Heck, "I" can build a mortar. How do you think most 4th of July fireworks displays happen? And plenty of people know how to convert a "civilian" AR15, AK, or Uzi to full-auto.
As far as that goes, almost anyone who's ever watched Mythbusters probably knows how to make some pretty impressive improvised weapons. Anyone up for some air-canon Molotov cocktails?
"Also, you'd need code to quiesce the card and context switch all of it's state (for going into and coming out of fullscreen mode)."
When you switch video modes doesn't the card basically have to drop it's contents and start over anyway? Seems like you could fake a switch and/or monitor change and be golden.
And since we really want GPU access for games anyway, they're used to grabbing the card and loading all of their own junk into it, which the OS then has to dump when the game quits.
"November 1st - Hitachi today said it plans to have a 2.5", 200GB 7,200RPM hard drive available in the first half of 2007. The company also said it would introduce a 2.5" drive with a capacity "in the quarter-terabyte range" and a 5,400RPM rotational speed for the second half of 2007."
But it was later than I thought. "Second half." Drat.
"...in case of XP, this allows you to have a windows install that won't get you rooted in 5 minutes after you go online."
Often been curious about that. Is the 5-minute time for a box connected directly to the web (static IP)? And if so, is it true for a new XP box behind a NAT'ed router as well?
I'm a professional photographer and artist, so some of my stitched 11MP PS documents are around 750MB or so...
HD video is even worse. Several gigs of databases. An entire virtualized OS partition. I have the latest 160GB hard drive, and my notebook is still bursting at the seams. I think someone is releasing a 250GB 2.5" drive early next year, and THAT probably won't be enough...
Yes, but like I said, there ought to be some way to open a hole in the OS so that a virtualized Windows could access the graphics card directly when in full-screen mode. And which would eliminate the need for fancy conversion drivers, since Windows should already "know" about an ATI x1600.
You'd think that in, say, full-screen mode that there's be some way for Apple to open a hole so that Parallels/Windows could get direct access to the video card.
Just an FYI, but the new MacBook Pros have a "right-click" control panel option whereby if you put two fingers on the pad while you click the button it's interpreted as a right click. Much easier to do than say, and no more "control-click". And the Parallels/Boot Camp drivers for Windows look for this as well.
As to Linux... well, it's open source. Just change the driver yourself.;)
"I would expect most people's collections to fit on a 100GB drive (laptops got to about 160 now, iirc) as lossless."
Please note that a few people need the occassional Word file and Excel spreadsheet as well. Most can't waste all of the space on their notebook on music...
Ditto. And as I've said before, most of us listen to compressed music on pod's while walking down the street, in a car, on the subway, at the gym, or at any number of other places where the ambient noise levels are going to drown out any perceived "superiority" in sound quality anyway.
IF you're recording for use on your home stero system and IF you have decent speakers and IF you've got the storage space to burn and IF the kind of music you listen to hasn't already been under the sound engineer's knife... THEN you might as well do loseless.
Note that there's a lot of "ifs" in that sentence...
You should look at one of the systems (about $150) that let you connect the pod directly to your head unit. Mine connects to it in place of the factory cd changer. At any rate, you lose an incredible amount of range going through the cassette adaptor.
One could also look at it as the new OS's current hardware requirements are a "base" for future systems, since, if past performance is any guide, it will be another five years before MS releases Vista's successor.
So? Some will get it and some won't. The ones that did you helped, and the ones that didn't could be beyond help anyway.
Or are you in the "if it can't be 100% perfect all the time then do nothing camp?" For that matter, are you a botnet writer/owner, and don't want people protecting their computer at all???
Again, that's why I said "in English". If a program is attempting to make a port 25 connection, you can easily say "send an email" instead of "make an outbound network connection". And if it strikes you odd that tic-tac-toe.exe is attempting to send an email...
Further, someone like Apple could avoid the 10 prior questions by preconfiguring the firewall to "know" that Safari wants to make web connections, Mail wants to POP and and SMTP, and so on. Further, they could avoid even more false positives and do the same preconfiguration with the major applications from MS, Adobe, and Intuit.
Or run on a 17" Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, use Safari, Firefox, and Opera, and then use Parallels to test againt IE when needed...;)
Seriously, it would be a bit difficult to release a test kit for Safari w/o having most of the rest of the OS available.
Although, since we're on that subject, why couldn't MS release an IE6 test application as a single EXE? Requiring yet another XP environment just to test a single application seems like a major case of overkill.
Or are we back to the "IE is inextricably bound to the OS" argument again?
"When painting a picture, a pencil sketch can give you an idea of the balance without wasting time. If you start with oils and change your mind part way through it becomes a lot more troublesome to modify."
Next thing you know you'll be telling me not to do the NYT crossword puzzle in ink...
Everyone acknowledges that AllofMP3 was operating under a loophole in the Russian system that made what they doing "legal", and that the loophole stems from conflicting interpretations of Russian copyright law. And which doesn't change the fact that the purchase and "importation" of said music here into the US seems to constitute infringement according to US law, and thus "can" be illegal. It's the law.
