Somebody didnt RTFA did they. The iQue was clearly mentioned in the article as _not_ being the same thing. iQue ships this month. The new console is planed for next year.
Well according to this the import duty on Portable Automatic Data Processing Equipment ( Laptops ) is 0%.
This ties in with the fact that Sony have recently successfully got the PS2 recategorized as Automatic Data Processing Equipment in order to avoid import duties into the EU. The ability to run Linux on it was apparently a deciding factor:)
The TARIC code is 8471300000 if anyone else wants to have a play.
Given all that, even with 17.5% VAT in the UK I still save over GBP800.
On a side note it's even more expensive to order from the continent. In the French store it works out a GBP4077!
It costs 1000 more to buy the same spec Powerbook in the UK than in the US?
From the US store a 17" G4 powerbook with 2GB ram, faster HDD, backpack, extra battery and chuck in an Ipod for good measure comes in at 2978 at todays exchange rate. The same spec system from the UK store costs 3978. Judging by this I'd be better off ordering from the US and having it shipped. It would even be cheaper to get a flight to New York and buy one in person.
I have to admit I'm not actually very likely to actually buy one.... my other half might have something to say about it if I blow the budget for outr new bathroom on a laptop:P
Apple has sold 1 million songs sings the windows version launched. Thats 1 million songs in total, not 1 million songs to Windows users.
They also claim to have had 1 million downloads of the windows version. So, at best, each new Windows user has bought 1 song and the existing Apple users didnt buy any songs at all in that period. At worst most people who downloaded it didnt bother buying *any music at all*. Probably since they couldnt get it to work. or found that it crashed their PC
Reading between the lines it looks like the launch of iTunes for Windows has actually been a bit of a flop.
The application does produce a pop up screen detailing an 1800 word EULA that the user has to agree to before the driver is installed, so no crime is commited as the user has given their permission for the software to be installed and the modifications to be made.
Doesn't mean it's not a daft way of trying to protect a cd or that the legal action has a cat in hells chance of suceeding.
On a side note, the disc cannot actually be called a CD. CD's have a very specific technical specification described in the standards documentation written by the format's creators, Sony and Philips. A disc that doesn't follow the standard to the letter can't be described by its supplier as a CD.
In the EULA it states
"This audio compact disc utilizes MediaMax technology by SunnComm to deliver enhanced features to your computer. In order to properly utilize this CD on your computer, it is necessary to install a small software program on your computer hard drive."
As you can see, the EULA, claims it is a CD - and is arguably in violation of the CD licensing regulations.
Anyone got a contact number for Sony's legal department?
My ex is a doctor. During her junior doctor days in hospital medicine ( Intern type thing ) they had a pair of Gameboys sealed in sterile plastic bags for the theater staff to use during long operations.
We arent a university, we're a ( UK ) Govt agency.:)
The copies are being stored approximately 50 miles from us. Anything big enough to wipe out both sites at one go is going to cause a lot more headaches than just data loss:)
OK, first off I dont work for an MO manufacturer. I use the kit, and a lot of it.
Compared to DVD and CD these things don't degrade in sunlight or heat. The tolerances are way higher than conventional optical media. Thats why MO manufactureres offer a 50 year _data_ guarantee as standard on all their media. Try finding a CD/DVD company that will do that. Thats a guarantee that your data will be readable 50 years from now, assuming you have the drives to do it:P If you cant read it they will recover it for you from the failed media. And yes, we have a contractual agreement with our supplier to that effect.
As for costs. We are looking at a total of 150Tb of data that has to be online and accessable. Put that on disk and the costs start to mount up. Raw disk may be cheap, but add in the infrastructure to support that volume and it gets real expensive real quick. On top of that those disks wont be trusted to run for more than say 5 years. So over the life span of an MO disk you'd use 10 times as many HDD's. Add to that the costs of backing up all that data - 150 TB tape systems dont come cheap, and no I'm not going to trust a unique collection of information to RAID only. I want a backup. - and all of a sudden MO is a lot better value. Yes you could mirror the data elsewhere. Double your disk costs for that, plus support/hosting/connectivity costs and costs for data verification, it gets expensive.
At the end of the day I can have the entire collection available online in JPEG form for viewing and printing on demand _and_ have it in high quality TIFF format for long term achiving and reproduction where needed _and_ have copies kept securely off site with just 2 10Tb Jukeboxes and two servers. ( Plus a big stack of media:) All this for approxiomately %50 of what it would have cost us to do it on disk. And its only going to get cheaper as 30Gb MO disks come online at the same price as the current 9.1Gb disks.
