WHAT HD content? (I say this as a person who didn't build an HTPC because I didn't want to spend what it woulc cost to build a fast enough box to decode 1080p and this sounds awesome to me, BUT..) Hulu has a ton of tv shows, available for free, on demand, and legally, and there's a lot to be said for that, even if it is SD.
The Boxee guys claimed they were removing Hulu support in an act of good will toward Hulu (I'd guess hoping to maintain good relations with a content provider they wanted to get back). Now they're completely negating the good-will-effect by helping users work around it while still making it more of a pain for their users. Genius.
I remember playing NBA 96 on Playstation and complaining about how horrible the 3d models looked compared to sprites. Sure, sprites were terribly limited, but the game looked like complete ass. I later realized it was a necessary step toward genuinely good 3d graphics. You can't just skip to the end result.
make it easier for researchers around the world to pool their data to make better drugs.
As in, like, paying them lots of money? No? I don't see this ever getting off the ground. And, uh, ask Proctor and Gamble what $5 million will buy you.
The ones that are failing at an ridiculous rate? And they're going to be used to write media that no one uses (or at least ought not to use) anymore? "problem no one has" -- couldn't have said it better.
That's great, but aren't there already more people equipped with computer skills than the market needs? America doesn't need more job-qualified people (at least, that's not the big problem), it needs jobs to put those people in to.
Such as.. adding a timestamp to the filename and not overwriting? Anyway, I wasn't suggesting a bulletproof backup method, I was suggesting something that takes almost 0 effort and would have been 100% sufficient in this case.
And, uh, what is "sufficient" ? Sounds relative and subjective to me. Imagine that the server has a 1% chance of failing each month, and the backup method I suggested also has a 1% chance of failing. For a guy that probably knew he should be backing his data up and just assumed the risk, isn't that sufficient?
Or back it up, like, once a day, or week, or ever, to a flash drive or something. That's a lesson that's already been learned, and it's common sense. I'm terrible about backing up my own data (anything I've lost and recovered is usually something that just happened to be on a remote web server somewhere, coincidentally, because it was always intended to be on the web). But all of my websites, with other users' data, are backed up. It doesn't take a very complex scheme or much thought. A cron job to dump your database and tar your web structure and then copy it to a different location.
I definitely have my doubts that someone who could make this mistake is all that capable "lessons learned."
I just installed boxee on my Apple TV last weekend exclusively for watching Hulu. This whole thing doesn't make much sense -- saying "we don't want our tv shows being watched on a tv."
What would honestly make the most sense, in my mind, is if the network that owned the rights to shows just had them stream from their own sites. Your media box could even call them something crazy, like "channels."
I just got an email from my boss that our proposal to switch to a new reporting tool, mostly due to the licensing BS the old company tried to pull, has been approved. The moral? Don't pull this shit or you'll get dumped. Rewriting all of our reports in the new environment is going to be expensive, but cheaper, in the long run, than dealing with that sleazy company.
"and cannot go to the media as a last resort, if needed.'"
Is that a joke? What an interesting story that would be.
Linux distros such as Ubuntu are stripping out functionality, including MySQL, CUPS, and LDAP, to cut footprints in half.... OS vendors realize they must adapt as virtualization, cloud computing, netbooks, and power concerns drive business users toward smaller, less costly, more efficient operating environments.
I don't see what removing MySQL and LDAP have to do with "slimming an OS." These are things that very few people are ever going to use on their desktop and made no sense to install by default, anyway. Of the home users, there is surely an inflated number of users on slashdot using them, but they could just as easily go install them after the OS install is complete. And for business users, I would guess almost no one is using them on their desktop.
Benchmarks are always plagued with questions, uncertainties, error margins and other complexities, which is why we're not going to try to look too deeply into these figures.
No they're not, if you do your benchmarks scientifically. Ignoring the anomoly of a "small file" taking several times longer to copy than the "large file" in Windows 7 ain't so scientific.
I'm not happy with my previous comment, so I'll try again. It still applies, though. If you are in the 1% of people using 100x as many resources as the next guy (and work with me here, think in generalities) why should you be paying the same price? You are either making their service worse or making it cost more for them.
