Yeah, I've heard about this. In particular, about them being given out like M&Ms, even for viral infections where the doctors knew damn well that they'd do nothing useful, but wanted to pander to the patients. That's not even the OP's "overuse", it's blatant and irresponsible misuse that was obviously going to cause major grief at some point- well, here we are.
I've heard it said that such people had no other option, but since their only "option" didn't work, the doctors would have been more responsible giving them placebo sugar pills. Wouldn't have helped those particular patients any more, but it would have caused less harm to the same demographic of poor people in general that this TB is now most likely to hit.
At any rate, if it hadn't already been in the headline, I'd have guessed (rightly) that it had started in India- this isn't remotely surprising.
It's partly a comment on society, not the article in question.
Oh, okay. "Offtopic".
It seems every 5th article on/. is how the government wants to get involved in yet another area of life.
Yet, oddly, despite the number of relevant opportunities this would imply, you posted the comment as a response to *this* article you concede it doesn't apply to.
Most recently is SOPA which is more related to CES than other examples.
You didn't mention SOPA in your original post, and there was no indication that this was what you meant. You're simply trying to justify your original offtopic comment by retrospectively adding a tenuous link via the current hot topic du jour.
This article is another example of people introducing a non-problem as a problem.
No, it's not- quite the opposite. As I already said, no-one else was complaining or implying this. It was only you why tried to make it appear that way.
It's also general sarcastic comment as to the newsworthiness of this article, which I did read, BTW.
Defensive much? I don't recall myself or anyone else actually saying (nor even implying) that you *hadn't* read the article!
And please stop backpedalling. The "sarcastic" part of your post wasn't being sarcastic about the newsworthiness, it was sarcastically attacking the nonexistent plea for government involvement that no-one was actually making.
Quick! Call your congress-critter! This sort of behavior needs to be outlawed for the safety of the children! (Or environment, or pick something else.) Clearly people can't make good decisions without government involvement.
Er, what? Given that no-one in the summary, nor in the article itself, nor in the comments above yours was even complaining about the restricted access, let alone saying that the US government should be doing something about it... I'm not sure what you think you're (sarcastically) poking fun at here.
I mean, I'd call it a strawman, but I'm not sure who involved with the article or this thread you're strawmanning, beyond using it as an excuse for a vague libertarian attack on perceived US government interference that had nothing to do with the article(!!)
Seriously, who cares who goes? I'm sure it's crowded, but really, this is news?
It's not really an interesting article, to be honest, but merely taking an interest in the attendance of a show doesn't imply OMGG COMMIE SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111111111
They're aiming this product at hipster tossers (*) who bought the iPad and gushed about it to their friends. Now "no keyboard" is no longer "underground", (**) which gives them an excuse to admit to themselves that it's actually really fucking annoying trying to use one without it, and rush out and buy the latest iOverpricedAccessoryTat.
(*) Seriously, *look* at the guy- he's the archetypal odious hipster twat if ever I saw one. It's the bloody hat that does it- he deserves to be beaten to death with his obnoxiously-angled self-consciously hipster headwear, if that was physically possible. Sadly it's not, so we'd just have to settle for choking him to death by shoving it down his throat. >:-(
(**) It never was, but when every man and his dog has an "exclusive" iPad, you really can't pretend any more.
Then the first one can one-up the copy-cats again.
So they spend a lot of money developing something to give them a very brief advantage- which almost certainly won't recover the cost of the investment- before the other company copies *that* again? Lather, rinse, repeat.
I'm not saying that the patent systems in various countries don't have problems, or that all patents should be allowed, or that all patents should last as long as they're allowed to be just now. However, to dismiss the entire concept in principle, is IMHO wrong.
Though to call that contrived and pointless opening "witty" would be overstating it. Either your case stands on the facts, or it doesn't; third-rate wordplay merely cheapens any point you're trying to make.
I was told I had no future because I spent my free time disassembling Apple II games and figuring out how they worked instead of kicking a football.
Was that just something the sports coach said, or is it an accurate reflection of what you were told in school in general? If the latter, then that's possibly the most fucked up thing I've ever heard.
I'm not American (never even been there) but I understand a lot of schools over there are very focussed around their (American-) Football teams and similar sports. I've nothing against sports being a part of school life, for those who enjoy that sort of thing. But they should never, *ever* be the primary focus of the institution.
(Then again, I understand that your universities also place heavy emphasis on sports teams. Do they give credit towards the final degree based on performance at sports (for non-sports or physical-related degrees)?)
