It is probably easier to get vista running on a desktop simply because they are built out of commodity components, and the third party vendors are usually better about having things like vista-ready drivers available to download.
That is 100% correct. I've always had a preference for laptops and I also used to work in their manufacture, so I'm not just making this up!;-) Almost everything you might need a driver for (display, sound, I/O) is built on semi-generic chips provided by companies like S3, cirrus and so on. Each laptop maker tweaks the drivers for their own boards. On my home directory right now I have complete sets of drivers for three different laptops, two from the same vendor (and a very similar devices, I know them well, they are the ones I worked with). Even between the two devices that have very similar chipsets, most (but not all) of the drivers are different. I never touched the software side myself, so I cannot vouch for whether the actual driver code is different, but I can certify that laptop drivers are, at best, a bastard to deal with. The funny thing is, you can usually get away with the OEM reference drivers, but I have had problems with some in the past.
As a civilian (and a reader of history), let me say, whaaaaat? The only thing that stops our armies invading any resource-rich country they desire is the marine deaths. Ask any American, the death toll in Iraq is around about 3,000. They don't even consider the lives of the "enemy", or the civilians caught in the crossfire. Once that 3,000 figure was met, the opinion "back home" changed dramatically. Add one more zero to that, and you get the certified, double-checked list of civilian casualties. A number I've NEVER seen mentioned on TV news.
Do you honestly think these robots are going to make the world a safer place? You are talking about a future where our leaders can wage war without any repercussions? No fallout once the flag-draped coffins start getting fed-exed home? Surely as a veteran you realise that this cannot be good?
9-11 was a direct result of our meddling in the middle east. Now we have robots to do our dirty work, do you think that's going to improve the situation? Is it going to "win hearts & minds", "shock and awe" or just downright, extreme, suicidal hatred? Your children can answer that for you...
Regarding the price of the console, Sony could charge up to $800 IMHO in the early months. They will still sell out EVERY console they ship to the stores. Remember all the past releases? Remember the prices on eBay? People ARE willing to pay extra to be "cutting edge".
If it's released at a high price, you can pretty much bet on a price drop 6-12 months later.
When did you try it? What was the OL version? Your post is worthless if you don't include relevent information. If it was in OpenLaszlo 2.x, you probably did struggle.
For about four months, say starting a year ago. Version 3.1 is still installed on my box, though I started with 3.0 IIRC.
I wanted to do things a little bit differently than the API allowed at the time. I do note that some of these features are now implemented and I do intend to revisit it (the whole project is on the back burner at the moment). Especially given the DHTML support. The idea of the multi-channel interested me as I'm a bit adverse to doing it in Flash for various reasons, but Open Laszlo interested me enough to give it a go.
WRT to the forums I asked a couple of questions and they weren't no-brainers, believe me. I also logged a bug on the forum, with a testcase, and got no response.
I tried it out for six months or so for a project and ended up abandoning it. For basic stuff it's fine, but if you want to manipulate data client-side, it's loaded with bugs including some nasty refresh issues. Combine that with zero support on the forums, and I wasn't all that impressed. It had a load of potential, perhaps it's just not ready yet.
Don't you just love that the illicit product is actually technical superiour? Back in the day, "pirate" used to mean poor video, poor sound, people walking in front of the camera and the first five minutes missing. Oh, and the photocopied case carries the tag lines from other movies, or such classics such as "no redeaming qualities whatsoever!".
Whereas now, it means better!! You can do what you want with it. Play it on your TV, xbox, PSP, DVD, whatever you feel to encode it to. Archive it to disk in case the original is damaged. Lend it to a friend without giving them your iTunes password!
Do they honestly expect to win this consumer war with these tactics?
The problem here is that it's hard to buy a PDA that isn't also a smartphone nowadays, and smartphones are all too often locked by network operators into running only apps published by an established company
That's the network operators fault, not the device. This seems common in the USA and with one or two networks in the UK, but from what I understand we are they only ones that get reamed this way.
My smartphone is fully open. You can even run Linux on it if you have nothing better to do with your time.
while $14.95 ($149 a year) lets you transfer those downloads to most newer Windows Media-compatible players.
That statement is also a lie. To the best of my knowledge, none of the Windows Media compatible mobile phones can touch the DRM used in Windows Media files. Pehaps they have a line of portable players that can, but I've never seen them.