See, Comcast doesn't work in a vacuum. They aren't arbitrarily setting costs and reaping in hordes of money. They price their offerings to be competetive. Even when they are the only provider in an area, since their prices are more or less identical between locations. If they need more bandwidth because one guy is using a ton more than anyone else, they have to upgrade, and to pay for that they have to raise their prices. You see it as being strong armed and dictating the market, but they are playing in the same market as you. Sure, they aren't going to find a way to save $1 a month per customer and pass the savings along to you, but if they have to upgrade something and it ends up costing $1 more per person, you can bet they will.
The fact that customers were paying for speed and not bandwidth last month is irrelevent. The few customers that mattered complained about how they wanted firm caps, and now they've got them. If you want a higher cap you pay more for it. What the hell did everyone expect? The new cap is probably as big as 90% of their customers' hard drives! At what cap would people stop complaining?
And.. If users say a cap is the way to resolve an issue where the highest users consume 50x as much bandwidth as the average user, how can you expect the cap to be anywhere near what the highest users were consuming?
If I can recall, every time I've seen a story about slashdot before today, there were 100 comments saying "They need to just have a firm cap." Now everyone is complaining about the firm cap.
The fact of the matter is, you asked for it, you got it, and arguing that 250gb a month isn't reasonable would be tough. Comcast is right - that should cover 99% of their customers, and of the 1% who "need" more bandwidth, 99% of them probably aren't using it for legitimate downloads. Anyone who needs more than that shouldn't expect to be paying what their neighbors are.
For what it's worth, I'm paying over $100 for 1mb SDSL. If I were to top it out 24 hours a day and never reboot I could possibly get to 250gb.
Slashdot Mirror
WHAT HD content? (I say this as a person who didn't build an HTPC because I didn't want to spend what it woulc cost to build a fast enough box to decode 1080p and this sounds awesome to me, BUT..) Hulu has a ton of tv shows, available for free, on demand, and legally, and there's a lot to be said for that, even if it is SD.
The Boxee guys claimed they were removing Hulu support in an act of good will toward Hulu (I'd guess hoping to maintain good relations with a content provider they wanted to get back). Now they're completely negating the good-will-effect by helping users work around it while still making it more of a pain for their users. Genius.
I remember playing NBA 96 on Playstation and complaining about how horrible the 3d models looked compared to sprites. Sure, sprites were terribly limited, but the game looked like complete ass. I later realized it was a necessary step toward genuinely good 3d graphics. You can't just skip to the end result.
+1. It's like having a story about water melons and adding a "black people" tag.
make it easier for researchers around the world to pool their data to make better drugs.
As in, like, paying them lots of money? No? I don't see this ever getting off the ground. And, uh, ask Proctor and Gamble what $5 million will buy you.
The ones that are failing at an ridiculous rate? And they're going to be used to write media that no one uses (or at least ought not to use) anymore? "problem no one has" -- couldn't have said it better.
..truly an American icon.
That's great, but aren't there already more people equipped with computer skills than the market needs? America doesn't need more job-qualified people (at least, that's not the big problem), it needs jobs to put those people in to.
Getting rid IE is good and all, but does like Slashdot hire out to India to write their article summaries? The retardation is growing daily.
[my emphasis]
No, they have wops and micks do it. Now is, I suppose, when you show me how your post wasn't racist.
Such as.. adding a timestamp to the filename and not overwriting? Anyway, I wasn't suggesting a bulletproof backup method, I was suggesting something that takes almost 0 effort and would have been 100% sufficient in this case.
And, uh, what is "sufficient" ? Sounds relative and subjective to me. Imagine that the server has a 1% chance of failing each month, and the backup method I suggested also has a 1% chance of failing. For a guy that probably knew he should be backing his data up and just assumed the risk, isn't that sufficient?
Or back it up, like, once a day, or week, or ever, to a flash drive or something. That's a lesson that's already been learned, and it's common sense. I'm terrible about backing up my own data (anything I've lost and recovered is usually something that just happened to be on a remote web server somewhere, coincidentally, because it was always intended to be on the web). But all of my websites, with other users' data, are backed up. It doesn't take a very complex scheme or much thought. A cron job to dump your database and tar your web structure and then copy it to a different location.
I definitely have my doubts that someone who could make this mistake is all that capable "lessons learned."