I've only got your comments above to go by, but if- as you imply- your school placed more importance on this to the point that a geeky but smart academic-oriented kid was told he had "no future" because he wasn't interested in football... then WTF? With the exception of a very, *very* small proportion of the best players, even relative success at school level is unlikely to translate to a future career. (*) At any rate, that's as twisted a perversion of a school's intended purpose as I can imagine, and your school was educationally worthless and should have been burned to the ground.
(*) Hence, I guess, the American cliche of the School Football Team Captain who was popular in High School and scored the winning touchdown in a game that seemed important at the time. Yet twenty years later everyone else has moved on and he's never done anything else, reliving his "glory days" having sadly peaked back then?
See, this is the problem. Your all-in-one-paragraph comes across as a defensive, slightly hysterical rant attacking those on the perceived "other" side who you think are attacking your beloved 3D. Towards the end, your tone is that of a religious zealot whose persecution simply makes him stronger in his own beliefs and the fantasy of his eventual victory over the ignorant oppressive masses all the sweeter.
Well, sorry to disappoint you, but most of us- or indeed, most 3D owners- don't see it that way. Good or bad, it's just a f****** TV system. Get a grip!
Simple fact is that 3D is something the industry is trying to push at the minute, and this is a tech site. The article didn't strike me as being particularly biased, and the comments simply reflect the fact that the Slashdot readership in general aren't as enamoured of the technology as the industry would like people to be.
If the tech improves to the point that it's good enough for casual viewing, and it becomes cheap enough, and there's enough worthwhile content out there, I suspect that a lot more people *might* go for it. But as things stand, people are indifferent.
The only good thing (IMO) about the ZX81 was the cheap, cheap price, otherwise it was a pretty awful machine.
The Vic-20 would have looked a poor second choice too if you had the money and inclination to splash out significantly more on an Atari 800. So yeah, the ZX81's selling feature undoubtedly *was* its "cheap, cheap price", but that doesn't make it the trashy, worthless machine the phrase implies.
In fact, the ZX80 was the first computer under £100 in the UK, and the ZX81 was significantly cheaper still, bringing computing to the masses here. It had its limitations- those were undeniable- but it still fulfilled the basic essentials of a hobbyist home computer. (Though I wouldn't ever claim it was a great choice for arcade games or business computing!)
The likes of the Vic 20 was never that cheap here.
I don't know if you're American, but I do note that Americans seem to slag off the ZX81 and TS-1000 (the US version) a lot. I'm *guessing* this dislike is for a number of reasons:-
(a) The TS-1000 came out properly over a *year* later(!) there- around the time we were getting the ZX Spectrum- and things had moved on fast,
(b) Americans had more disposable income- and could probably stretch to the Vic- so possibly the TS-1000's low price wasn't the difference between "having a computer" and "not having a computer"
(c) Commodore's Jack Tramiel seemed to be more aggressive in pushing prices down on the US market (*) so I assume the Vic 20 was probably cheaper over there; being US-made probably helped
(d) AFAIK there was a US shortage of the 16K RAM-packs that made the ZX81 far more capable, and they weren't that cheap either
(*) I'm basing this on what I've heard about the C64. I get the impression that it was a "cheap" machine on the US market in the way it never quite was in the UK- I do know that Jack Tramiel was ruthlessly aggressive in his pricing over there (to the point that Commodore's eventual victory in the market may have been pyrrhic). However, it was always enough more expensive than the ZX Spectrum in the UK that the latter was the best-selling machine here, even though it wasn't technically as good.
The VIC-20 had lots of stuff the ZX81 did not have. A proper keyboard, color graphics, disk drive(s)
Disk drive interface, yes, but the drives themselves sure as heck weren't standard. In fact, Wikipedia says they cost more than the computer itself, and I can believe that- even "cheap" drives were expensive back then. That's why cassette-based storage was so "popular" (cough!) at the time.
I doubt anyone buying a ZX81 could have afforded even the Vic's disk drives.
FWIW, I remember reading an old magazine article mentioning a disk drive system for the ZX81. IIRC it was ludicrously expensive in relation to the machine itself, but it *was* possible(!)
a real video chip so the processor didn't have to draw the screen (that's why you can either run a program or have screen output.
You're thinking of the ZX80. The ZX81 was capable of running a program and displaying the output without the screen flicker, albeit at a slower speed. (You could revert to flickery "FAST" mode if you wanted to).
I don't want this post to come across as an attempt to say that the ZX81 wasn't a very simplistic and somewhat limited machine. It was. However, it was a usable machine that fulfilled the essentials, and that "cheap, cheap price" opened up computing to a whole new audience. Even the disliked flat keyboard served its part in keeping the price down. About the only thing that wasn't forgivable in that context was the notorious "RAM pack wobble", which was just bad design (apparently Sinclair reused the ZX80 ram pack case that was moulded to fit the older machine).
