Or it could just be that the kernel developers have been keeping up with major hardware issues lately and that there hasn't been a major new piece of hardware introduced since the last kernel release. Of course, if nVidia or ATI would break their contracts with whatever parties they worked with to make their video drivers and suddenly opened everything up, then that would be revolutionary. But as it is, we already have Cell drivers, most hardware components work, etc. The improvements pretty much need to be along the lines of stabilizing and improving HAL, dbus, and other software.
The only reason why Microsoft is pushing Vista is so they can talk about their ROI for that particular (albeit very large) investment. However, with each computer that comes with Windows XP, Microsoft is still making money. Sure, the investors will be pissed if Vista isn't being taken up as quickly as they were told, but it's not like Microsoft is going in the red any time soon.
The only way Microsoft will be in serious trouble is if they start losing overall OEM sales to competition like Apple or the various Linux distributions. I suppose they would be in trouble if they don't expand any further either, but then again, that's why they're branching out of the desktop and servers and going into things like video games and digital cable boxes.
In fact, if the present sales situation keeps up a little longer, the Wii will hit the critical sales mass and enjoy the kind of dominance Sony attained in the past two generations.
Britney Spears... Jessica Simpson... American Idol... OMG Ponies!
Oddly enough, it's similar to/., only different topics. Most frequent stories on/.: Linux is ready for the Desktop! Ground-breaking new hard-drive capacity! New, ground-breaking graphics cards! OMFG Ponies!
Awesome, now with all of this high-tech gadgetry, I can't tell how far away something is from me!
On a serious note, I'm *guessing* that the monitor thing in front of the main picture's face is foldable, pivotable or something to get it out of the way, but I can see how this equipment could be a huge liability.
Which means that Sony is turning a profit off of the units now? Good thing I can keep on waiting, as if they've turned a profit after losing money hand-over-fist on these things, I'm guessing that a price cut is foreseeable in the notsodistant future for the existing models.
Honestly, why wouldn't we use the space? If we're suddenly going from the average TV set having a 480i resolution to 720p, 1080i, or 1080p, we're going to want better textures. The only way that we can fit more textures in game is to increase storage capacity, either via disk or hard drive. How many games would it take to fill up a 60GB hard drive? How long does it take to install a game? The answers are "too quickly" followed by "not fast enough." When people buy a game, they don't want to have to wait to install it, they want to play right away. Plus, if they have many games, it doesn't take much effort to fill up 60GB. Just look at how much space Half Life 2, along with CS:source, DOD:source, Doom 3, et al use up. Consumers would complain like crazy if they had to uninstall one game to play another. Moreover, you aren't burdened to excessive downloads to retrieve more data. By having the storage media be removable, this is bypassed by longer loading times.
Sure, we won't use it right away, but the idea is to futureproof the damn thing. Did we originally have all of the PS2 games on DVD's? I seem to remember the earlier Madden games for PS2's still being on CD's....
Am I the only one here that thinks this would result in very tired arms after a relatively short amount of time? I think I've read similar comments here before. Although I suppose that it could help improve hand-eye coordination....
Of course. When you pretty much need a P4 or a Core Duo for newer versions of Windows, while Linux will run just fine on P3's. Sure, you can install it on things going back to 386's and possibly earlier, but then there's no practicality.
If one of the parties can prove that the contract was signed under duress, that is the party's signature was extracted by physical or mental coercion, then the contract is null and void.
Huh, here's what my Business Law by Mann & Roberts book says:
Duress A person should not be held to an agreement he has not entered voluntarily. Accordingly, the law will not enforce any contract induced by duress, which in general is any wrongful or unlawful act or threat that overcomes the free will of the party.
Physical compulsion Duress is of two basic types. The first type, physical duress, occurs when one party compels another to manifest assent to a contract through actual physical force, such as pointing a gun at a person or taking a person's hand and compelling him to sign a written contract. This type of duress, while extremely rare, renders the agreement void.
Improper Threats The second and more common type of duress involves the use of improper threats or acts, including economic and social coercion, to compel a person into a contract. Though the threat may be explicit or may be inferred from words r conduct, in either case it must leave the victim with no reasonable alternative. This type of duress makes the contract voidable at the option of the coerced party....