I just installed boxee on my Apple TV last weekend exclusively for watching Hulu. This whole thing doesn't make much sense -- saying "we don't want our tv shows being watched on a tv."
What would honestly make the most sense, in my mind, is if the network that owned the rights to shows just had them stream from their own sites. Your media box could even call them something crazy, like "channels."
How can you make that mistake when the guy you're talking about references the actual law?
Better yet, with the screen off, how do you, uh, see what the count is??
I just got an email from my boss that our proposal to switch to a new reporting tool, mostly due to the licensing BS the old company tried to pull, has been approved. The moral? Don't pull this shit or you'll get dumped. Rewriting all of our reports in the new environment is going to be expensive, but cheaper, in the long run, than dealing with that sleazy company.
"and cannot go to the media as a last resort, if needed.'"
Is that a joke? What an interesting story that would be.
Linux distros such as Ubuntu are stripping out functionality, including MySQL, CUPS, and LDAP, to cut footprints in half. ... OS vendors realize they must adapt as virtualization, cloud computing, netbooks, and power concerns drive business users toward smaller, less costly, more efficient operating environments.
I don't see what removing MySQL and LDAP have to do with "slimming an OS." These are things that very few people are ever going to use on their desktop and made no sense to install by default, anyway. Of the home users, there is surely an inflated number of users on slashdot using them, but they could just as easily go install them after the OS install is complete. And for business users, I would guess almost no one is using them on their desktop.
If I thought it was worthwhile, sure, I'd do that.
Ars doesn't think the story is so ridiculous. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/02/intel-is-shooting-for-playstation-4-but-has-it-scored.ars
What about in February? Still, you say? Boy, do I feel like an idiot. Wait, what was my point? That wasn't it at all? Good catch, douchebag.
Benchmarks are always plagued with questions, uncertainties, error margins and other complexities, which is why we're not going to try to look too deeply into these figures.
No they're not, if you do your benchmarks scientifically. Ignoring the anomoly of a "small file" taking several times longer to copy than the "large file" in Windows 7 ain't so scientific.
Read the sentence after the one you quoted, you fuck.
I'm not happy with my previous comment, so I'll try again. It still applies, though. If you are in the 1% of people using 100x as many resources as the next guy (and work with me here, think in generalities) why should you be paying the same price? You are either making their service worse or making it cost more for them.
See, Comcast doesn't work in a vacuum. They aren't arbitrarily setting costs and reaping in hordes of money. They price their offerings to be competetive. Even when they are the only provider in an area, since their prices are more or less identical between locations. If they need more bandwidth because one guy is using a ton more than anyone else, they have to upgrade, and to pay for that they have to raise their prices. You see it as being strong armed and dictating the market, but they are playing in the same market as you. Sure, they aren't going to find a way to save $1 a month per customer and pass the savings along to you, but if they have to upgrade something and it ends up costing $1 more per person, you can bet they will.
The fact that customers were paying for speed and not bandwidth last month is irrelevent. The few customers that mattered complained about how they wanted firm caps, and now they've got them. If you want a higher cap you pay more for it. What the hell did everyone expect? The new cap is probably as big as 90% of their customers' hard drives! At what cap would people stop complaining?
And.. If users say a cap is the way to resolve an issue where the highest users consume 50x as much bandwidth as the average user, how can you expect the cap to be anywhere near what the highest users were consuming?
You're wrong. Comcast is capping bandwidth beginning this month. They are paying for speed and bandwidth.
If I can recall, every time I've seen a story about slashdot before today, there were 100 comments saying "They need to just have a firm cap." Now everyone is complaining about the firm cap.
The fact of the matter is, you asked for it, you got it, and arguing that 250gb a month isn't reasonable would be tough. Comcast is right - that should cover 99% of their customers, and of the 1% who "need" more bandwidth, 99% of them probably aren't using it for legitimate downloads. Anyone who needs more than that shouldn't expect to be paying what their neighbors are.
For what it's worth, I'm paying over $100 for 1mb SDSL. If I were to top it out 24 hours a day and never reboot I could possibly get to 250gb.
Sweet! I won't be watching CNN video, but I bet the things I am downloading would go a lot faster than on my 1mb connection.