Huh? No, "every 20-30 years" is *not* "correct"(!)
The OP was talking about "3D tv" and this is the *first* time round they've seriously tried to push 3D TV as a commercial concern.... but then, I'd already said that!
tvs were only around since the 50s
Er, not sure what point you're trying to make. Chronologically, that's still within the "'50s, early '80s and present day" range. In fact, AFAIK the original 50s wave of 3D cinema films was a response to the growing threat from television's early success.
I was one of the first purchasers and the only issue I find with it is the fact that they aren't releasing enough [etc]
You like it? That's great!
If you don't want to use 3D, then don't. No one's holding a gun to your head.
Oh, god, not the old "no-one's holding a gun to your head so you're not entitled to criticise" argument logic again. (You even explicitly stated it in this case!)
This pops up on Slashdot regularly. Bottom line; (a) people are entitled to their free opinion if they don't like something and (b) if this logic was used, only people who liked something enough to buy it would be entitled to comment on it- which would rather bias discussion of the subject and not be helpful to those seeking an unbiased cross-section of opinion. Are you suggesting that someone who looked into something, saw that it was seriously flawed (or whatever) and decided it wasn't for them shouldn't be entitled to express their opinion or advice to others?
Now go ahead and mod me down because I didn't say "Yeah you're right my 3D sucks".
No- your post's more likely to be modded down because it's an attack-is-the-best-form-of-defensiveness whine. You seem to think those critical of 3D are attacking those who do enjoy it for partisan fanboyish reasons- rather than just expressing a differing opinion on a technology and its place in the market- when in fact it's you that comes across as the defensive fanboy. (Though that polarised attitude may be your response to your *perception* of being attacked... er, if I made a circular argument there, forget it;-)).
3D tv is just a scam. tried every 20-30 years and they just don't learn...
No, AFAIK this is the third time they've tried it with movies ('50s, early '80s, present day), but only the first they've tried it seriously with television.
(Not counting sporadic special events and gimmick fests that require special glasses and have limitations, but work with an ordinary TV, and hence would not be much use for getting people to buy a new one!)
Coincidentally, I just overhead my boss this afternoon telling a customer that he doesn't have much use for the expensive 3D television he bought last year, and even admitting that it was a "gimmick". No big surprise, he was never even into TV that much in the first place, but likes his boys toys until he gets bored of them... which is pretty much as soon as he gets them:-).
If Woz ain't rolling now, he never will be...
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If Woz wuz dead (sorry woz, I know your out there), he'd be rolling already.
Except that he's not dead. Yeah, I know you just said that, but despite not agreeing with everything "his" company does, he's not exactly vehemently complaining about them either.
Which is (or might not be) odd considering that what Apple is nowadays pretty much represents the complete and utter antithesis of the hacker ethic (*) and the scene that Woz came out of in the mid-70s- the same scene that ultimately nurtured the creation of the Apple II.
(Even if, ironically, the Apple II itself was one of the first consumer-friendly microcomputers and step away from those early origins!)
Of course, Apple had already moved away from that by the time the (Jobs-driven) Mac was coming out, and indeed, the original Mac already demonstrated Apple's (Jobs-driven!) control freakery and closed nature with its lack of expansion and Jobs' insistence that its 128K not be expandable, despite it being generally accepted by the designers that this was inadequate.
But this controlling, closed nature only really became an issue recently, when the iPhone snuck a walled-garden approach to computing in under the guise of being a phone (**), even though it was basically a portable computer. Their success and dominance, combined with being a demonstration that consumers would tolerate a closed ecosystem has made this an issue for the future direction of the computer market.
But I don't see any rolling from the undead Woz...
(*) Yes, one *could* make a case that this was A Good Thing. But it doesn't change the fact that- good or bad- Apple's current direction pretty much is the complete opposite of the hacker philosophy.
(**) The "phone" tag reflects the direction it came from- i.e. building on the existing phone market- rather than what it is. If 90s/early-2000s style PDAs hadn't gone out of fashion, they probably would have evolved into something similar, albeit from a different direction. That's why I find it silly- but understandable- when people say they don't need a "phone" with all that stuff; well, fair enough, but the iPhone and Android siblings aren't meant to be *just* phones, and no-one is buying them merely for that reason- if they were called "portable computers", "communications PDAs" or whatever, the complainers wouldn't be arguing that.
If a pyramid scheme can give itself a fancy name like Scientology
Please bear in mind that while it may be a way to extract large amounts of money from people by dubious means, that doesn't make it a "pyramid scheme", the latter of which's name reflects the structure of that particular scam.
