AFAIK, the iPod buffers something like 20 minutes of music at a time. It's just when you keep skipping stuff that you'll notice more frequent buffering. Playing the first 15 seconds of every song without buffering would still reduce battery life dramatically.
As of iTunes 7, you can move authorized music from the iPod to the computer. This was announced as a way to sync the iTunes library on two computers, but it'd also be useful for music that was downloaded to the iPod via wireless.
Part of the problem with the battery life is the amount of buffering the thing does. It tries to read entire songs into memory and shut off the HD, FOR EVERY SONG YOU PLAY.
If it didn't buffer songs, you'd have a 2-hour battery life instead of 10 hours. Seems like an acceptable tradeoff to me.
They assigned points based on measurable criteria. You can quibble over how many points a particular infraction is worth, but it's definitely more accurate than running around and going 'OMG!'
While the blurb headline may be construed as US-bashing, TFA does nothing of the sort, and shows that RSF has made a serious effort to measure freedom of the press. Also, the article merely confirms what everyone's been able to observe over the past few years. I see no FUD here, just a statement of fact.
dream of the day that I won't have to posess bank-burglar safe-cracker finger dexterity to get my shower to the exact temperature I desire, but rather I can just dial in a digital thermostat to 102.5F or whatever suits me.
Apart from the digital input, these already exist. Companies like Grohe produce thermostatic faucets like these. They typically have two knobs, one to set the temperature, and one to set the amount of water. I've been using these for years, and (provided you get a good one, and not a cheap-ass B-brand) they work perfectly. They're not exactly cheap (>$100), but worth it. Temperature control is to sub-1 degree C accuracy.
HVAC systems are a prime example. In our office, we have central heating (with hot water radiators), and an AC system. Both are controlled separately, which is stupid because you can easily set them up to work at the same time, counteracting each other. To make things worse, the heating has the dumbest thermostat I've ever seen. It ignores room temperature, and only uses the water temp. and outside temp. as inputs. One sensor is used to regulate the temperature in half a dozen rooms, which are warmed up by to sun at different rates. Result: there's no way to get the temperature right. Plus, the thermostat is run by an $5 microcontroller which has the most convoluted, braindead UI I've ever seen for such a simple function. The controller is made by Cenvax (so you know what to avoid).
What we need is a system that controls both hot and cold sources, with an easy way to program temperature profiles for each room separately. Get that right, and we can talk about refrigerators that can order food on their own.
How can an image which is constructed psuedorandomly ever compare to an image that is compressed using algorithms designed to preserve 'important' information? It seems to me you need to assemble the image before you can decide what to throw away.
The blurb gets it wrong, "pre-trash" isn't about "before stuff goes into the trash". Quote from TFA: "pre-trash inspection survey is in progress for the Tam residence,", IMO this should be parsed as "pre-(trash inspection) survey". This probably means walking down the street past the house, to see if they can get at the trash without Tam noticing.
"Same thing we do every night Pinky, try and take over the world! We shall create millions of doodles which will keep the world's intelligence services occupied long enough for us to take over without opposition."
This is mentioned in TFA (second page, heading "SOLID-STATE"). IIRC there are more materials that can do this, collectively they're called metal hydrides. Metal hydride tanks are heavy and expensive: Mercedes built a car with a metal hydride fuel tank about 10 years ago, the tank alone cost $100k. The temperature needed to release the hydrogen is about 300 deg C.
The difference is that people without TVs choose to watch less - they are generally more selective.
Generally, yes. But it's entirely possible to have a TV and a cable subscription, and still be selective. Thanks to the VCR, I don't have to conform to the broadcast schedule, and I get to skip the ads. I hardly watch anything 'live' these days.
I suspect we're arguing about semantics, though. IMO, 'watching TV' encompasses anything you do with a TV set, this includes watching DVD movies, but also TV programmes that have been encoded into a digital file (torrent). There's no difference between watching CSI on cable or as a downloaded file.
DVD/torrent is just a more convenient method (than a VCR) of a. choosing the programming you like, and b. timeshifting.
Thanks for pointing that out. I get their newsletter, but hadn't noticed this yet. Apparently, there are still several voting districts that use paper ballots. And it's possible to get a pass to vote in a different district.
E-voting does two things better than paper voting: - no counting errors (yes, assuming the software works correctly) - results are in much faster than with hand counting. We basically know who won 5 minutes after the poll closes.
If true, this is a major step. The voting process hasn't been very transparent, with Nedap trying to keep the software and voting procedures a secret. Wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet forced the issue using the Dutch 'freedom of information' act to get access to documents. Let's hope this committee will have access to the source code, and will be able to monitor and verify that the new PROMs actually contain the code the committee has been reviewing.
I, for one, welcome our election-monitoring overlords. Where do I sign up to be one of them?
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Op and za are abbreviations, apparently. ISTR the rules didn't allow them, but it's been a while since I played.
I can confirm that 'Vrow' is *not* a Dutch word.
AFAIK, the iPod buffers something like 20 minutes of music at a time. It's just when you keep skipping stuff that you'll notice more frequent buffering.
Playing the first 15 seconds of every song without buffering would still reduce battery life dramatically.
The technology exists today to make a very capable wireless media player,
Not as long as you've still got to plug it in anyway to recharge, it doesn't.
As of iTunes 7, you can move authorized music from the iPod to the computer. This was announced as a way to sync the iTunes library on two computers, but it'd also be useful for music that was downloaded to the iPod via wireless.