Although the destructive US-lead occupation of Iraq is bad enough, the Americans are expected to eventually leave that burned country to Iraqis (or whatever the remaining peoples choose to call themselves and their ethno-religious units). But other increasingly fascist second-rate superpowers like China and (Soviet) Russia are in the process of occupying and swallowing (de facto wiping off the map) their neigbouring nations and peoples as part of a nationalistic neo-imperial drive.
Have you been away from the news for 30 years or something? The latter half of the above statement only applies to that time period. I don't see Russia invading anywhere. I don't see China doing it (for Gawds sake, if you bring up Tibet I will scream and terminate this discussion as you know nothing of the history and are just repeating CIA anti-communist propaganda like the typical non-informed voter. China invading Tibet was no different to the UK "invading" the Falkland Islands in the '80s.)
You think the US plans to leave Iraq? Why are you building 16 permament bases there? Why are there numerous position statments, some going back to 1998, on the Project For A New American Century's offical website, stating their plan for the US getting a foothold in the middle east for the benefit of it's strategic benefit? Why does the reason for the invasion keep changing? Why is there documented proof that the invasion was going ahead regardless of international negotiations?
Your written English is pretty good and I can see you are not an idiot. Why on Earth do you have your position? Are you denied access to history books, or just simply uninterested in the truth? Or are you paid to be here and spout these viewpoints? McCarthyism is dead, and nowadays the US is no better than China. At least the Chinese don't make themselves out to be something they are not.
Surely summary execution is bad regardless of whether the victims are citizens of the country in which it takes place or not? Are you saying you would have no problem with the US government rounding up foreigners and shooting them dead, as long as it leaves its citizens alone?
Yes, that is EXACTLY how it works. Ask any American the death toll in Iraq and you'll get an answer in the region of 3,000. The non-racist, correct answer is nearer 100,000.
Bullshit. Holding a democratic election does not absolve you of responsibility for the outcome. If "the People" want Hamas to run the P.A., they will have to live with the consequences of that decision.
Yes, that is fair enough, if they elect a government that doesn't want to play fair internationally, then they need not be treated fairly themselves.
However, Americas medling in democratic elections is not limited to the Middle East, nor is it limited to violent regimes. Take a look at the past 50 years of South American history. Pick almost any country and you can name an election that was tampered with by the USA, or where the democraticly elected leaders were disposed of in a US sponsored military coop. Just so they could get a leader in that they can "do business" with.
Ditto East Asia. Grandparent poster picked a bad example in Hamas, but his point is 100% correct. The US does not observe democracy when the outcome is not ecconically or strategically favourable. Google CNN for "Venezuela" to see it happening today!
Great post, really interesting stuff, in fact much of it was on my "I should read up on this..." list. However:
Plus... there's a big bait & switch problem the cable and DSL providers have. Until now, nobody really could use that 9 Mbps!
I've had cable for five years and I've always been able to use all of it at any time of the day. I live in a relatively "well-off" area of a city, where you would expect to have a lot of contention. I could go home right now and kick off a BitTorrent download that'll get me 1000kbytes/sec on my 10 meg link instantly.
The contention thing has always interested me. When I signed up, many people complained that the ratios on cable are worse than DSL (50/1 verses 20/1), so I was concerned about it. I think a lot of people don't realise that it's the weakest link in the chain that determines the speed. Only certain sites will be able to give me full power, and I expect that. Maybe I've just been lucky, perhaps I'm the only bandwidth hog on my segment. But as you say, it's going to get real interesting once everyone starts downloading video. Fortunately my cable co does video on demand for TV shows over their cable service so that ought to be the bulk of it, keeping it off my TCP/IP link.:-p
Personally, I think the upstream is going to be fought over more. Most people don't upload anything other than emails at the moment, but that'll change soon.
Besides, at least Azureus and GTK-Gnutella can tag bulk transfers as such.
I believe that this has always been the case and as such all ISPs completely ignore the packet QoS headers. If you want to do bandwidth shapping, you can only do it on your own outgoing connection. Everything else is beyond your control.
Most traffic shapers can actually analyse the packet data to determine the type. However, once VoIP is encrypted that becomes impossible.