Firstly its a living archive. The maps are handled and used on a regular basis which leads to degradation. By digitzing them we can provide the same service to users of the maps without the manual handling issues.
Secondly, by taking very high quality scans we can effectivly duplicate the maps for recreation in the event of a disaster of some kind destroying the collection. From the digitized form we can create as many paper duplicates as we want without the storage issues of holding large quantities of paper.
This is a unique collection of maps. They dont exisit in any form anywhere else in the world and are irreplacable in the event of loss.
A paper based collection of 100,000+ maps dating back to 1886 that are slowly decaying with use. They require digitisation for long term ( 200 years +, at least as long again as they have survived already ) archiving but need to be available quickly and easily for viewing on demand. Total storage requirement is in excess of 150 Tb.
The Solution:
An archiving setup using Magneto Optical technology in managed jukeboxes in a controlled environment. MO has been around for nearly 20 years now and is a highly refined and proven technology. Current capacities are up to 9.1 Gb per media item with 30Gb coming online in the near future. Jukeboxes handling up to 10Tb per unit are readily available now.
MO doesnt use dye at all. The laser melts a magnetic substrate that is then manipulated by the write head to impart the data in a similar way to a conventional disk, the sustrate cools and the data is permanantly stored. There is no degradation of the media by sunlight, heat etc as compared to DVD or CD formats. It's more accessable and requires less management than tape, its cheaper than conventional disk, off site storage of duplicate media is easily achieved, data throughputs are faster then DVD or CD and capacity is as good or better than either.
Which is why it was discussed on Slashdot not three hours previously. My point is that the rest of the world doesnt actually care about US power supply deregulation. All the points you made were covered in the earlier discussion. This story was an attempt to spin something out of a discussion that had already been had. My point remains that this particular version of it should never have been posted to Slashdot in the first place.
Well guess what, we dont.
So the US had a major power outage, so what. Yeah we saw it on the News over here, but we really dont want to know any more about it. Where's the technology angle in this story? Where is the relavence to the Global audiance that Slashdot has, rather than the US audiance. Why was there a need to start a whole new story and discussion on this when it had been posted and discussed not 3 hours earlier?
Out of interstest, I'd put money on US slashdot readers being in the minority compared to the global readership.
a few years ago one paper, one vellum. Both copies are online in a readable form ( 1045 / 2048 ) and can be viewed side by side. See them here They actually constitute a usefull research tool in this form as all the text including margin notes is readable via the web, assuming you can read latin of course.
It's always nice to see things like this being put up on the web for all to use, but the texas copy one is a little redundant in this instance.
So not only are you frying your brains with the radio waves from the phone pressed to your ear, your also running a real risk of some DIY Electro Convulsive Therapy:)
We're not afraid to do that either, but the outlets have to be of a specific type, isolated with internal transformers to step down the voltage, and mounted in a certain way, up high, away from any water. Added to this is the fact that all UK appliances are fused and virtually all are grounded. The large 3rd pin on uk mains plugs is the earth and all uk plugs have an internal fuse rated to match the appliance ( untill the owner changes it for the wrong rating, but there only so much you can do ).
So in the case of your hair dryer not only would it be grounded to prevent an electric shock, but the fuse in the plug would blow cutting off the supply without fusing the entire house's electrics.
The reason that the american, and other flat 2 pin plugs, tend to fall out easily is the way they are retained. The holes in the pins are for a sprung copper contact wiper inside the socket that has a detent bump moulded into it to match the hole, providing a away for the plug to be retained. Over time the wipers lose their spring and the detent becomes less and less effective, allowing the plug to fall out easily.
Go take a look at Magneto Optical solutions. Faster than tape, and more reliable over the longer term ( 10 years + ). More robust than DVD. Automatable in jukebox formats. WORM and Rewriteable formats available for archiving and backup.
We are in the process of archiving ( for at least 30 years ) our collection of historic maps. Total data volume will be around the 150Tb mark before we start duplication for off site copies. M/O does everything we need quickly and reliably. Of course it costs an arm and a leg, but how much is your data worth to you?
DVD-R is not really a suitable media for long term backups or archiving. Its a consumer grade product, and despite what the advertising blurbs says I wouldnt trust the data to be usable in 10 years, even if the drives are still about.
