Every time I see one of these devices come out, I always ask myself how come people don't like MiniDisc players.
They cost about 200 bux a pop for recordable portables, can store 80 minutes of music on a 2 dollar disc at a quality roughly equivalent to a 196bit mp3, or HOURS at a slight loss of quality, 10-20 hours of battery life, and most importantly can actually be used independent of a computer.
i.e. this is a pure audio device, you can hook up microphones, plug it into a stereo, anything you want.
Your music is stored in an editable manner, which gives you random access to data, edit tracks, move tracks around, etc.
They are really convenient for travelling - if you're going on a plane you can grab a stack of discs (2 bux each, remember) so you never run out of music.
Or you can go the portable mp3 player route, which means you can either listen to the same songs over and over again, or you could try to bring along a bunch of $50.00 memory sticks.
Do some reading - here and maybe you guys will be as underwhelmed by portable mp3 players as I am.
> Let me clarify that I'm absolutely not > joking - I'm a J2EE consultant, and I really > like the technology; I don't savor the prospect > of having to become a.NET consultant to pay > the bills in 3 or 4 years.
Thats a kind of a weird attitude for a consultant to have.
I've been in this game for a while, and my favourite language/environment is the one that pays me the most. Sounds facetious, but its true.
If the highest bidder for my hours wants me to code for.net using VB and C#, using a microsoft tablet and produce DHTML that will crash Netscape, and render perfectly only in IE, then so be it.
Doesn't mean I won't support Open Software, submit code and fix bugs, and in general root for the little guy, but my hobby and my livelihood are two completely different things.
What it makes Nintendo do is unknown, but I tell you what - it WILL make other companies think twice about price fixing.
As an American, this kind of stuff worries me. The EU government seems to have a very effective watchdog that protects consumers, whereas our government seems to be interested only in protecting corporate interests.
I predict that in a few years (if they keep good work like this up), Europe will be paradise compared to the US.
There is already a counterpart in nature - just like every virus, it tries to spread itself to uninfected hosts, or hosts that are only partially infected by other viruses.
There are several versions, that do different things.
Their fundamental purpose is to funnel resources to the original distributer, in a manner as efficient as possible.
Distribution methods vary
Some try to infect hosts, and on failure, they just move on to trying a different host
Some will attack a host, and if infection fails, will destroy it in order to prevent a virus that is similar (but of different origin) from succeeding
In all cases, the infected hosts begins to act unpredictably. The normal instruction set is subverted by the remote programming mechanism such that it begins to neglect normal operations in favour of operations (often irrational) assigned by the worm.
This can prevent the host from being a part of a network, so the host often reassigns itself to a different area in order to best serve its originator.
This virus acts among humans, its called Religion.
This topic has been beaten to death here and on arstechnica.
I personally can't see it happening for several reasons, the number one being software. Apple has commited to the intel/moto design, which includes a cpu library (altivec). Any 3rd party apps if not rewritten will need to be run in some horrible altivec->intel emulation kludge, which will be nightmareishly slow, and defeat the purpose.
Slower than the cartoon we know as XP? - probably not, but still slow.
The other thing is power consumption/heat dissipation - for mobile applications intel/amd just plain suck up too much juice and run too hot.
Apple is currently suffering because its chip suppliers have not been producing faster ships at the rate they should be, but until next month (chip conference) its all speculation as to what apples' long term plans are.
I've read this guy's writings before, and I find it annoying that his article got slashdotted. Now he is probably an even more highly regarded hack.:(
I looked at this book, and decided not to buy it because it didn't really offer that much other than implementations of the GoF patterns in Java, and to be honest, they were basically crap. I'd say that this book might actually do more harm than good if it were being used in a teaching environment.
I noticed that there are some comments criticizing the fact that the GoF book has examples in only C++ or smalltalk, which is perhaps what promted the authors to produce this book.
The thing is though, the GoF text is trying to express some pretty fundamental programming concepts, that can be readily implemented in ANY language - granted it helps if your choice language supports inheritance/polymorphism.
The bottom line is that C++ is basically similar to smalltalk which is basically similar to Java which is basically similar to C#.
Any programmer worth his salt should be able to understand what the examples in the GoF book are trying to get across if he knows even one of those languages. They're not _that_ different. And besides, it might help if you have to look at the code a little harder.
Now if the examples were written in some language that was an absolutely radical departure from your standard OO language, say Lisp for example, then I could understand some complaints, but seriously, the language is not that big of a deal.