...for Google to prevent this. Picture this message on the Google Homepage:
Google is loading slow as your ISP (insert name) is presently blackmailing Google in an attempt to extort cash. They seek to charge us extra and are artifically slowing down your traffic. If you would like to switch ISP, please try these A, B or C ISPs that we recommend.
If you live in the UK and would like to break out of a fixed period contract, contact Trading Standards to force your ISP to terminate your contract without any penalty on you. This is possible as your ISP is in breach of contract and not providing the service you are paying for. You may be entitled to claim compensation for this from your ISP.
There. Nice and simple. The ISPs will drop this instanly, lest they use the userbase they have that use google.
Perhaps once you've finished congratulating yourself on the amazing protective powers of the fifth amendment, you might explain to us how Joe McCarthy got away with it?
Easy. He was fighting paedophiles. Or was it terrorists? Or communists? Does it even matter?
As freedom decreases, the potential for comparison to more restricted countries tends towards 1".
Then we can explain the "sure it's bad, but it's not China" meme used to make us think "oh well, it's not so bad I guess. Can I have my ID card back please officer?".
Sheesh. With a microsecond of thought, you'd realize that the police aren't going to just stick your encryption key into YOUR software.
Depends on the skill of the local police force, or whether they are interested enough in your data to send it away to a technical centre. There were articles approx 6-9 months ago about the Police having serious problems dealing with Linux boxes and the lack of experience. The "terrorist" buzz word appeared in that article as well...:-|
I've actually seen a couple of Police reports from investigating a small-time crooks computer. They weren't comprehensive and I saw no evidence of them even considering encyption or hidden data. His drug debt-list was stored in an Excel spreadsheet in My Documents. If he'd have called it sys.dat and dropped in in Windows/System32 he'd have gotten away with it.
Despite the poorly worded title, the UK govt. isn't about to ask you to submit every single key you ever generate.
It just wants the ability to 'force' you to hand over the keys if and when it asks for them.
They were still doing this recently. XP "requires" 128MB, but when you open a browser or word processor you start paging. 256MB is the real world minimum, yet shops are still selling 128MB machines.
They did release it immediately. The Moussaoui trial just ended. It's common that the government and companies do not discuss details relating to a trial while it's in progress.
I can bullshit on that excuse. The trial is the only reason that we know this video exists. Are you telling me that the best video surveilence that the USA's wartime command and control centre is two webcams on entry barriers? The hotel across the road has an "ideal" view of the site and it's video was confiscated and hidden away. People found out this new video existed due to its inclusion as "evidence" in a trial of someone who had very little to do with it.
This video had no bearing on the trial, and it has nothing to do with why it is released now. What exactly is in this video that would inflnce the trial? Bear in mind that it would be impossible to find a juror who hasn't seen the trade tower strikes. That's the normal rational for surpressing information during a trial, as it's not fair on the defendant. They cannot get a fair trail with a jury that has pre-determined thoughts and beliefs about the incident. Getting a fair trial over 9/11 is utterly impossible.
Why is it that in your "alternate" scenario the only players with Fairplay are iPods?
Yet in the MS scenario it is all the players from other (non-MS) companies?
Because MS don't make their own devices and Apple do. Apple point blank refuse to license Fairplay for third party devices, in fact I think they have been sued in some places over this stance. That's the way it is. Will I get shot down for pointing out that the sky is blue next?;-)
Are you really trying to tell me you have 80GB of purchased Music Store tracks
So, let me get this straight...your argument is that as iTunes is relatively new and no one will have a large library yet? And that this makes it alright?
What about in two years time, where you've got millions of kids running about with their whole music collections bought from iTunes? They will be Apples customers for life, in a way that would get certain other companies (e.g. M$) criminally investigated. Am I the only one left on this planet that can look further down the line than six months? Surely not...
I don't get your point. What does Nokia have to do with the number of Windows phones out there, other than being a competitor? You are making my point for me.
Slashdot Mirror
That is 100% correct. I've always had a preference for laptops and I also used to work in their manufacture, so I'm not just making this up! ;-) Almost everything you might need a driver for (display, sound, I/O) is built on semi-generic chips provided by companies like S3, cirrus and so on. Each laptop maker tweaks the drivers for their own boards. On my home directory right now I have complete sets of drivers for three different laptops, two from the same vendor (and a very similar devices, I know them well, they are the ones I worked with). Even between the two devices that have very similar chipsets, most (but not all) of the drivers are different. I never touched the software side myself, so I cannot vouch for whether the actual driver code is different, but I can certify that laptop drivers are, at best, a bastard to deal with. The funny thing is, you can usually get away with the OEM reference drivers, but I have had problems with some in the past.