The fact that the act or threat would not affect a person of average strength and intelligence is not important if it places fear in the person actually affected and induces her to act against her will. The test is subjective, and the question is this: Did the threat actually induce assent on the party of the person claiming to be the victim of duress? Ordinarily, the acts or threats constituting duress are themselves crimes or torts. But this is not true in all cases. The acts need to be criminal or tortious in order to be wrongful; they merely need to be contrary to public policy or morally reprehensible. For example, if the threat involves a breach of contractual duty of good faith and fair dealing, it is improper.
Moreover, it generally has been held that contracts induced by threats of criminal prosecution are voidable, regardless of whether the coerced party had committed an unlawful act. Similarly, threatening the criminal prosecution of a close relative is also duress. To be distinguished from such threats of prosecution are threats that resort to ordinary civil remedies to recover a debt due from another. It is not wrong to threaten a civil suit against an individual to recover a debt. What is prohibited is threatening to bring a civil suit when bringing such a suit would be abuse of process.
Basically, because what the RIAA is not physical duress, it is considered voidable, not null and void. It is at the discretion of the party that was coerced to decide whether the contract exists or not. Also note that many of the stories brought up regarding the RIAA (Going after a person's surviving family, going after grandma & grandpa, etc) are clearly against any morally reprehensible.
Exactly. Make the keyboard something that can actually be used. We have an old ultra-ultra portable laptop that's probably 7" wide and is utterly unusable if I had to type something and keep up with the speaker. The only thing we use the damn thing for now is Solitare, and that's because it has a touch screen.
You know, it's possible to get versions of Linux on disks as well, whether they are CD's or DVD's. You don't *have* to only download it. Once again, the great thing is that you have a choice.
Or maybe it's because I'm surrounded by people that are better looking than her that my bar is set considerably high.... Thank god for universities and fields of study where people know that how they look is important to prospective clients and employers.
last night, and the host at the time was speculating that now is the time for indie bands like The Arcade Fire to rise up on the charts. It would be fantastic to see the lesser-known groups receive the publicity that they deserve.
In the final quarter of 2007, Apple earned $7.1 billion in revenue, compared to Microsoft's $12.5 billion in total revenue. Yes, that's right, Apple brought in more than half as much money as Microsoft, despite Windows owning 98% of the PC market.
Don't confuse revenue with profits. It's a very easy and stupid thing to do. Keep in mind that the vast majority of Microsoft's revenue comes from software, whereas a lot of Apple's revenues come from hardware.
I encoded my entire CD collect 7 years ago as 320kbps constant MP3. I'm thinking about re-encoding it, because there's no point in having the files that big. 256kbps variable mp3 is would probably still be more than enough.
Maybe because not everyone uses those $30 speakers that come standard with all Dell computers? I personally rarely use my computer speakers (I have a set of Klipsch 2.1 ProMedia's), but instead have my sound routed to my receiver. No computer speakers can compete with a real stereo.
Keep it simple. Here are my only criteria for a dream computer:
No moving parts
A sound card that has a built-in mixer and digital out, I'll let my receiver do the decoding for DTS and Dolby Digital
Lots and lots of disk space
Linux fully supports it
A graphics card that can do 1080P out
If I want to play games, I'll use a console. Give me something that has excellent 2D performance.
Remember back in the good ol' days, when we could gamble for real money online? I do. I see nothing wrong with people who are capable of acting responsibly gambling online, nor gambling on sports. Yet for some reason, the government here has decided to become everyone's parent and prevent them from spending their money as they see fit. They claim it's because of possible addictions and the aftermath of said 'addictions', but we all know how the Prohibition fixed our alcoholic problem.
Vote by choosing options that you would like AND would make sense from a business prospective.
E.g: For support, I said that I wanted support from whoever produces the operating system. Basically, along with the purchase of the computer I would then get 3 years of support directly from RedHat or Novell or whoever, and Dell wouldn't have to increase their customer support head-count much, if at all.