I'm not sure what's most laughable... the Standing Seats [bbc.co.uk], or the Pay Toilets [bbc.co.uk]
I'm pretty sure O'Leary doesn't seriously expect any of his ideas of this ilk to go ahead. But he knows damn well the press will report them, giving him and his company "no-publicity-is-bad" publicity. IOW, they're designed purely to get attention, and the press duly obliges him. They probably know this as well, but figure out it's a good way to bulk out column inches.
Everyone wins, except Ryanair's customers, and those of us fed up of seeing this dislikable attention whore in the papers.
And it isn't like it will do much to anyone but GoDaddy. The RIAA/MPAA companies, the real villains, are who we should be boycotting. Why aren't people canceling their cable and Netflix or Hulu+. [Boycotting GoDaddy is] easy and costs $7-10 dollars.
Well, you said it. It doesn't make *that* much difference if you choose another registrar, whereas if you were to boycott the large movie or tech companies, you'd have to actually sacrifice seeing the latest geek-friendly blockbuster or not have the latest shiny tech gadget or console.
And while people here are happy to complain about how Sony or whoever are going to lose their business or whatever because of some dick move they made, when it comes to the crunch and making a *real* sacrifice (like those above), they'll cave in with some spurious and/or lightweight excuse, or say how they're going to hand over their money on *this* occasion, but they'll buy less shiny stuff from them in future. You show them!
And as the companies have got the only thing they're interested in (i.e. angry-but-wishy-washy geeks' money) I doubt they're too concerned about their ranting to the converted on Slashdot.
Wired is gone over to the dark side of popular culture, but I read it still.
Come to think of it, been years since Wired was very geeky, or computing-centric
I bought it for the first time circa 2000 (i.e. over a decade back, and it was still a few years old even then) and even at that point it struck me as more of a US-oriented business magazine masquerading as a science/tech magazine for people who didn't *actually* like science (just liked to think that they did, as well as fetishising the latest technology).
The presentation was sometimes interesting (and just as often was pretentiously up-its-own-arse style over substance) and they occasionally do have something of interest, but for the most part Wired was (and is?) massively overrated.
They have a British version again (after a brief and unsuccessful attempt at the same in the mid-90s which I never read), but I haven't ever bought it, to be honest.
Actual and Genuine Communism killed nobody. People purporting to be espousing the ideas of Communism may have, but the philosophical construct was not responsible for it
"Actual" and "genuine" communism can't exist in the real world without being subverted. That is its problem.
"Genuine" communism is reliant upon people behaving in an idealised and unrealistic manner, and is therefore reliant upon external forces to make them behave in that manner- which leads to repression and subversion of the original ideal. And, to be honest, any system that doesn't accurately take account of the nature of human beings shouldn't be excused for people's failure to live up to it, because that would be putting the horse before the cart.
Was I the only person who read the summary and thought "even at 1:50 scale, that's going to be damn massive" (couldn't remember the exact size, but I knew it was big- having checked, the circumference of the whole thing is 27km, or around 16 miles)?
Then pretty quickly twigged that they probably hadn't built the whole thing, checked the article, and was right.
It used to not even prompt back in the day, it just automatically opened the link.
Perhaps that was only the case if you had the "download license automatically" checkbox ticked in the preferences? At any rate, you can turn this "helpful" feature off, and I always have. Though of course, this doesn't excuse MS's crappy implementation and presentation of a feature that most people won't realise is dangeous.
Yep. Was trying to download a "White Christmas" wmv for Xmas family listening off eMule. Every single file was a redirect to a malware codec. Sheesh... not even Mr. Crosby's classic is safe!
Isn't that one of those cases where a malware peddler on P2P notes what you're searching for and returns lots of fake results "customised" to your search term that are all basically the same piece of malware if you try to download them?
For example, if you searched for "sasquatch and queen elizabeth ii playing beach volleyball" (i.e. the most unlikely term to get *any* match, let alone exact match), you'd get quite a number of "results" such as "sasquatch-and-queen-elizabeth-ii-playing-beach-volleyball.wmv"... which of course would be nothing of the sort!
I think they're doing fine. They are a money machine, they aren't hipsters. Why invest all the time and money in huge new projects and technology when you have stuff making tons of money and more importantly profit.
Er, but the point is that they *are* "investing all that time and money" in lab research on innovative products and technologies anyway... it's just that it rarely seems to make it out!
Slashdot Mirror
in india antibiotics are used as if it was water
Yeah, I've heard about this. In particular, about them being given out like M&Ms, even for viral infections where the doctors knew damn well that they'd do nothing useful, but wanted to pander to the patients. That's not even the OP's "overuse", it's blatant and irresponsible misuse that was obviously going to cause major grief at some point- well, here we are.
