.'ers want to see "reject" as the default position).
The USPTO recently underwent some changes (new computer system, IIRC) that should allow patent examiners to be a little bit more effective in the future. But it's obvious to me the USPTO has problems - and they are management issues, not really idiot patent examiners.
I got 45 mpg on my 87 Honda Civic once. It was manual, and the _only_ thing I drove for that week was the highway. That was the incident that pretty much put Honda at the top of my list for any new car purchase.
While "real porn sites" generally involve hunting them down, pornographic ads (and I'm talking about rather explicit stuff, too) are far easier to come across by accident. I think the _ads_ are the thing that the government needs to concentrate on if they're going to regulate internet porn.
The problem with prototyping tools as good as VB is that you end up using the work you did for the prototype as the "real" program.
I took an HCI course not too long ago at university, and _everyone_ (including us) who did prototyping with VB ended up using it for the final program. To be fair, this worked pretty well - but it was only for a lowly kiosk program. I'm sure it would have been much faster if we had rewritten the whole thing in C or C++.
But, yeah, VB is pretty damn good if you need to get something done in a hurry, or prototype rapidly.
I don't see how it's any different than any other "personal information awareness" technology in that respect. I mean, there's always the problem that someone who's not supposed to have access gains it (say, by password).
There are relatively easy ways to help prevent this sort of abuse, too. Will they be implemented? Let's hope so.
A Blackberry is not exactly the device I would be using to try to get the records of every person in the system, of course.
"I think the problem is more of resistance from established industries to adopt new technology because they don't want to lose their source of revenue."
The difference is, oil companies _know_ their source of revenue is going to run out. There is simply _not_ an infinite amount of oil under the ground. Therefore, it is entirely rational, and eminently sensible, for "big oil" to start branching out into other fuels.
In other words, protecting your revenue stream doesn't always mean crushing the competition - it also involves hedging your bets. And, obviously, hedging against oil running out is a VERY intelligent idea if you're an oil company.
The obvious answer would be, use the variants that are the lower-clocked ones that _don't_ have the huge fans that intrude on other slots. It could be that nVidia might differentiate the upper and lower end cards with "can it use SLI?", but I don't think we've seen any confirmation of that.
"It seems all the game makers went from story lines to graphics."
It's because game reviewers punish them more for "bad" graphics than bad gameplay.
Recently, I read a review for Front Mission 4. The damned reviewer simply could not stop talking about how the graphics "didn't live up to the PS2 potential"[1]. But, if graphics weren't that important, then why does that matter? I mean, I saw the screenshots, and I certainly didn't have any issues distinguishing wanzers from each other, and the "drab backgrounds" didn't hurt the gameplay, did they?
So, blame lying game critics, who _say_ that gameplay is more important than graphics, yet go nuts if the graphics are anything less than perfect.
-Erwos
[1] This is not to imply Front Mission 4 didn't have genuine gameplay issues - only that reviewers seemed to get hung up on the graphics more than their stated preference for "gameplay > graphics" would indicate.
If Yahoo asked very politely for third-party clients to display advertising and provided info on how to do so, there'd probably be a better than zero chance of at least seeing a plug-in.
I don't begrudge AOL, Yahoo, or even MSN for trying to make some money on ads. If they explained intelligently and elegantly why Gaim users _should_ view with ads, I bet some people would do it.
-Erwos
Re:How does this differ from other efforts?
on
Linux in Iraq
·
· Score: 1
You're making the very weird assumption that the corporations _aren't_ trying to use the locals. If I was trying to make a profit off this, I know _I_ would be getting all the cheap local help I could get, instead of importing expensive Americans.
Another thing: the local help is somewhat unreliable due to the ongoing insurgency. Do you _really_ want to put a guy in a sensitive position who might be just looking for a great target to bomb? I'm betting that 99% of Iraqis are just fine, but it's that damned 1% that you've got to worry about. You can be pretty sure (100%) that the American you're importing isn't going to plant a mine under your chair.
So, not only I am not sure how much reality jives with your appreciation of the state of events, even if it did, there are certainly decent reasons to hire at least some Americans.
The greatest console app ever is easy: emacs. Thanks, RMS! Functions as a news reader, email client, game console, lisp compiler, AND back scratcher! Plus, it provides excellent reading material in the form of the emacs help file / GNU manifesto.
I've heard it can do text editing, too, although I'm not sure how commonly people use _that_ functionality.
You're making no sense. You're trying to posit something along the lines of "Apple stores "haven't come to the US" unless they're in all 50 states". The moment Apple opens a store in Florida, they're in the US. It's really that simple.