If you're in a position where you need automated media handling ( tape or otherwise ) and want a secure long term archive / backup solution that will last then Magneto Optical is really the only way to go. Same data capacity as DVD-R but far more robust and long lived. Through puts are much higher than DVD-R, so backup windows are reduced. The technology has been around for at least 10 years already, and shows no signs of going away any time soon.
The media is available in both WORM and Rewriteable formats as well so you can tailor for archiveing or backup as required. The only downside is the cost. But balance that against the value of the data your storing and things start to look more reasonable.
Please try reading more before you post.
As has been said numerous times below, conventional trains Do Not run at anything like 500 Kmh. To quote TGV themselves about the high speed testing they do...
"It is however forseeable that future TGV designs could run in revenue service at speeds of 360 km/h (224 mph)... "on the condition that it be economically viable, and that a braking system be developped to bypass wheel-rail contact," says Roger Gérin, joint TGV production director."
TGV do not run at even 400 Kmh in production. The Maglev system will do that and the tests they have just run are part of the work up to running those speeds commercially.
Yes the French TGV has gone faster, but only under specific test conditions after over 2000 hours of work on the track and engine.
This story implies that the maglev was running at the same speeds it would operate at commercially. There's a big differance between that and the world speed record. To quote TGV themselves from their site
"Running at over 500 km/h (311 mph) with a specially prepared trainset on brand new track is an accomplishment, but one should not expect such speeds to be possible in commercial service anytime soon."
If the maglev speeds are reproducable in a production - ie passenger carrying - environment then this is a major achievement and certainly seems to be what they are aiming for.
Cost not MPG is what people use.
on
239 MPG Car
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I can tell you just how far I can get on a tank full of ( Low sulpher diesel ) fuel - 450 miles. And how much it costs me - £25 , but I couldnt hope to tell you the MPG figures for it. Especially since fuel is sold in litres these days and not gallons. Most people I know judge fuel consumption on the same basis. Cost, not MPG. We buy fuel by price, not volume. Does anyone actually use MPG figures as an every day referance anymore?
Slashdot Mirror
Somebody didnt RTFA did they. The iQue was clearly mentioned in the article as _not_ being the same thing. iQue ships this month. The new console is planed for next year.
Now if they could come up with something like that I'd be impressed :)
This ties in with the fact that Sony have recently successfully got the PS2 recategorized as Automatic Data Processing Equipment in order to avoid import duties into the EU. The ability to run Linux on it was apparently a deciding factor
The TARIC code is 8471300000 if anyone else wants to have a play.
Given all that, even with 17.5% VAT in the UK I still save over GBP800.
On a side note it's even more expensive to order from the continent. In the French store it works out a GBP4077!
It costs 1000 more to buy the same spec Powerbook in the UK than in the US?
:P
From the US store a 17" G4 powerbook with 2GB ram, faster HDD, backpack, extra battery and chuck in an Ipod for good measure comes in at 2978 at todays exchange rate. The same spec system from the UK store costs 3978. Judging by this I'd be better off ordering from the US and having it shipped. It would even be cheaper to get a flight to New York and buy one in person.
I have to admit I'm not actually very likely to actually buy one.... my other half might have something to say about it if I blow the budget for outr new bathroom on a laptop
They also claim to have had 1 million downloads of the windows version. So, at best, each new Windows user has bought 1 song and the existing Apple users didnt buy any songs at all in that period. At worst most people who downloaded it didnt bother buying *any music at all*. Probably since they couldnt get it to work. or found that it crashed their PC
Reading between the lines it looks like the launch of iTunes for Windows has actually been a bit of a flop.
The application does produce a pop up screen detailing an 1800 word EULA that the user has to agree to before the driver is installed, so no crime is commited as the user has given their permission for the software to be installed and the modifications to be made.
Doesn't mean it's not a daft way of trying to protect a cd or that the legal action has a cat in hells chance of suceeding.
On a side note, the disc cannot actually be called a CD. CD's have a very specific technical specification described in the standards documentation written by the format's creators, Sony and Philips. A disc that doesn't follow the standard to the letter can't be described by its supplier as a CD.
In the EULA it states
"This audio compact disc utilizes MediaMax technology by SunnComm to deliver enhanced features to your computer. In order to properly utilize this CD on your computer, it is necessary to install a small software program on your computer hard drive."
As you can see, the EULA, claims it is a CD - and is arguably in violation of the CD licensing regulations.
Anyone got a contact number for Sony's legal department?