I've heard it said that such people had no other option, but since their only "option" didn't work, the doctors would have been more responsible giving them placebo sugar pills. Wouldn't have helped those particular patients any more, but it would have caused less harm to the same demographic of poor people in general that this TB is now most likely to hit.
At any rate, if it hadn't already been in the headline, I'd have guessed (rightly) that it had started in India- this isn't remotely surprising.
It's partly a comment on society, not the article in question.
Oh, okay. "Offtopic".
It seems every 5th article on /. is how the government wants to get involved in yet another area of life.
Yet, oddly, despite the number of relevant opportunities this would imply, you posted the comment as a response to *this* article you concede it doesn't apply to.
Most recently is SOPA which is more related to CES than other examples.
You didn't mention SOPA in your original post, and there was no indication that this was what you meant. You're simply trying to justify your original offtopic comment by retrospectively adding a tenuous link via the current hot topic du jour.
This article is another example of people introducing a non-problem as a problem.
No, it's not- quite the opposite. As I already said, no-one else was complaining or implying this. It was only you why tried to make it appear that way.
It's also general sarcastic comment as to the newsworthiness of this article, which I did read, BTW.
Defensive much? I don't recall myself or anyone else actually saying (nor even implying) that you *hadn't* read the article!
And please stop backpedalling. The "sarcastic" part of your post wasn't being sarcastic about the newsworthiness, it was sarcastically attacking the nonexistent plea for government involvement that no-one was actually making.
Quick! Call your congress-critter! This sort of behavior needs to be outlawed for the safety of the children! (Or environment, or pick something else.) Clearly people can't make good decisions without government involvement.
Er, what? Given that no-one in the summary, nor in the article itself, nor in the comments above yours was even complaining about the restricted access, let alone saying that the US government should be doing something about it... I'm not sure what you think you're (sarcastically) poking fun at here.
I mean, I'd call it a strawman, but I'm not sure who involved with the article or this thread you're strawmanning, beyond using it as an excuse for a vague libertarian attack on perceived US government interference that had nothing to do with the article(!!)
Seriously, who cares who goes? I'm sure it's crowded, but really, this is news?
It's not really an interesting article, to be honest, but merely taking an interest in the attendance of a show doesn't imply OMGG COMMIE SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111111111
They're aiming this product at hipster tossers (*) who bought the iPad and gushed about it to their friends. Now "no keyboard" is no longer "underground", (**) which gives them an excuse to admit to themselves that it's actually really fucking annoying trying to use one without it, and rush out and buy the latest iOverpricedAccessoryTat.
(*) Seriously, *look* at the guy- he's the archetypal odious hipster twat if ever I saw one. It's the bloody hat that does it- he deserves to be beaten to death with his obnoxiously-angled self-consciously hipster headwear, if that was physically possible. Sadly it's not, so we'd just have to settle for choking him to death by shoving it down his throat. >:-(
(**) It never was, but when every man and his dog has an "exclusive" iPad, you really can't pretend any more.
Then the first one can one-up the copy-cats again.
So they spend a lot of money developing something to give them a very brief advantage- which almost certainly won't recover the cost of the investment- before the other company copies *that* again? Lather, rinse, repeat.
I'm not saying that the patent systems in various countries don't have problems, or that all patents should be allowed, or that all patents should last as long as they're allowed to be just now. However, to dismiss the entire concept in principle, is IMHO wrong.
Damn, puts my mildly crap time at school in perspective to be honest. :-/
I hope you find what you're looking for anyway.
For a dyslexic, nuclear is unclear.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Though to call that contrived and pointless opening "witty" would be overstating it. Either your case stands on the facts, or it doesn't; third-rate wordplay merely cheapens any point you're trying to make.
I was told I had no future because I spent my free time disassembling Apple II games and figuring out how they worked instead of kicking a football.
Was that just something the sports coach said, or is it an accurate reflection of what you were told in school in general? If the latter, then that's possibly the most fucked up thing I've ever heard.
I'm not American (never even been there) but I understand a lot of schools over there are very focussed around their (American-) Football teams and similar sports. I've nothing against sports being a part of school life, for those who enjoy that sort of thing. But they should never, *ever* be the primary focus of the institution.
(Then again, I understand that your universities also place heavy emphasis on sports teams. Do they give credit towards the final degree based on performance at sports (for non-sports or physical-related degrees)?)
I've only got your comments above to go by, but if- as you imply- your school placed more importance on this to the point that a geeky but smart academic-oriented kid was told he had "no future" because he wasn't interested in football... then WTF? With the exception of a very, *very* small proportion of the best players, even relative success at school level is unlikely to translate to a future career. (*) At any rate, that's as twisted a perversion of a school's intended purpose as I can imagine, and your school was educationally worthless and should have been burned to the ground.