France, UK, and Germany are all in Europe. Ergo, iTunes has come to Europe. Perhaps not _all_ of Europe, but they didn't say that, either.
Yes, and the house and the senate members get elected how? Hint: they don't _buy_ their positions. People vote them in.
It doesn't matter how much money a corporation is slipping them. If people are pissed off that all grain-based products cost 10x more than they did last election, those people are going to _LOSE THEIR JOBS_.
CDs are not food. The situation is in no way similar.
Two points: 1. The EU, militarily, is laughable. They've got nukes, sure, but all the member countries are slashing budgets, not raising them. When it comes to an effective military, you can't cheap out and still have offensive capabilities.
More to the point, individual member nations still retain control over their own armed forces. The likelihood of getting the entire EU to participate in any war effort is about none. Maybe this will change, but it will take more than 50 years. See (2), though.
2. You are assuming things will continue as they are. They don't usually do that. The EU might up and collapse. China might have another civil war. India might get its act together. The US might form an "AU" with Mexico and Canada and other NAFTA members (unlikely, yeah).
Fortunately, three superpowers only _decreases_ the chances of war, especially if they're not unfriendly to each other. I mean, honestly, could you imagine attacking the EU? Sounds stupid. I mean, right now, the EU and the US are closely allied under NATO - if anyone should be threatened, it's China, not the EU.
The US knocks over a dictatorship that you didn't want them to. Don't generalize that into "going to start WW3". It's over-reacting and totally out of touch with the American mindset. In fact, the problems in Iraq will only make Americans _less_ likely to get involved in this sort of thing in the future.
"As soon as it becomes a guerilla war you can have as many nukes, chemical weapons, rail guns or smart bombs as you want and it won't be much use."
Not exactly true. If you're willing to use them with impunity, they're excellent weapons for putting down an insurgency. See WMD use by Arab regimes to put down revolts.
A good bombing campaign may not actually destroy tanks, or even kill all that many troops, but it _will_ lower morale and force them to maintain their vehicles with valuable spare parts. More to the point, it can rip up supply lines pretty good, and an enemy that can't move is a sitting duck.
Also, we have been putting some decent money into non-stand-off equipment, such as the Stryker and OICW (about to enter service, isn't it?). I'm kind of wondering when the next-generation MBT is going to come along, though. Links?
I thought it was a mistake to cancel Comanche, but what do I know...?
The fact that you're not hearing much about the outcomes is primarily linked to the fact that settlements typically include gag clauses to prevent you from coming out and berating the RIAA.
You can probably infer from the fact that we've not heard much that 99.9% of the cases have been settled privately.
I'm not usually a guy to whine about spelling, but it's "hear", not "here". If you want people to take you seriously, spelling is important.
Sounds alarmist to me. If anyone pulled a stunt like that, their patent would be revoked, if only due to popular protest. People on/. ascribe a little too much power to corporations. If the price of wheat bread goes up 10x, you better believe there's going to be some popular protest - and people vote, not corporations.
If McCain were to run, I'd vote for him if the Democrats put up Hillary Clinton as their choice. In fact, I'd vote for him against any Democratic choice if he put Joe Lieberman on his ticket.
I don't agree with all their policies, but dammit, those two always struck me as two of the most level-headed men in politics.
Back on topic for a moment - I doubt this bill will pass, because, as everyone has said, it effectively outlaws VCRs, and it's doubtful Congressmen are going to vote for something that would piss people off _that much_. The DMCA only affected a limited number of people... but everyone owns a VCR or device that would be affected by this.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it's true. Neatly dismissing the accuser because the defendant is Google seems foolish to me.
If we want unbiased courts, the first thing to do is become unbiased ourselves.
-Erwos
But is Blu-Ray backwards-compat to "normal" DVD, or will this mean I'm buying a new DVD drive?
-Erwos
A cinch to set up? I think that's a bit of a stretch. I've done dual-monitor in Linux with both dual-view cards and two heterogeneous cards, and it's never been _that_ trivial. It takes maybe 15 minutes of Googling and man pages for me, which is not too bad, but it's not "a cinch", at least compared to WindowsME.
The biggest argument in favor of multiple monitors is that you don't have to play software games to make windows behave in a logical fashion - they won't maximize to the entire combined frame-buffer, for instance, just to the physical monitor. nVidia's Windows drivers have some sort of grid tool that you can use to alter that behavior, though, and simulate it on a single monitor.
However, if I just needed a lot of real estate for _one_ application, the 30 inch Apple monitor would be heavenly, I'm sure. Actually, I wouldn't mind buying two and getting the best of both worlds, either!