My ex is a doctor. During her junior doctor days in hospital medicine ( Intern type thing ) they had a pair of Gameboys sealed in sterile plastic bags for the theater staff to use during long operations.
We arent a university, we're a ( UK ) Govt agency. :)
The copies are being stored approximately 50 miles from us. Anything big enough to wipe out both sites at one go is going to cause a lot more headaches than just data loss :)
OK, first off I dont work for an MO manufacturer. I use the kit, and a lot of it.
:P If you cant read it they will recover it for you from the failed media. And yes, we have a contractual agreement with our supplier to that effect.
:) All this for approxiomately %50 of what it would have cost us to do it on disk. And its only going to get cheaper as 30Gb MO disks come online at the same price as the current 9.1Gb disks.
Compared to DVD and CD these things don't degrade in sunlight or heat. The tolerances are way higher than conventional optical media. Thats why MO manufactureres offer a 50 year _data_ guarantee as standard on all their media. Try finding a CD/DVD company that will do that. Thats a guarantee that your data will be readable 50 years from now, assuming you have the drives to do it
As for costs. We are looking at a total of 150Tb of data that has to be online and accessable. Put that on disk and the costs start to mount up. Raw disk may be cheap, but add in the infrastructure to support that volume and it gets real expensive real quick. On top of that those disks wont be trusted to run for more than say 5 years. So over the life span of an MO disk you'd use 10 times as many HDD's. Add to that the costs of backing up all that data - 150 TB tape systems dont come cheap, and no I'm not going to trust a unique collection of information to RAID only. I want a backup. - and all of a sudden MO is a lot better value. Yes you could mirror the data elsewhere. Double your disk costs for that, plus support/hosting/connectivity costs and costs for data verification, it gets expensive.
At the end of the day I can have the entire collection available online in JPEG form for viewing and printing on demand _and_ have it in high quality TIFF format for long term achiving and reproduction where needed _and_ have copies kept securely off site with just 2 10Tb Jukeboxes and two servers. ( Plus a big stack of media
We're digitizing them for a couple of reasons.
Firstly its a living archive. The maps are handled and used on a regular basis which leads to degradation. By digitzing them we can provide the same service to users of the maps without the manual handling issues.
Secondly, by taking very high quality scans we can effectivly duplicate the maps for recreation in the event of a disaster of some kind destroying the collection. From the digitized form we can create as many paper duplicates as we want without the storage issues of holding large quantities of paper.
This is a unique collection of maps. They dont exisit in any form anywhere else in the world and are irreplacable in the event of loss.
The problem :
:
A paper based collection of 100,000+ maps dating back to 1886 that are slowly decaying with use. They require digitisation for long term ( 200 years +, at least as long again as they have survived already ) archiving but need to be available quickly and easily for viewing on demand. Total storage requirement is in excess of 150 Tb.
The Solution
An archiving setup using Magneto Optical technology in managed jukeboxes in a controlled environment. MO has been around for nearly 20 years now and is a highly refined and proven technology. Current capacities are up to 9.1 Gb per media item with 30Gb coming online in the near future. Jukeboxes handling up to 10Tb per unit are readily available now.
MO doesnt use dye at all. The laser melts a magnetic substrate that is then manipulated by the write head to impart the data in a similar way to a conventional disk, the sustrate cools and the data is permanantly stored. There is no degradation of the media by sunlight, heat etc as compared to DVD or CD formats. It's more accessable and requires less management than tape, its cheaper than conventional disk, off site storage of duplicate media is easily achieved, data throughputs are faster then DVD or CD and capacity is as good or better than either.
Which is why it was discussed on Slashdot not three hours previously. My point is that the rest of the world doesnt actually care about US power supply deregulation. All the points you made were covered in the earlier discussion.
This story was an attempt to spin something out of a discussion that had already been had. My point remains that this particular version of it should never have been posted to Slashdot in the first place.
So the US had a major power outage, so what. Yeah we saw it on the News over here, but we really dont want to know any more about it.
Where's the technology angle in this story?
Where is the relavence to the Global audiance that Slashdot has, rather than the US audiance.
Why was there a need to start a whole new story and discussion on this when it had been posted and discussed not 3 hours earlier?
Out of interstest, I'd put money on US slashdot readers being in the minority compared to the global readership.
a few years ago one paper, one vellum. Both copies are online in a readable form ( 1045 / 2048 ) and can be viewed side by side. See them here They actually constitute a usefull research tool in this form as all the text including margin notes is readable via the web, assuming you can read latin of course. It's always nice to see things like this being put up on the web for all to use, but the texas copy one is a little redundant in this instance.