(*) Hence, I guess, the American cliche of the School Football Team Captain who was popular in High School and scored the winning touchdown in a game that seemed important at the time. Yet twenty years later everyone else has moved on and he's never done anything else, reliving his "glory days" having sadly peaked back then?
See, this is the problem. Your all-in-one-paragraph comes across as a defensive, slightly hysterical rant attacking those on the perceived "other" side who you think are attacking your beloved 3D. Towards the end, your tone is that of a religious zealot whose persecution simply makes him stronger in his own beliefs and the fantasy of his eventual victory over the ignorant oppressive masses all the sweeter.
Well, sorry to disappoint you, but most of us- or indeed, most 3D owners- don't see it that way. Good or bad, it's just a f****** TV system. Get a grip!
Simple fact is that 3D is something the industry is trying to push at the minute, and this is a tech site. The article didn't strike me as being particularly biased, and the comments simply reflect the fact that the Slashdot readership in general aren't as enamoured of the technology as the industry would like people to be.
If the tech improves to the point that it's good enough for casual viewing, and it becomes cheap enough, and there's enough worthwhile content out there, I suspect that a lot more people *might* go for it. But as things stand, people are indifferent.
Oh, and I almost forgot. One other thing- the ZX81 had 32 columns. Try getting *that* on a Vic-20! ;-)
The only good thing (IMO) about the ZX81 was the cheap, cheap price, otherwise it was a pretty awful machine.
The Vic-20 would have looked a poor second choice too if you had the money and inclination to splash out significantly more on an Atari 800. So yeah, the ZX81's selling feature undoubtedly *was* its "cheap, cheap price", but that doesn't make it the trashy, worthless machine the phrase implies.
In fact, the ZX80 was the first computer under £100 in the UK, and the ZX81 was significantly cheaper still, bringing computing to the masses here. It had its limitations- those were undeniable- but it still fulfilled the basic essentials of a hobbyist home computer. (Though I wouldn't ever claim it was a great choice for arcade games or business computing!)
The likes of the Vic 20 was never that cheap here.
I don't know if you're American, but I do note that Americans seem to slag off the ZX81 and TS-1000 (the US version) a lot. I'm *guessing* this dislike is for a number of reasons:-
(a) The TS-1000 came out properly over a *year* later(!) there- around the time we were getting the ZX Spectrum- and things had moved on fast,
(b) Americans had more disposable income- and could probably stretch to the Vic- so possibly the TS-1000's low price wasn't the difference between "having a computer" and "not having a computer"
(c) Commodore's Jack Tramiel seemed to be more aggressive in pushing prices down on the US market (*) so I assume the Vic 20 was probably cheaper over there; being US-made probably helped
(d) AFAIK there was a US shortage of the 16K RAM-packs that made the ZX81 far more capable, and they weren't that cheap either
(*) I'm basing this on what I've heard about the C64. I get the impression that it was a "cheap" machine on the US market in the way it never quite was in the UK- I do know that Jack Tramiel was ruthlessly aggressive in his pricing over there (to the point that Commodore's eventual victory in the market may have been pyrrhic). However, it was always enough more expensive than the ZX Spectrum in the UK that the latter was the best-selling machine here, even though it wasn't technically as good.
The VIC-20 had lots of stuff the ZX81 did not have. A proper keyboard, color graphics, disk drive(s)
Disk drive interface, yes, but the drives themselves sure as heck weren't standard. In fact, Wikipedia says they cost more than the computer itself, and I can believe that- even "cheap" drives were expensive back then. That's why cassette-based storage was so "popular" (cough!) at the time.
I doubt anyone buying a ZX81 could have afforded even the Vic's disk drives.
FWIW, I remember reading an old magazine article mentioning a disk drive system for the ZX81. IIRC it was ludicrously expensive in relation to the machine itself, but it *was* possible(!)
a real video chip so the processor didn't have to draw the screen (that's why you can either run a program or have screen output.
You're thinking of the ZX80. The ZX81 was capable of running a program and displaying the output without the screen flicker, albeit at a slower speed. (You could revert to flickery "FAST" mode if you wanted to).
I don't want this post to come across as an attempt to say that the ZX81 wasn't a very simplistic and somewhat limited machine. It was. However, it was a usable machine that fulfilled the essentials, and that "cheap, cheap price" opened up computing to a whole new audience. Even the disliked flat keyboard served its part in keeping the price down. About the only thing that wasn't forgivable in that context was the notorious "RAM pack wobble", which was just bad design (apparently Sinclair reused the ZX80 ram pack case that was moulded to fit the older machine).
so...every 20-30 years is correct...