(side note: lots of Windows games don't like to play nice with two monitors, and don't lock the mouse to the window in full screen games)
-Erwos
The problems with the US patent office are two-fold: /.'ers want to see "reject" as the default position).
1. Patent examiners are EXTREMELY over-worked. My future brother-in-law is a patent examiner, and he's often told me of a draconian quota system that rewards being quick and sloppy.
2. The US government is pro-business (as it should be, IMHO). However, this translates into the default standing order at the USPTO being "accept", and not "reject" (whereas most
The USPTO recently underwent some changes (new computer system, IIRC) that should allow patent examiners to be a little bit more effective in the future. But it's obvious to me the USPTO has problems - and they are management issues, not really idiot patent examiners.
-Erwos
I got 45 mpg on my 87 Honda Civic once. It was manual, and the _only_ thing I drove for that week was the highway. That was the incident that pretty much put Honda at the top of my list for any new car purchase.
-Erwos
While "real porn sites" generally involve hunting them down, pornographic ads (and I'm talking about rather explicit stuff, too) are far easier to come across by accident. I think the _ads_ are the thing that the government needs to concentrate on if they're going to regulate internet porn.
-Erwos
"Unlike the whole "keep your cell-phone number" jiberjoo, this is unneeded..."
How is "keep your phone number" any more needed than this?
I mean, you go tell people who need to get in contact with you what your new phone number is, and update your online info. It's not that hard!
-Erwos
The problem with prototyping tools as good as VB is that you end up using the work you did for the prototype as the "real" program.
I took an HCI course not too long ago at university, and _everyone_ (including us) who did prototyping with VB ended up using it for the final program. To be fair, this worked pretty well - but it was only for a lowly kiosk program. I'm sure it would have been much faster if we had rewritten the whole thing in C or C++.
But, yeah, VB is pretty damn good if you need to get something done in a hurry, or prototype rapidly.
-Erwos
I don't see how it's any different than any other "personal information awareness" technology in that respect. I mean, there's always the problem that someone who's not supposed to have access gains it (say, by password).
There are relatively easy ways to help prevent this sort of abuse, too. Will they be implemented? Let's hope so.
A Blackberry is not exactly the device I would be using to try to get the records of every person in the system, of course.
-Erwos
"I think the problem is more of resistance from established industries to adopt new technology because they don't want to lose their source of revenue."
The difference is, oil companies _know_ their source of revenue is going to run out. There is simply _not_ an infinite amount of oil under the ground. Therefore, it is entirely rational, and eminently sensible, for "big oil" to start branching out into other fuels.
In other words, protecting your revenue stream doesn't always mean crushing the competition - it also involves hedging your bets. And, obviously, hedging against oil running out is a VERY intelligent idea if you're an oil company.
-Erwos
The obvious answer would be, use the variants that are the lower-clocked ones that _don't_ have the huge fans that intrude on other slots. It could be that nVidia might differentiate the upper and lower end cards with "can it use SLI?", but I don't think we've seen any confirmation of that.
-Erwos
"It seems all the game makers went from story lines to graphics."
It's because game reviewers punish them more for "bad" graphics than bad gameplay.
Recently, I read a review for Front Mission 4. The damned reviewer simply could not stop talking about how the graphics "didn't live up to the PS2 potential"[1]. But, if graphics weren't that important, then why does that matter? I mean, I saw the screenshots, and I certainly didn't have any issues distinguishing wanzers from each other, and the "drab backgrounds" didn't hurt the gameplay, did they?
So, blame lying game critics, who _say_ that gameplay is more important than graphics, yet go nuts if the graphics are anything less than perfect.
-Erwos
[1] This is not to imply Front Mission 4 didn't have genuine gameplay issues - only that reviewers seemed to get hung up on the graphics more than their stated preference for "gameplay > graphics" would indicate.
If Yahoo asked very politely for third-party clients to display advertising and provided info on how to do so, there'd probably be a better than zero chance of at least seeing a plug-in.
I don't begrudge AOL, Yahoo, or even MSN for trying to make some money on ads. If they explained intelligently and elegantly why Gaim users _should_ view with ads, I bet some people would do it.
-Erwos
You're making the very weird assumption that the corporations _aren't_ trying to use the locals. If I was trying to make a profit off this, I know _I_ would be getting all the cheap local help I could get, instead of importing expensive Americans.
Another thing: the local help is somewhat unreliable due to the ongoing insurgency. Do you _really_ want to put a guy in a sensitive position who might be just looking for a great target to bomb? I'm betting that 99% of Iraqis are just fine, but it's that damned 1% that you've got to worry about. You can be pretty sure (100%) that the American you're importing isn't going to plant a mine under your chair.
