I think the digital challenger to medium format would be scanning backs; no problem getting huge megapixels there. Or does somebody use MF for action shots?
Even the price argument falls to digital if you're taking many exposures though.
Re:Big Brother and the iTunes Company
on
iTunes is Malware?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
If you don't like it, use something else
People can't decide to quit using spyware until they discover it, now can they? That's the value of publicising this issue.
As it happens, I'm not an iTunes user at all (mplayer and xmms). One of the big things I love about Linux is freedom (for lack of a better word) from little spams tucked into every icon and preinstalled application and bookmark. But I think issues like this clearly illustrate the benefit of keeping media available outside proprietary players, and that won't happen unless a lot of people demand it. My own choices alone will not determine the environment I live in. The more people complain about the commercialization of every mouse click, the better the future will be.
Re:Big Brother and the iTunes Company
on
iTunes is Malware?
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· Score: 1
Can the feature even be turned off by those dilligent enough to do so? (Short of resorting to firewalling?)
Re:Big Brother and the iTunes Company
on
iTunes is Malware?
·
· Score: 1
The fact that they make suggestions while you're browsing your local computer does NOT imply that they're collecting data about your browsing and, more importantly, sending it back and storing it on their own central database!
If that is what they're indeed doing, I suggest they simply disable the feature by default, and add a checkbox for those who wish to use it. Simple!
Re:Big Brother and the iTunes Company
on
iTunes is Malware?
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Baloney. You're readining far more into that disclaimer than what it actually states. When they say "your favorite artists," it's reasonable to assume they're gleaning this from your interactions with *their* website. Just as Amazon does. But when they're monitoring your actions on your own computer and sending it back to a central server... sorry, that's the definition of spyware. iTunes is spyware.
They can defuse this whole situation simply by adding a checkbox to iTunes, to only enable this invasive feature at the user's request. If enough customers demand it, I'm sure they'll comply. Personally, if they want to make money tracking me, they'll at least have to pay for the privilege.
they never said they would support it or make it easy.
I've heard that too, and it's a real pity. I can't/won't take the "big bang" approach to transitioning my work environment to OSX, and dual booting would be a great safety net. And I might even want to play a game once in a while.
The reason scientists commit fraud is the're just sure the results will be confirmed by later experiments, and they don't want to get beaten to the punch.
Those of you who code: haven't you ever been tempted to release an untested patch because "hey, it's just a spelling correction. What could go wrong?"
I'll agree that the.jpg format may be replaced at somepoint, but how long would it take an automated tool to batch convert a few million.jpgs?
And I will disagree. Worrying about jpeg disappearing is no different than saying "don't waste your time writing in English, it'll go obsolete and humankind won't understand it anyways." There are billions of jpegs out there, and unlike human language, they are documented unambiguously and in source code. And JPEG is used globally, unlike risky region-specific encodings such as English, Chinese, and Spanish (I'm only half kidding).
ASCII is safe. JPEG is safe. Basic HTML is safe. The only problem a thousand years from now will be finding the good stuff among all the boring crap our descendents will wish we'd deleted. (Then again search engines may be smarter than we are by 2106).
Unfortunately I'm not as confident in sound and video. MPEG is pretty safe due to DVDs, other codecs I wouldn't trust for archival in the slightest.
Besides, tapes have a serious format obsolescence problem, because they're unpopular and there are so many incompatible types. Any optical drive you find at BestBuy right now will read a 20 year-old CD just fine, in fact even today CD is the main format for music and shrinkwrapped software distribution. I'll wager that for each of the last 10 years, the number of CDs manufactured outnumbers all the data tapes ever manufactured (and that includes dozens of incompatible types of tape). I think CDs will be readable for a long, long time to come (relative to a human lifetime and not eons).
I guess public space imagery matters if your biggest military rivals don't have their own satellites. Our biggest rival in 1974 was in space before we were, so I don't see what made this such an issue.
The processor costs $30 more. The writeup says "slightly more pricey." If you somehow find that false, I suggest you're a fanboy. If you want to justify the slightly higher price, such as reduced power or cooling costs, fine. But don't slam the writeup for being factually correct, or engage in speculation about how the street price of the AMD might actually be less when the opposite could just as well be true.
Yes, off topic, but it's nice to see a well written and concise topic summary around here once in a while.
But how accurate is it?
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono.
I think that's far premature. Without even knowing yet what the catch is, I know there will be some. I just don't think Microsoft will let Windows apps seamlessly run under Linux, one way or another.
I guess this test would be useful in determining if the subject was strangulated before decapitated, but how often are the investigators wondering that.
you won't save much money, if anything, buying e-books...
inertia does appear to sometimes cause e-books to be priced dearer for a while longer then the paperbacks.