Huh? No, "every 20-30 years" is *not* "correct"(!)
The OP was talking about "3D tv" and this is the *first* time round they've seriously tried to push 3D TV as a commercial concern.... but then, I'd already said that!
tvs were only around since the 50s
Er, not sure what point you're trying to make. Chronologically, that's still within the "'50s, early '80s and present day" range. In fact, AFAIK the original 50s wave of 3D cinema films was a response to the growing threat from television's early success.
I was one of the first purchasers and the only issue I find with it is the fact that they aren't releasing enough [etc]
You like it? That's great!
If you don't want to use 3D, then don't. No one's holding a gun to your head.
Oh, god, not the old "no-one's holding a gun to your head so you're not entitled to criticise" argument logic again. (You even explicitly stated it in this case!)
This pops up on Slashdot regularly. Bottom line; (a) people are entitled to their free opinion if they don't like something and (b) if this logic was used, only people who liked something enough to buy it would be entitled to comment on it- which would rather bias discussion of the subject and not be helpful to those seeking an unbiased cross-section of opinion. Are you suggesting that someone who looked into something, saw that it was seriously flawed (or whatever) and decided it wasn't for them shouldn't be entitled to express their opinion or advice to others?
Now go ahead and mod me down because I didn't say "Yeah you're right my 3D sucks".
No- your post's more likely to be modded down because it's an attack-is-the-best-form-of-defensiveness whine. You seem to think those critical of 3D are attacking those who do enjoy it for partisan fanboyish reasons- rather than just expressing a differing opinion on a technology and its place in the market- when in fact it's you that comes across as the defensive fanboy. (Though that polarised attitude may be your response to your *perception* of being attacked... er, if I made a circular argument there, forget it ;-)).
3D tv is just a scam. tried every 20-30 years and they just don't learn...
No, AFAIK this is the third time they've tried it with movies ('50s, early '80s, present day), but only the first they've tried it seriously with television.
:-).
(Not counting sporadic special events and gimmick fests that require special glasses and have limitations, but work with an ordinary TV, and hence would not be much use for getting people to buy a new one!)
Coincidentally, I just overhead my boss this afternoon telling a customer that he doesn't have much use for the expensive 3D television he bought last year, and even admitting that it was a "gimmick". No big surprise, he was never even into TV that much in the first place, but likes his boys toys until he gets bored of them... which is pretty much as soon as he gets them
If Woz wuz dead (sorry woz, I know your out there), he'd be rolling already.
Except that he's not dead. Yeah, I know you just said that, but despite not agreeing with everything "his" company does, he's not exactly vehemently complaining about them either.
Which is (or might not be) odd considering that what Apple is nowadays pretty much represents the complete and utter antithesis of the hacker ethic (*) and the scene that Woz came out of in the mid-70s- the same scene that ultimately nurtured the creation of the Apple II.
(Even if, ironically, the Apple II itself was one of the first consumer-friendly microcomputers and step away from those early origins!)
Of course, Apple had already moved away from that by the time the (Jobs-driven) Mac was coming out, and indeed, the original Mac already demonstrated Apple's (Jobs-driven!) control freakery and closed nature with its lack of expansion and Jobs' insistence that its 128K not be expandable, despite it being generally accepted by the designers that this was inadequate.
But this controlling, closed nature only really became an issue recently, when the iPhone snuck a walled-garden approach to computing in under the guise of being a phone (**), even though it was basically a portable computer. Their success and dominance, combined with being a demonstration that consumers would tolerate a closed ecosystem has made this an issue for the future direction of the computer market.
But I don't see any rolling from the undead Woz...
(*) Yes, one *could* make a case that this was A Good Thing. But it doesn't change the fact that- good or bad- Apple's current direction pretty much is the complete opposite of the hacker philosophy.
(**) The "phone" tag reflects the direction it came from- i.e. building on the existing phone market- rather than what it is. If 90s/early-2000s style PDAs hadn't gone out of fashion, they probably would have evolved into something similar, albeit from a different direction. That's why I find it silly- but understandable- when people say they don't need a "phone" with all that stuff; well, fair enough, but the iPhone and Android siblings aren't meant to be *just* phones, and no-one is buying them merely for that reason- if they were called "portable computers", "communications PDAs" or whatever, the complainers wouldn't be arguing that.
If a pyramid scheme can give itself a fancy name like Scientology
Please bear in mind that while it may be a way to extract large amounts of money from people by dubious means, that doesn't make it a "pyramid scheme", the latter of which's name reflects the structure of that particular scam.