So, not only I am not sure how much reality jives with your appreciation of the state of events, even if it did, there are certainly decent reasons to hire at least some Americans.
-Erwos
Porn sites and athletes - always on the bleeding edge of technology!
-Erwos
The greatest console app ever is easy: emacs. Thanks, RMS! Functions as a news reader, email client, game console, lisp compiler, AND back scratcher! Plus, it provides excellent reading material in the form of the emacs help file / GNU manifesto.
I've heard it can do text editing, too, although I'm not sure how commonly people use _that_ functionality.
-Erwos
You're making no sense. You're trying to posit something along the lines of "Apple stores "haven't come to the US" unless they're in all 50 states". The moment Apple opens a store in Florida, they're in the US. It's really that simple.
France, UK, and Germany are all in Europe. Ergo, iTunes has come to Europe. Perhaps not _all_ of Europe, but they didn't say that, either.
Yes, and the house and the senate members get elected how? Hint: they don't _buy_ their positions. People vote them in.
It doesn't matter how much money a corporation is slipping them. If people are pissed off that all grain-based products cost 10x more than they did last election, those people are going to _LOSE THEIR JOBS_.
CDs are not food. The situation is in no way similar.
-Erwos
Two points:
1. The EU, militarily, is laughable. They've got nukes, sure, but all the member countries are slashing budgets, not raising them. When it comes to an effective military, you can't cheap out and still have offensive capabilities.
More to the point, individual member nations still retain control over their own armed forces. The likelihood of getting the entire EU to participate in any war effort is about none. Maybe this will change, but it will take more than 50 years. See (2), though.
2. You are assuming things will continue as they are. They don't usually do that. The EU might up and collapse. China might have another civil war. India might get its act together. The US might form an "AU" with Mexico and Canada and other NAFTA members (unlikely, yeah).
Fortunately, three superpowers only _decreases_ the chances of war, especially if they're not unfriendly to each other. I mean, honestly, could you imagine attacking the EU? Sounds stupid. I mean, right now, the EU and the US are closely allied under NATO - if anyone should be threatened, it's China, not the EU.
The US knocks over a dictatorship that you didn't want them to. Don't generalize that into "going to start WW3". It's over-reacting and totally out of touch with the American mindset. In fact, the problems in Iraq will only make Americans _less_ likely to get involved in this sort of thing in the future.
-Erwos
"As soon as it becomes a guerilla war you can have as many nukes, chemical weapons, rail guns or smart bombs as you want and it won't be much use."
Not exactly true. If you're willing to use them with impunity, they're excellent weapons for putting down an insurgency. See WMD use by Arab regimes to put down revolts.
-Erwos
A good bombing campaign may not actually destroy tanks, or even kill all that many troops, but it _will_ lower morale and force them to maintain their vehicles with valuable spare parts. More to the point, it can rip up supply lines pretty good, and an enemy that can't move is a sitting duck.
Also, we have been putting some decent money into non-stand-off equipment, such as the Stryker and OICW (about to enter service, isn't it?). I'm kind of wondering when the next-generation MBT is going to come along, though. Links?
I thought it was a mistake to cancel Comanche, but what do I know...?
-Erwos
The fact that you're not hearing much about the outcomes is primarily linked to the fact that settlements typically include gag clauses to prevent you from coming out and berating the RIAA.
You can probably infer from the fact that we've not heard much that 99.9% of the cases have been settled privately.
I'm not usually a guy to whine about spelling, but it's "hear", not "here". If you want people to take you seriously, spelling is important.
-Erwos
Sounds alarmist to me. If anyone pulled a stunt like that, their patent would be revoked, if only due to popular protest. People on /. ascribe a little too much power to corporations. If the price of wheat bread goes up 10x, you better believe there's going to be some popular protest - and people vote, not corporations.
-Erwos
Yes, it could be made to - if you had the source. Since no source is included, you're not going to get any native ports until Skype does it.
-Erwos
If McCain were to run, I'd vote for him if the Democrats put up Hillary Clinton as their choice. In fact, I'd vote for him against any Democratic choice if he put Joe Lieberman on his ticket.
I don't agree with all their policies, but dammit, those two always struck me as two of the most level-headed men in politics.
Back on topic for a moment - I doubt this bill will pass, because, as everyone has said, it effectively outlaws VCRs, and it's doubtful Congressmen are going to vote for something that would piss people off _that much_. The DMCA only affected a limited number of people... but everyone owns a VCR or device that would be affected by this.
-Erwos