And that is why I won't be buying - simply because they refusal of the publishing industry to share the savings of electronic publishing annoys me. I don't even care if the electronic books are a little more convenient, it's simple tit for tat. Electronic distribution should be eradicating information scarcity everywhere, instead they're hobbling it, keeping all the benefits for themselves and bending over backwards to destroy every benefit for everybody else. Until/unless they change their minds, they can forget it.
"There isn't good research that says it causes permanent damage, but even temporary symptoms are worth noting," said Ticho.
Anybody noticed this? Sometimes when I'm working in the evening, my eyes, which felt fine all day, start burning and watering up so I can't do anything but blink for a couple minutes, and it's somewhat painful.
From a PR standpoint, the fact that they're not worth buying only makes it more impressive that everybody knows what they are. I mean, it doesn't take a PR genius to publicize a cure for cancer, right?
Well, you've missed the point of his command-line argument. He considers the familiar GUI to be a command-line interface:
First the person does something, usually either by typing or clicking with a pointing device. And then, after an unspecified period of time, the computer does something, and then the cycle is repeated.
(I think he should call it the "command-based" interface instead of the "command-line" interface though.)
Anyways, his complaint seems that command-based interfaces treat interaction as a linear sequence of discrete events, with actions normally initiated by the user. You might say they're "turn-based," whereas people don't normally interact with the world that way.
Now, he might or might not have a point. I'd like to hear him propose an alternative.
If there's anything wrong with the article, it's that any single paragraph would yeild more interesting discussion than the whole thing together.
I already do run Windows under VMWare on Linux. Virtualization is OK for most things, but I need to be able to get native performance for graphics sometimes.
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I think the digital challenger to medium format would be scanning backs; no problem getting huge megapixels there. Or does somebody use MF for action shots?
Even the price argument falls to digital if you're taking many exposures though.
As it happens, I'm not an iTunes user at all (mplayer and xmms). One of the big things I love about Linux is freedom (for lack of a better word) from little spams tucked into every icon and preinstalled application and bookmark. But I think issues like this clearly illustrate the benefit of keeping media available outside proprietary players, and that won't happen unless a lot of people demand it. My own choices alone will not determine the environment I live in. The more people complain about the commercialization of every mouse click, the better the future will be.
Can the feature even be turned off by those dilligent enough to do so? (Short of resorting to firewalling?)
If that is what they're indeed doing, I suggest they simply disable the feature by default, and add a checkbox for those who wish to use it. Simple!
They can defuse this whole situation simply by adding a checkbox to iTunes, to only enable this invasive feature at the user's request. If enough customers demand it, I'm sure they'll comply. Personally, if they want to make money tracking me, they'll at least have to pay for the privilege.
"Including a firewall with Windows is no progress?"
Not when the most buggy apps are IE and Outlook, which are both essential yet can't function disconnected from the network.
Even Apple doesn't call its own computers "PCs." Just visit apple.com and look at the first words in big bold letters at the top of the page.
Those of you who code: haven't you ever been tempted to release an untested patch because "hey, it's just a spelling correction. What could go wrong?"
ASCII is safe. JPEG is safe. Basic HTML is safe. The only problem a thousand years from now will be finding the good stuff among all the boring crap our descendents will wish we'd deleted. (Then again search engines may be smarter than we are by 2106).
Unfortunately I'm not as confident in sound and video. MPEG is pretty safe due to DVDs, other codecs I wouldn't trust for archival in the slightest.
Besides, tapes have a serious format obsolescence problem, because they're unpopular and there are so many incompatible types. Any optical drive you find at BestBuy right now will read a 20 year-old CD just fine, in fact even today CD is the main format for music and shrinkwrapped software distribution. I'll wager that for each of the last 10 years, the number of CDs manufactured outnumbers all the data tapes ever manufactured (and that includes dozens of incompatible types of tape). I think CDs will be readable for a long, long time to come (relative to a human lifetime and not eons).
I can't believe how undemocratic what I just wrote sounds. Yet even still, it's too much for some.
I guess public space imagery matters if your biggest military rivals don't have their own satellites. Our biggest rival in 1974 was in space before we were, so I don't see what made this such an issue.
The processor costs $30 more. The writeup says "slightly more pricey." If you somehow find that false, I suggest you're a fanboy. If you want to justify the slightly higher price, such as reduced power or cooling costs, fine. But don't slam the writeup for being factually correct, or engage in speculation about how the street price of the AMD might actually be less when the opposite could just as well be true.
From a PR standpoint, the fact that they're not worth buying only makes it more impressive that everybody knows what they are. I mean, it doesn't take a PR genius to publicize a cure for cancer, right?
Anyways, his complaint seems that command-based interfaces treat interaction as a linear sequence of discrete events, with actions normally initiated by the user. You might say they're "turn-based," whereas people don't normally interact with the world that way.
Now, he might or might not have a point. I'd like to hear him propose an alternative.
If there's anything wrong with the article, it's that any single paragraph would yeild more interesting discussion than the whole thing together.