At any rate, anyone with half a brain should also know that such loopholes tend to be closed when they draw too much attention, and/or when too much money begins pouring through them.
"Glyn Evans, argued that the higher cost resulted from the council having to experiment with the new technology and build up a depth of technical understanding, as well as fit it with the complex system already in place."
As would anyone contemplating a move to new systems and new technologies.
From my perspective it appears that both sides have a point. Free software has costs associated with it, just like "paid" commercial software. Those costs can be purchase price, future upgrade costs, support fees, training, planning and implementation time, helpdesk time, lost end-user productivity, and so on.
Anyone considering either needs to review the TCO and impact on the organization at large.
Any piece of software attempting to open an outbound connection, particularly to common port like SMTP, needs to flag the fact to the user and explain, in English, what's going on.
"Tic-Tac-Toe.exe is attempting to send an email, but is not a known email program. Do you want to allow this?"
"Since then, I have not really encountered manufacturers who are willing to replace software on an existing device. Even if the software is available online for free, most users cannot or will not do this for themselves, which reduces a manufacturer's willingness to provide updates."
Not to blow Apple's horn here, but... I'm going to blow Apple's horn. I just stuck an older 'pod I hadn't used for a while into my Mac and iTunes informed me that a firmware update was available for it, and did I want to install it? In essence, and running with your arguments, they continue to provide updates, and through the iTunes integration, made it simple for me to know it existed and to actually do the upgrade (clicked "yes').
I also ran the AirPort manager so I could get the network password, and again was notified that there was an AirPort Express firmware upgrade available. Click yes, automatically downloaded and installed, automatically restarted the Express and automatically reconnected. Painless.
I could contrast this with my experience with, say, Dell, where a new wireless device failed to connect to the computer and I had to spend an hour rummaging through Dell's support site to find out that there was an updated driver available that I could download manually... and then install manually... and then reboot the computer... and now restart the device... yuck.
In short, some companies "get it", and some don't. Some view each and every connection with a customer as a chance to dazzle... and most view those connections as costs to be avoided. And in the same vein, some consumers understand that you get what you pay for, while others only see "the bargin".
Slashdot Mirror
"...but it would certainly make those Canadians think twice before invading us."
Canadians? I thought we were worrying about the Mexicans?
Oh. Right. The Canadians are our enemy. The Canadians have always been our enemy...
Heck, "I" can build a mortar. How do you think most 4th of July fireworks displays happen? And plenty of people know how to convert a "civilian" AR15, AK, or Uzi to full-auto.
As far as that goes, almost anyone who's ever watched Mythbusters probably knows how to make some pretty impressive improvised weapons. Anyone up for some air-canon Molotov cocktails?
Yes, but "Your Rights Online" makes more sense from a "News For Nerds" perspective. What do computer geeks care about whatever happens offline?
I don't get it. The first thing they do is change the plates... so we're going to put tags into the plates???
I hate to ruin it for the guy on Drivl.com, but some machines do make a "blip" noise when you press a key.
Like my cell phone?
I did that on a DEC PDP-8e. (12-bit octal though)
"Also, you'd need code to quiesce the card and context switch all of it's state (for going into and coming out of fullscreen mode)."
When you switch video modes doesn't the card basically have to drop it's contents and start over anyway? Seems like you could fake a switch and/or monitor change and be golden.
And since we really want GPU access for games anyway, they're used to grabbing the card and loading all of their own junk into it, which the OS then has to dump when the game quits.
Oh, don't tease.
"November 1st - Hitachi today said it plans to have a 2.5", 200GB 7,200RPM hard drive available in the first half of 2007. The company also said it would introduce a 2.5" drive with a capacity "in the quarter-terabyte range" and a 5,400RPM rotational speed for the second half of 2007."
But it was later than I thought. "Second half." Drat.
"...in case of XP, this allows you to have a windows install that won't get you rooted in 5 minutes after you go online."
Often been curious about that. Is the 5-minute time for a box connected directly to the web (static IP)? And if so, is it true for a new XP box behind a NAT'ed router as well?
I'm a professional photographer and artist, so some of my stitched 11MP PS documents are around 750MB or so...
HD video is even worse. Several gigs of databases. An entire virtualized OS partition. I have the latest 160GB hard drive, and my notebook is still bursting at the seams. I think someone is releasing a 250GB 2.5" drive early next year, and THAT probably won't be enough...
Yes, but like I said, there ought to be some way to open a hole in the OS so that a virtualized Windows could access the graphics card directly when in full-screen mode. And which would eliminate the need for fancy conversion drivers, since Windows should already "know" about an ATI x1600.
You'd think that in, say, full-screen mode that there's be some way for Apple to open a hole so that Parallels/Windows could get direct access to the video card.
Just an FYI, but the new MacBook Pros have a "right-click" control panel option whereby if you put two fingers on the pad while you click the button it's interpreted as a right click. Much easier to do than say, and no more "control-click". And the Parallels/Boot Camp drivers for Windows look for this as well.