Another example: Which operating system? Naturally, I chose ones that cost money rather than community-supported ones. Why? Because it provides more incentive for Dell, while still ensuring that they provide hardware that is fully compatible with Linux.
When dealing with gigantic companies such as Dell, it's about making compromises. Not everyone can have it exactly how they want it, and that's just how it goes for business in general.
Slashdot Mirror
Or it could just be that the kernel developers have been keeping up with major hardware issues lately and that there hasn't been a major new piece of hardware introduced since the last kernel release. Of course, if nVidia or ATI would break their contracts with whatever parties they worked with to make their video drivers and suddenly opened everything up, then that would be revolutionary. But as it is, we already have Cell drivers, most hardware components work, etc. The improvements pretty much need to be along the lines of stabilizing and improving HAL, dbus, and other software.
The only way Microsoft will be in serious trouble is if they start losing overall OEM sales to competition like Apple or the various Linux distributions. I suppose they would be in trouble if they don't expand any further either, but then again, that's why they're branching out of the desktop and servers and going into things like video games and digital cable boxes.
Step Two: ???
What, you mean like what they had 20 years ago?
Britney Spears...
/., only different topics. /.:
Jessica Simpson...
American Idol...
OMG Ponies!
Oddly enough, it's similar to
Most frequent stories on
Linux is ready for the Desktop!
Ground-breaking new hard-drive capacity!
New, ground-breaking graphics cards!
OMFG Ponies!
Probably so they can collect X*$3 on Jan 1, 2009 from all of the "upgrades."
Awesome, now with all of this high-tech gadgetry, I can't tell how far away something is from me! On a serious note, I'm *guessing* that the monitor thing in front of the main picture's face is foldable, pivotable or something to get it out of the way, but I can see how this equipment could be a huge liability.
Which means that Sony is turning a profit off of the units now? Good thing I can keep on waiting, as if they've turned a profit after losing money hand-over-fist on these things, I'm guessing that a price cut is foreseeable in the notsodistant future for the existing models.
How many retard-frog-squirrels did it take for this to happen?
Honestly, why wouldn't we use the space? If we're suddenly going from the average TV set having a 480i resolution to 720p, 1080i, or 1080p, we're going to want better textures. The only way that we can fit more textures in game is to increase storage capacity, either via disk or hard drive. How many games would it take to fill up a 60GB hard drive? How long does it take to install a game? The answers are "too quickly" followed by "not fast enough." When people buy a game, they don't want to have to wait to install it, they want to play right away. Plus, if they have many games, it doesn't take much effort to fill up 60GB. Just look at how much space Half Life 2, along with CS:source, DOD:source, Doom 3, et al use up. Consumers would complain like crazy if they had to uninstall one game to play another. Moreover, you aren't burdened to excessive downloads to retrieve more data. By having the storage media be removable, this is bypassed by longer loading times.
Sure, we won't use it right away, but the idea is to futureproof the damn thing. Did we originally have all of the PS2 games on DVD's? I seem to remember the earlier Madden games for PS2's still being on CD's....
Am I the only one here that thinks this would result in very tired arms after a relatively short amount of time? I think I've read similar comments here before. Although I suppose that it could help improve hand-eye coordination....
Of course. When you pretty much need a P4 or a Core Duo for newer versions of Windows, while Linux will run just fine on P3's. Sure, you can install it on things going back to 386's and possibly earlier, but then there's no practicality.
Huh, here's what my Business Law by Mann & Roberts book says:
DuressA person should not be held to an agreement he has not entered voluntarily. Accordingly, the law will not enforce any contract induced by duress, which in general is any wrongful or unlawful act or threat that overcomes the free will of the party.
Physical compulsion
Duress is of two basic types. The first type, physical duress, occurs when one party compels another to manifest assent to a contract through actual physical force, such as pointing a gun at a person or taking a person's hand and compelling him to sign a written contract. This type of duress, while extremely rare, renders the agreement void.
Improper Threats
The second and more common type of duress involves the use of improper threats or acts, including economic and social coercion, to compel a person into a contract. Though the threat may be explicit or may be inferred from words r conduct, in either case it must leave the victim with no reasonable alternative. This type of duress makes the contract voidable at the option of the coerced party....