Do you honestly think these robots are going to make the world a safer place? You are talking about a future where our leaders can wage war without any repercussions? No fallout once the flag-draped coffins start getting fed-exed home? Surely as a veteran you realise that this cannot be good?
9-11 was a direct result of our meddling in the middle east. Now we have robots to do our dirty work, do you think that's going to improve the situation? Is it going to "win hearts & minds", "shock and awe" or just downright, extreme, suicidal hatred? Your children can answer that for you...
If it's released at a high price, you can pretty much bet on a price drop 6-12 months later.
For about four months, say starting a year ago. Version 3.1 is still installed on my box, though I started with 3.0 IIRC.
I wanted to do things a little bit differently than the API allowed at the time. I do note that some of these features are now implemented and I do intend to revisit it (the whole project is on the back burner at the moment). Especially given the DHTML support. The idea of the multi-channel interested me as I'm a bit adverse to doing it in Flash for various reasons, but Open Laszlo interested me enough to give it a go.
WRT to the forums I asked a couple of questions and they weren't no-brainers, believe me. I also logged a bug on the forum, with a testcase, and got no response.
I tried it out for six months or so for a project and ended up abandoning it. For basic stuff it's fine, but if you want to manipulate data client-side, it's loaded with bugs including some nasty refresh issues. Combine that with zero support on the forums, and I wasn't all that impressed. It had a load of potential, perhaps it's just not ready yet.
Whereas now, it means better!! You can do what you want with it. Play it on your TV, xbox, PSP, DVD, whatever you feel to encode it to. Archive it to disk in case the original is damaged. Lend it to a friend without giving them your iTunes password!
Do they honestly expect to win this consumer war with these tactics?
That's the network operators fault, not the device. This seems common in the USA and with one or two networks in the UK, but from what I understand we are they only ones that get reamed this way.
My smartphone is fully open. You can even run Linux on it if you have nothing better to do with your time.
Much like iTunes is the default install for 95% of portable media players sold.
You said it! Who would have thought that "Apple Music" would one day no longer bring up memories of the fab four?
That statement is also a lie. To the best of my knowledge, none of the Windows Media compatible mobile phones can touch the DRM used in Windows Media files. Pehaps they have a line of portable players that can, but I've never seen them.
Have you been away from the news for 30 years or something? The latter half of the above statement only applies to that time period. I don't see Russia invading anywhere. I don't see China doing it (for Gawds sake, if you bring up Tibet I will scream and terminate this discussion as you know nothing of the history and are just repeating CIA anti-communist propaganda like the typical non-informed voter. China invading Tibet was no different to the UK "invading" the Falkland Islands in the '80s.)
You think the US plans to leave Iraq? Why are you building 16 permament bases there? Why are there numerous position statments, some going back to 1998, on the Project For A New American Century's offical website, stating their plan for the US getting a foothold in the middle east for the benefit of it's strategic benefit? Why does the reason for the invasion keep changing? Why is there documented proof that the invasion was going ahead regardless of international negotiations?
Your written English is pretty good and I can see you are not an idiot. Why on Earth do you have your position? Are you denied access to history books, or just simply uninterested in the truth? Or are you paid to be here and spout these viewpoints? McCarthyism is dead, and nowadays the US is no better than China. At least the Chinese don't make themselves out to be something they are not.
Yes, that is EXACTLY how it works. Ask any American the death toll in Iraq and you'll get an answer in the region of 3,000. The non-racist, correct answer is nearer 100,000.
Yes, that is fair enough, if they elect a government that doesn't want to play fair internationally, then they need not be treated fairly themselves.
However, Americas medling in democratic elections is not limited to the Middle East, nor is it limited to violent regimes. Take a look at the past 50 years of South American history. Pick almost any country and you can name an election that was tampered with by the USA, or where the democraticly elected leaders were disposed of in a US sponsored military coop. Just so they could get a leader in that they can "do business" with.
Ditto East Asia. Grandparent poster picked a bad example in Hamas, but his point is 100% correct. The US does not observe democracy when the outcome is not ecconically or strategically favourable. Google CNN for "Venezuela" to see it happening today!