Heh,
:)
So not only are you frying your brains with the radio waves from the phone pressed to your ear, your also running a real risk of some DIY Electro Convulsive Therapy
We're not afraid to do that either, but the outlets have to be of a specific type, isolated with internal transformers to step down the voltage, and mounted in a certain way, up high, away from any water. Added to this is the fact that all UK appliances are fused and virtually all are grounded. The large 3rd pin on uk mains plugs is the earth and all uk plugs have an internal fuse rated to match the appliance ( untill the owner changes it for the wrong rating, but there only so much you can do ).
So in the case of your hair dryer not only would it be grounded to prevent an electric shock, but the fuse in the plug would blow cutting off the supply without fusing the entire house's electrics.
The reason that the american, and other flat 2 pin plugs, tend to fall out easily is the way they are retained. The holes in the pins are for a sprung copper contact wiper inside the socket that has a detent bump moulded into it to match the hole, providing a away for the plug to be retained. Over time the wipers lose their spring and the detent becomes less and less effective, allowing the plug to fall out easily.
Go take a look at Magneto Optical solutions. Faster than tape, and more reliable over the longer term ( 10 years + ). More robust than DVD. Automatable in jukebox formats. WORM and Rewriteable formats available for archiving and backup.
We are in the process of archiving ( for at least 30 years ) our collection of historic maps. Total data volume will be around the 150Tb mark before we start duplication for off site copies. M/O does everything we need quickly and reliably. Of course it costs an arm and a leg, but how much is your data worth to you?
DVD-R is not really a suitable media for long term backups or archiving. Its a consumer grade product, and despite what the advertising blurbs says I wouldnt trust the data to be usable in 10 years, even if the drives are still about.
If you're in a position where you need automated media handling ( tape or otherwise ) and want a secure long term archive / backup solution that will last then Magneto Optical is really the only way to go. Same data capacity as DVD-R but far more robust and long lived. Through puts are much higher than DVD-R, so backup windows are reduced. The technology has been around for at least 10 years already, and shows no signs of going away any time soon.
The media is available in both WORM and Rewriteable formats as well so you can tailor for archiveing or backup as required. The only downside is the cost. But balance that against the value of the data your storing and things start to look more reasonable.
They already have "snow" and "powder", now they get the "good clean shit" too....
:)
No wonder australians are so relaxed
How long do you think it will take them to write laws to kill spam and execute spammers?"
And this is a bad thing because........?
" Sadly, it's not an option to make CSIRAC operational again today. Time has taken a toll on this fragile dinosaur.
So what exactly would happen if anyone tried to relive the magic by switching it on?
"A lot of its components would not stand having voltages applied to them again," says Thorne. "I think it would probably catch fire."
As has been said numerous times below, conventional trains Do Not run at anything like 500 Kmh. To quote TGV themselves about the high speed testing they do...
"It is however forseeable that future TGV designs could run in revenue service at speeds of 360 km/h (224 mph)... "on the condition that it be economically viable, and that a braking system be developped to bypass wheel-rail contact," says Roger Gérin, joint TGV production director."
TGV do not run at even 400 Kmh in production. The Maglev system will do that and the tests they have just run are part of the work up to running those speeds commercially.
Articles on Alternative fuels/vehicles and high speed trains stay readable right from the get go.
:)
An article on getting a few extra FPS's out of RtCW or Unreal Tournament and the server is reduced to molten slag.......
Guess slashdotters are more concerned with fragging their opponents than real life.
PS. Ive been trying to get to the site since I saw it posted. I want my FPS!
This story implies that the maglev was running at the same speeds it would operate at commercially. There's a big differance between that and the world speed record. To quote TGV themselves from their site
"Running at over 500 km/h (311 mph) with a specially prepared trainset on brand new track is an accomplishment, but one should not expect such speeds to be possible in commercial service anytime soon."
If the maglev speeds are reproducable in a production - ie passenger carrying - environment then this is a major achievement and certainly seems to be what they are aiming for.
I can tell you just how far I can get on a tank full of ( Low sulpher diesel ) fuel - 450 miles. And how much it costs me - £25 , but I couldnt hope to tell you the MPG figures for it. Especially since fuel is sold in litres these days and not gallons.
Most people I know judge fuel consumption on the same basis. Cost, not MPG. We buy fuel by price, not volume.
Does anyone actually use MPG figures as an every day referance anymore?