;)
As to Linux... well, it's open source. Just change the driver yourself.
"I would expect most people's collections to fit on a 100GB drive (laptops got to about 160 now, iirc) as lossless."
Please note that a few people need the occassional Word file and Excel spreadsheet as well. Most can't waste all of the space on their notebook on music...
Ditto. And as I've said before, most of us listen to compressed music on pod's while walking down the street, in a car, on the subway, at the gym, or at any number of other places where the ambient noise levels are going to drown out any perceived "superiority" in sound quality anyway.
IF you're recording for use on your home stero system and IF you have decent speakers and IF you've got the storage space to burn and IF the kind of music you listen to hasn't already been under the sound engineer's knife... THEN you might as well do loseless.
Note that there's a lot of "ifs" in that sentence...
You should look at one of the systems (about $150) that let you connect the pod directly to your head unit. Mine connects to it in place of the factory cd changer. At any rate, you lose an incredible amount of range going through the cassette adaptor.
One could also look at it as the new OS's current hardware requirements are a "base" for future systems, since, if past performance is any guide, it will be another five years before MS releases Vista's successor.
So? Some will get it and some won't. The ones that did you helped, and the ones that didn't could be beyond help anyway.
Or are you in the "if it can't be 100% perfect all the time then do nothing camp?" For that matter, are you a botnet writer/owner, and don't want people protecting their computer at all???
Again, that's why I said "in English". If a program is attempting to make a port 25 connection, you can easily say "send an email" instead of "make an outbound network connection". And if it strikes you odd that tic-tac-toe.exe is attempting to send an email...
Further, someone like Apple could avoid the 10 prior questions by preconfiguring the firewall to "know" that Safari wants to make web connections, Mail wants to POP and and SMTP, and so on. Further, they could avoid even more false positives and do the same preconfiguration with the major applications from MS, Adobe, and Intuit.
Or run on a 17" Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, use Safari, Firefox, and Opera, and then use Parallels to test againt IE when needed... ;)
Seriously, it would be a bit difficult to release a test kit for Safari w/o having most of the rest of the OS available.
Although, since we're on that subject, why couldn't MS release an IE6 test application as a single EXE? Requiring yet another XP environment just to test a single application seems like a major case of overkill.
Or are we back to the "IE is inextricably bound to the OS" argument again?
"When painting a picture, a pencil sketch can give you an idea of the balance without wasting time. If you start with oils and change your mind part way through it becomes a lot more troublesome to modify."
Next thing you know you'll be telling me not to do the NYT crossword puzzle in ink...
Everyone acknowledges that AllofMP3 was operating under a loophole in the Russian system that made what they doing "legal", and that the loophole stems from conflicting interpretations of Russian copyright law. And which doesn't change the fact that the purchase and "importation" of said music here into the US seems to constitute infringement according to US law, and thus "can" be illegal. It's the law.
At any rate, anyone with half a brain should also know that such loopholes tend to be closed when they draw too much attention, and/or when too much money begins pouring through them.
"Glyn Evans, argued that the higher cost resulted from the council having to experiment with the new technology and build up a depth of technical understanding, as well as fit it with the complex system already in place."
As would anyone contemplating a move to new systems and new technologies.
From my perspective it appears that both sides have a point. Free software has costs associated with it, just like "paid" commercial software. Those costs can be purchase price, future upgrade costs, support fees, training, planning and implementation time, helpdesk time, lost end-user productivity, and so on.
Anyone considering either needs to review the TCO and impact on the organization at large.
Any piece of software attempting to open an outbound connection, particularly to common port like SMTP, needs to flag the fact to the user and explain, in English, what's going on.
"Tic-Tac-Toe.exe is attempting to send an email, but is not a known email program. Do you want to allow this?"
"Since then, I have not really encountered manufacturers who are willing to replace software on an existing device. Even if the software is available online for free, most users cannot or will not do this for themselves, which reduces a manufacturer's willingness to provide updates."
Not to blow Apple's horn here, but... I'm going to blow Apple's horn. I just stuck an older 'pod I hadn't used for a while into my Mac and iTunes informed me that a firmware update was available for it, and did I want to install it? In essence, and running with your arguments, they continue to provide updates, and through the iTunes integration, made it simple for me to know it existed and to actually do the upgrade (clicked "yes').
I also ran the AirPort manager so I could get the network password, and again was notified that there was an AirPort Express firmware upgrade available. Click yes, automatically downloaded and installed, automatically restarted the Express and automatically reconnected. Painless.
I could contrast this with my experience with, say, Dell, where a new wireless device failed to connect to the computer and I had to spend an hour rummaging through Dell's support site to find out that there was an updated driver available that I could download manually... and then install manually... and then reboot the computer... and now restart the device... yuck.
In short, some companies "get it", and some don't. Some view each and every connection with a customer as a chance to dazzle... and most view those connections as costs to be avoided. And in the same vein, some consumers understand that you get what you pay for, while others only see "the bargin".