Great post, really interesting stuff, in fact much of it was on my "I should read up on this..." list. However:
Plus... there's a big bait & switch problem the cable and DSL providers have. Until now, nobody really could use that 9 Mbps!I've had cable for five years and I've always been able to use all of it at any time of the day. I live in a relatively "well-off" area of a city, where you would expect to have a lot of contention. I could go home right now and kick off a BitTorrent download that'll get me 1000kbytes/sec on my 10 meg link instantly.
The contention thing has always interested me. When I signed up, many people complained that the ratios on cable are worse than DSL (50/1 verses 20/1), so I was concerned about it. I think a lot of people don't realise that it's the weakest link in the chain that determines the speed. Only certain sites will be able to give me full power, and I expect that. Maybe I've just been lucky, perhaps I'm the only bandwidth hog on my segment. But as you say, it's going to get real interesting once everyone starts downloading video. Fortunately my cable co does video on demand for TV shows over their cable service so that ought to be the bulk of it, keeping it off my TCP/IP link. :-p
Personally, I think the upstream is going to be fought over more. Most people don't upload anything other than emails at the moment, but that'll change soon.
I believe that this has always been the case and as such all ISPs completely ignore the packet QoS headers. If you want to do bandwidth shapping, you can only do it on your own outgoing connection. Everything else is beyond your control.
Most traffic shapers can actually analyse the packet data to determine the type. However, once VoIP is encrypted that becomes impossible.
There. Nice and simple. The ISPs will drop this instanly, lest they use the userbase they have that use google.
Easy. He was fighting paedophiles. Or was it terrorists? Or communists? Does it even matter?
Then we can explain the "sure it's bad, but it's not China" meme used to make us think "oh well, it's not so bad I guess. Can I have my ID card back please officer?".
Depends on the skill of the local police force, or whether they are interested enough in your data to send it away to a technical centre. There were articles approx 6-9 months ago about the Police having serious problems dealing with Linux boxes and the lack of experience. The "terrorist" buzz word appeared in that article as well... :-|
I've actually seen a couple of Police reports from investigating a small-time crooks computer. They weren't comprehensive and I saw no evidence of them even considering encyption or hidden data. His drug debt-list was stored in an Excel spreadsheet in My Documents. If he'd have called it sys.dat and dropped in in Windows/System32 he'd have gotten away with it.
They already have this ability. It's called the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and it was passed in 2000. RIP, don't ya just love it...?
They were still doing this recently. XP "requires" 128MB, but when you open a browser or word processor you start paging. 256MB is the real world minimum, yet shops are still selling 128MB machines.
You must be new to this planet. This happens all the time, including Slashdot summaries that almost contract the story they are discussing.
Outrage -> pageviews -> adverts -> $cashMoney$
Been like that since the printing press.
I can bullshit on that excuse. The trial is the only reason that we know this video exists. Are you telling me that the best video surveilence that the USA's wartime command and control centre is two webcams on entry barriers? The hotel across the road has an "ideal" view of the site and it's video was confiscated and hidden away. People found out this new video existed due to its inclusion as "evidence" in a trial of someone who had very little to do with it.
This video had no bearing on the trial, and it has nothing to do with why it is released now. What exactly is in this video that would inflnce the trial? Bear in mind that it would be impossible to find a juror who hasn't seen the trade tower strikes. That's the normal rational for surpressing information during a trial, as it's not fair on the defendant. They cannot get a fair trail with a jury that has pre-determined thoughts and beliefs about the incident. Getting a fair trial over 9/11 is utterly impossible.
Because MS don't make their own devices and Apple do. Apple point blank refuse to license Fairplay for third party devices, in fact I think they have been sued in some places over this stance. That's the way it is. Will I get shot down for pointing out that the sky is blue next? ;-)
So, let me get this straight...your argument is that as iTunes is relatively new and no one will have a large library yet? And that this makes it alright?
What about in two years time, where you've got millions of kids running about with their whole music collections bought from iTunes? They will be Apples customers for life, in a way that would get certain other companies (e.g. M$) criminally investigated. Am I the only one left on this planet that can look further down the line than six months? Surely not...
I don't get your point. What does Nokia have to do with the number of Windows phones out there, other than being a competitor? You are making my point for me.