Just for fun, the language whiners should check out Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" series - he defined his own language for those examples. His language is kind of like assembly, but it kind of isn't. Doesn't match any language today, but I bet you won't be able to find anyone who will say that those books are not an absolute treasure trove of information, despite the implementation language.
I mean, they both just plain suck. They look like windows, but with a few slightly different features here and there.
Not to mention they both rely on XWindows, which just plain needs to die.
Its obsolete, its shit, its missing waaaaaaay to many features, it needs to go away. Sure it was great 20 years ago, but for god's sake, haven't we carried that albatross around our necks for long enough ?
I say toss them both and put the osX interface on, and go from there.
I was shopping the other day for these CDs (don't flame me for my taste in music please)
Shakira Unplugged
any Cirque Du Soleil soundtrack.
Shakira CD: 14.99
Shakira DVD: 14.99
Circue Du Soleil (Quidam) CD: 17.99
Circue Du Soleil (Quidam) DVD: 19.99
You can guess which ones I bought.
I also picked up a Rage Against The Machine DVD for like 18.99. Their live CD was about the same price.
Until CDs drop in price to about 6 bux or so, I don't see sales going up.
Consumer spending on almost everything else has fallen (lo recession) far less than CD spending, but for some reason the RIAA can't recognize the fact that they are selling a product at a price higher than the market will bear.
I wonder if any of those guys every played Lemonade or Dope Wars...
If I were you I would look into converting over to postgreSQL. postgreSQL is kind of like the shy geeky kid in the family that no one ever heard about - seems like all people do is rave on and on about mySQL, but aren't aware of the limitataions. unlike mySQL, postgreSQL will support subselects, row-level locking, union join, foreign keys, and the single most advantage over mySQL - it actually scales. Its pretty fast too. for tiny databases mySQL is of course the king, because of its primitive structure, but once the db grows a little, postgreSQL is actually much faster than most dbs out there.
odbc drivers are out there, and assuming you haven't been doing too many mySQL specific commands like "SELECT * FROM TABLES" the transition should be fairly easy.
Slashdot Mirror
Every time I see one of these devices come out, I always ask myself how come people don't like MiniDisc players.
They cost about 200 bux a pop for recordable portables, can store 80 minutes of music on a 2 dollar disc at a quality roughly equivalent to a 196bit mp3, or HOURS at a slight loss of quality, 10-20 hours of battery life, and most importantly can actually be used independent of a computer.
i.e. this is a pure audio device, you can hook up microphones, plug it into a stereo, anything you want.
Your music is stored in an editable manner, which gives you random access to data, edit tracks, move tracks around, etc.
They are really convenient for travelling - if you're going on a plane you can grab a stack of discs (2 bux each, remember) so you never run out of music.
Or you can go the portable mp3 player route, which means you can either listen to the same songs over and over again, or you could try to bring along a bunch of $50.00 memory sticks.
Do some reading - here and maybe you guys will be as underwhelmed by portable mp3 players as I am.
> Let me clarify that I'm absolutely not .NET consultant to pay
.net using VB and C#, using a microsoft tablet and produce DHTML that will crash Netscape, and render perfectly only in IE, then so be it.
> joking - I'm a J2EE consultant, and I really
> like the technology; I don't savor the prospect
> of having to become a
> the bills in 3 or 4 years.
Thats a kind of a weird attitude for a consultant to have.
I've been in this game for a while, and my favourite language/environment is the one that pays me the most. Sounds facetious, but its true.
If the highest bidder for my hours wants me to code for
Doesn't mean I won't support Open Software, submit code and fix bugs, and in general root for the little guy, but my hobby and my livelihood are two completely different things.
> Is starving retirees really necessary in this case?
Well, theres one positive to starving retirees.
If they die, then we get the added benefit of a lowered burden on Social Security for future generations.
This will generate a surplus, which Bush can then use to buy more missiles for his Star Wars playset.
I'll feel much safer once that happens, won't you?
What it makes Nintendo do is unknown, but I tell you what - it WILL make other companies think twice about price fixing. As an American, this kind of stuff worries me. The EU government seems to have a very effective watchdog that protects consumers, whereas our government seems to be interested only in protecting corporate interests. I predict that in a few years (if they keep good work like this up), Europe will be paradise compared to the US.
There are several versions, that do different things.
Their fundamental purpose is to funnel resources to the original distributer, in a manner as efficient as possible.
Distribution methods vary
In all cases, the infected hosts begins to act unpredictably. The normal instruction set is subverted by the remote programming mechanism such that it begins to neglect normal operations in favour of operations (often irrational) assigned by the worm.