I'm not sure what's most laughable... the Standing Seats [bbc.co.uk], or the Pay Toilets [bbc.co.uk]
I'm pretty sure O'Leary doesn't seriously expect any of his ideas of this ilk to go ahead. But he knows damn well the press will report them, giving him and his company "no-publicity-is-bad" publicity. IOW, they're designed purely to get attention, and the press duly obliges him. They probably know this as well, but figure out it's a good way to bulk out column inches.
Everyone wins, except Ryanair's customers, and those of us fed up of seeing this dislikable attention whore in the papers.
Personally I'm more than happy to be back in boring old England where things cost what they are advertised as
Well, sometimes. Otherwise, I know an Irishman that wants to sell you a flight to 40 miles outside Paris for just 3 1/2 New Pence. ;-)
And it isn't like it will do much to anyone but GoDaddy. The RIAA/MPAA companies, the real villains, are who we should be boycotting. Why aren't people canceling their cable and Netflix or Hulu+. [Boycotting GoDaddy is] easy and costs $7-10 dollars.
Well, you said it. It doesn't make *that* much difference if you choose another registrar, whereas if you were to boycott the large movie or tech companies, you'd have to actually sacrifice seeing the latest geek-friendly blockbuster or not have the latest shiny tech gadget or console.
And while people here are happy to complain about how Sony or whoever are going to lose their business or whatever because of some dick move they made, when it comes to the crunch and making a *real* sacrifice (like those above), they'll cave in with some spurious and/or lightweight excuse, or say how they're going to hand over their money on *this* occasion, but they'll buy less shiny stuff from them in future. You show them!
And as the companies have got the only thing they're interested in (i.e. angry-but-wishy-washy geeks' money) I doubt they're too concerned about their ranting to the converted on Slashdot.
Wired is gone over to the dark side of popular culture, but I read it still. Come to think of it, been years since Wired was very geeky, or computing-centric
I bought it for the first time circa 2000 (i.e. over a decade back, and it was still a few years old even then) and even at that point it struck me as more of a US-oriented business magazine masquerading as a science/tech magazine for people who didn't *actually* like science (just liked to think that they did, as well as fetishising the latest technology).
The presentation was sometimes interesting (and just as often was pretentiously up-its-own-arse style over substance) and they occasionally do have something of interest, but for the most part Wired was (and is?) massively overrated.
They have a British version again (after a brief and unsuccessful attempt at the same in the mid-90s which I never read), but I haven't ever bought it, to be honest.
Actual and Genuine Communism killed nobody. People purporting to be espousing the ideas of Communism may have, but the philosophical construct was not responsible for it
"Actual" and "genuine" communism can't exist in the real world without being subverted. That is its problem.
"Genuine" communism is reliant upon people behaving in an idealised and unrealistic manner, and is therefore reliant upon external forces to make them behave in that manner- which leads to repression and subversion of the original ideal. And, to be honest, any system that doesn't accurately take account of the nature of human beings shouldn't be excused for people's failure to live up to it, because that would be putting the horse before the cart.
It's not the whole LHC - it's the detector part.
Was I the only person who read the summary and thought "even at 1:50 scale, that's going to be damn massive" (couldn't remember the exact size, but I knew it was big- having checked, the circumference of the whole thing is 27km, or around 16 miles)?
Then pretty quickly twigged that they probably hadn't built the whole thing, checked the article, and was right.
It used to not even prompt back in the day, it just automatically opened the link.
Perhaps that was only the case if you had the "download license automatically" checkbox ticked in the preferences? At any rate, you can turn this "helpful" feature off, and I always have. Though of course, this doesn't excuse MS's crappy implementation and presentation of a feature that most people won't realise is dangeous.
Yep. Was trying to download a "White Christmas" wmv for Xmas family listening off eMule. Every single file was a redirect to a malware codec. Sheesh... not even Mr. Crosby's classic is safe!
Isn't that one of those cases where a malware peddler on P2P notes what you're searching for and returns lots of fake results "customised" to your search term that are all basically the same piece of malware if you try to download them?
For example, if you searched for "sasquatch and queen elizabeth ii playing beach volleyball" (i.e. the most unlikely term to get *any* match, let alone exact match), you'd get quite a number of "results" such as "sasquatch-and-queen-elizabeth-ii-playing-beach-volleyball.wmv"... which of course would be nothing of the sort!
I think they're doing fine. They are a money machine, they aren't hipsters. Why invest all the time and money in huge new projects and technology when you have stuff making tons of money and more importantly profit.
Er, but the point is that they *are* "investing all that time and money" in lab research on innovative products and technologies anyway... it's just that it rarely seems to make it out!