The fact that the act or threat would not affect a person of average strength and intelligence is not important if it places fear in the person actually affected and induces her to act against her will. The test is subjective, and the question is this: Did the threat actually induce assent on the party of the person claiming to be the victim of duress?
Ordinarily, the acts or threats constituting duress are themselves crimes or torts. But this is not true in all cases. The acts need to be criminal or tortious in order to be wrongful; they merely need to be contrary to public policy or morally reprehensible. For example, if the threat involves a breach of contractual duty of good faith and fair dealing, it is improper.
Moreover, it generally has been held that contracts induced by threats of criminal prosecution are voidable, regardless of whether the coerced party had committed an unlawful act. Similarly, threatening the criminal prosecution of a close relative is also duress. To be distinguished from such threats of prosecution are threats that resort to ordinary civil remedies to recover a debt due from another. It is not wrong to threaten a civil suit against an individual to recover a debt. What is prohibited is threatening to bring a civil suit when bringing such a suit would be abuse of process.
Basically, because what the RIAA is not physical duress, it is considered voidable, not null and void. It is at the discretion of the party that was coerced to decide whether the contract exists or not. Also note that many of the stories brought up regarding the RIAA (Going after a person's surviving family, going after grandma & grandpa, etc) are clearly against any morally reprehensible.
Exactly. Make the keyboard something that can actually be used. We have an old ultra-ultra portable laptop that's probably 7" wide and is utterly unusable if I had to type something and keep up with the speaker. The only thing we use the damn thing for now is Solitare, and that's because it has a touch screen.
weren't free?
Oh crap, now I can see the medicaid fund running out very quickly....
You know, it's possible to get versions of Linux on disks as well, whether they are CD's or DVD's. You don't *have* to only download it. Once again, the great thing is that you have a choice.
Or maybe it's because I'm surrounded by people that are better looking than her that my bar is set considerably high.... Thank god for universities and fields of study where people know that how they look is important to prospective clients and employers.
last night, and the host at the time was speculating that now is the time for indie bands like The Arcade Fire to rise up on the charts. It would be fantastic to see the lesser-known groups receive the publicity that they deserve.
How are you saying yay for google? Are you so short-sighted that you forgot how they're handling their Chinese operations?
Don't confuse revenue with profits. It's a very easy and stupid thing to do. Keep in mind that the vast majority of Microsoft's revenue comes from software, whereas a lot of Apple's revenues come from hardware.
Maybe because not everyone uses those $30 speakers that come standard with all Dell computers? I personally rarely use my computer speakers (I have a set of Klipsch 2.1 ProMedia's), but instead have my sound routed to my receiver. No computer speakers can compete with a real stereo.
Keep it simple. Here are my only criteria for a dream computer: No moving parts A sound card that has a built-in mixer and digital out, I'll let my receiver do the decoding for DTS and Dolby Digital Lots and lots of disk space Linux fully supports it A graphics card that can do 1080P out If I want to play games, I'll use a console. Give me something that has excellent 2D performance.
Remember back in the good ol' days, when we could gamble for real money online? I do. I see nothing wrong with people who are capable of acting responsibly gambling online, nor gambling on sports. Yet for some reason, the government here has decided to become everyone's parent and prevent them from spending their money as they see fit. They claim it's because of possible addictions and the aftermath of said 'addictions', but we all know how the Prohibition fixed our alcoholic problem.
E.g:
For support, I said that I wanted support from whoever produces the operating system. Basically, along with the purchase of the computer I would then get 3 years of support directly from RedHat or Novell or whoever, and Dell wouldn't have to increase their customer support head-count much, if at all.
Another example:
Which operating system?
Naturally, I chose ones that cost money rather than community-supported ones. Why? Because it provides more incentive for Dell, while still ensuring that they provide hardware that is fully compatible with Linux.
When dealing with gigantic companies such as Dell, it's about making compromises. Not everyone can have it exactly how they want it, and that's just how it goes for business in general.