Part of the problem with the battery life is the amount of buffering the thing does. It tries to read entire songs into memory and shut off the HD, FOR EVERY SONG YOU PLAY.
If it didn't buffer songs, you'd have a 2-hour battery life instead of 10 hours. Seems like an acceptable tradeoff to me.
Will it? I realize we'll tend to fill up whatever amount of space we have.
It just seems we've been at a plateau for a while, with laptop drive capacity stuck at 80-120 Gb for about two years now. 200 Gb is a quantum leap.
Maybe it's just me, but this is the first I've heard of 2,5" HDs > 120 Gb...
Wow. Finally a laptop with enough storage space.
(/me being cursed with a company laptop with a way-too-small 20 Gb disk)
They assigned points based on measurable criteria. You can quibble over how many points a particular infraction is worth, but it's definitely more accurate than running around and going 'OMG!'
While the blurb headline may be construed as US-bashing, TFA does nothing of the sort, and shows that RSF has made a serious effort to measure freedom of the press. Also, the article merely confirms what everyone's been able to observe over the past few years. I see no FUD here, just a statement of fact.
Does TFA use the word 'beleaguered'? (/.'ed already, so can't check) No Apple-is/was-in-trouble article can be taken seriously without it.
dream of the day that I won't have to posess bank-burglar safe-cracker finger dexterity to get my shower to the exact temperature I desire, but rather I can just dial in a digital thermostat to 102.5F or whatever suits me.
Apart from the digital input, these already exist. Companies like Grohe produce thermostatic faucets like these.
They typically have two knobs, one to set the temperature, and one to set the amount of water. I've been using these for years, and (provided you get a good one, and not a cheap-ass B-brand) they work perfectly. They're not exactly cheap (>$100), but worth it. Temperature control is to sub-1 degree C accuracy.
HVAC systems are a prime example. In our office, we have central heating (with hot water radiators), and an AC system. Both are controlled separately, which is stupid because you can easily set them up to work at the same time, counteracting each other.
To make things worse, the heating has the dumbest thermostat I've ever seen. It ignores room temperature, and only uses the water temp. and outside temp. as inputs. One sensor is used to regulate the temperature in half a dozen rooms, which are warmed up by to sun at different rates. Result: there's no way to get the temperature right. Plus, the thermostat is run by an $5 microcontroller which has the most convoluted, braindead UI I've ever seen for such a simple function. The controller is made by Cenvax (so you know what to avoid).
What we need is a system that controls both hot and cold sources, with an easy way to program temperature profiles for each room separately. Get that right, and we can talk about refrigerators that can order food on their own.
I, for one, welcome our nuclear-powered bacterial underlords!
How can an image which is constructed psuedorandomly ever compare to an image that is compressed using algorithms designed to preserve 'important' information?
It seems to me you need to assemble the image before you can decide what to throw away.
The blurb gets it wrong, "pre-trash" isn't about "before stuff goes into the trash".
Quote from TFA: "pre-trash inspection survey is in progress for the Tam residence,", IMO this should be parsed as "pre-(trash inspection) survey".
This probably means walking down the street past the house, to see if they can get at the trash without Tam noticing.
"What are we going to do tonight, Brain?"
"Same thing we do every night Pinky, try and take over the world! We shall create millions of doodles which will keep the world's intelligence services occupied long enough for us to take over without opposition."
This is mentioned in TFA (second page, heading "SOLID-STATE"). IIRC there are more materials that can do this, collectively they're called metal hydrides. Metal hydride tanks are heavy and expensive: Mercedes built a car with a metal hydride fuel tank about 10 years ago, the tank alone cost $100k.
The temperature needed to release the hydrogen is about 300 deg C.
The difference is that people without TVs choose to watch less - they are generally more selective.
Generally, yes. But it's entirely possible to have a TV and a cable subscription, and still be selective. Thanks to the VCR, I don't have to conform to the broadcast schedule, and I get to skip the ads. I hardly watch anything 'live' these days.
I suspect we're arguing about semantics, though. IMO, 'watching TV' encompasses anything you do with a TV set, this includes watching DVD movies, but also TV programmes that have been encoded into a digital file (torrent). There's no difference between watching CSI on cable or as a downloaded file.
DVD/torrent is just a more convenient method (than a VCR) of
a. choosing the programming you like, and
b. timeshifting.
I gave up on TV years ago
No, you didn't. You still watch TV, you just use different hardware. This has some advantages (fewer ads, less 'TV network' crap), but it's still TV.
We may live in our parents' basements, but teens we're not. 'Curmudgeons' is the word you're looking for.
is the price tag. AFAIK $200M is an order of magnitude cheaper than current nuclear power plants. How did they get the price down that far?
Thanks for pointing that out. I get their newsletter, but hadn't noticed this yet.
Apparently, there are still several voting districts that use paper ballots. And it's possible to get a pass to vote in a different district.
E-voting does two things better than paper voting:
- no counting errors (yes, assuming the software works correctly)
- results are in much faster than with hand counting. We basically know who won 5 minutes after the poll closes.
IOW, we use e-voting because it's convenient.
If true, this is a major step. The voting process hasn't been very transparent, with Nedap trying to keep the software and voting procedures a secret. Wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet forced the issue using the Dutch 'freedom of information' act to get access to documents.
Let's hope this committee will have access to the source code, and will be able to monitor and verify that the new PROMs actually contain the code the committee has been reviewing.
I, for one, welcome our election-monitoring overlords. Where do I sign up to be one of them?