This can prevent the host from being a part of a network, so the host often reassigns itself to a different area in order to best serve its originator.
This virus acts among humans, its called Religion.
I especially like your stock photo reference. Pretty funny.
the link seems to be dead.
I know someone that writes software at the place that makes the software that drives the lasik machines.
The staff gets discounts, blah blah blah, yet they still wear glasses, from the cheif architect on down.
If they don't trust it, should you ?
Personally, I intend to do it eventually, but only _after_ my friend gets his eyes done.
This topic has been beaten to death here and on arstechnica.
:(
I personally can't see it happening for several reasons, the number one being software. Apple has commited to the intel/moto design, which includes a cpu library (altivec). Any 3rd party apps if not rewritten will need to be run in some horrible altivec->intel emulation kludge, which will be nightmareishly slow, and defeat the purpose.
Slower than the cartoon we know as XP? - probably not, but still slow.
The other thing is power consumption/heat dissipation - for mobile applications intel/amd just plain suck up too much juice and run too hot.
Apple is currently suffering because its chip suppliers have not been producing faster ships at the rate they should be, but until next month (chip conference) its all speculation as to what apples' long term plans are.
I've read this guy's writings before, and I find it annoying that his article got slashdotted. Now he is probably an even more highly regarded hack.
I looked at this book, and decided not to buy it because it didn't really offer that much other than implementations of the GoF patterns in Java, and to be honest, they were basically crap. I'd say that this book might actually do more harm than good if it were being used in a teaching environment.
I noticed that there are some comments criticizing the fact that the GoF book has examples in only C++ or smalltalk, which is perhaps what promted the authors to produce this book.
The thing is though, the GoF text is trying to express some pretty fundamental programming concepts, that can be readily implemented in ANY language - granted it helps if your choice language supports inheritance/polymorphism.
The bottom line is that C++ is basically similar to smalltalk which is basically similar to Java which is basically similar to C#.
Any programmer worth his salt should be able to understand what the examples in the GoF book are trying to get across if he knows even one of those languages. They're not _that_ different. And besides, it might help if you have to look at the code a little harder.
Now if the examples were written in some language that was an absolutely radical departure from your standard OO language, say Lisp for example, then I could understand some complaints, but seriously, the language is not that big of a deal.
Just for fun, the language whiners should check out Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" series - he defined his own language for those examples. His language is kind of like assembly, but it kind of isn't. Doesn't match any language today, but I bet you won't be able to find anyone who will say that those books are not an absolute treasure trove of information, despite the implementation language.
Ebola is a pretty crappy biological weapon - it kills too fast so it doesn't spread well - why do you think there are still people alive in Africa ?
I mean, they both just plain suck. They look like windows, but with a few slightly different features here and there.
Not to mention they both rely on XWindows, which just plain needs to die.
Its obsolete, its shit, its missing waaaaaaay to many features, it needs to go away. Sure it was great 20 years ago, but for god's sake, haven't we carried that albatross around our necks for long enough ?
I say toss them both and put the osX interface on, and go from there.
MiniDisc ? :D
Cheap discs, durable, small, reusable, you can swap discs with your friends, whats not to like ?
I was shopping the other day for these CDs (don't flame me for my taste in music please)
Shakira Unplugged
any Cirque Du Soleil soundtrack.
Shakira CD: 14.99
Shakira DVD: 14.99
Circue Du Soleil (Quidam) CD: 17.99
Circue Du Soleil (Quidam) DVD: 19.99
You can guess which ones I bought.
I also picked up a Rage Against The Machine DVD for like 18.99. Their live CD was about the same price.
Until CDs drop in price to about 6 bux or so, I don't see sales going up.
Consumer spending on almost everything else has fallen (lo recession) far less than CD spending, but for some reason the RIAA can't recognize the fact that they are selling a product at a price higher than the market will bear.
I wonder if any of those guys every played Lemonade or Dope Wars...
If I were you I would look into converting over to postgreSQL.
postgreSQL is kind of like the shy geeky kid in the family that no one ever heard about - seems like all people do is rave on and on about mySQL, but aren't aware of the limitataions.
unlike mySQL, postgreSQL will support subselects, row-level locking, union join, foreign keys, and the single most advantage over mySQL - it actually scales.
Its pretty fast too. for tiny databases mySQL is of course the king, because of its primitive structure, but once the db grows a little, postgreSQL is actually much faster than most dbs out there. odbc drivers are out there, and assuming you haven't been doing too many mySQL specific commands like "SELECT * FROM TABLES" the transition should be fairly easy.