Oh I agree entirely - the recent decision to put the PSU inside the case was something of a strange one. The lack of an external brick is nice, but given that it lives behind the TV or under the desk for its entire life it wasn't really a pressing concern and it then gives you more room inside the Mini itself for better hardware or a cheaper manufacturing.
The point I was addressing there, though is that a $200 Win 7 PC can't really be anything but a big, compromised tower/mini-tower - just made from the cheapest possible parts. The OEM price for the mobile 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo in the Mini is £52 on its own (take off about 18% for VAT for US price) which doesn't leave a lot left over from your $200 budget for other components).
The desktop-version Core 2 Duo at 2.0Ghz is £32, so less, but not by much (and slower).
I have looked at the Revo as a potential HTPC and I am happy with the size - if the Mini was that size, it would be cheaper to build, no doubt.
There are four different ports over the lifetime of the device, one of which is shared across two generations.
Those are:
* DVI (not obscure by any stretch of the chalk) * mini-DVI (slightly obscure, but cheap to convert to full size DVI with an adapter) *mini-displayport (not obscure really - all current Macs ship with this port, as well as some laptops). This port is shared across the most recent generations of Minis, so if you bought the dongle once, you don;t need to replace it if you replace the mini (or move to any other modern Mac). * HDMI (oh yes, so obscure my mind is melting).
You are just trying to invent problems and controversy where none exists, purely to bait "fanboys" (shouldn't that be 'fanbois').
The amount of Polonium 110 used to kill Alexander Litvenenko was about 10 micrograms, which is significantly more than a single atom, and no airport detector is going to pick that up, especially if it's inside a container (it's an alpha emitter only).
More amusing was the "outrage" on talk radio shows here from members of the public (and the host himself) about why there weren't procedures and detectors in place to pick this sort of thing up at airports to prevent it happening. You think backscatter scanners are bad? Just wait until each person has to be searched for 10 micrograms of Polonium!
He taught me at undergraduate level - Atomic and Molecular Structure, and is very well known around the university. He's the brother of film director Stephen Poliakoff, and is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet.
He's also a huge nerd, and has an enormous collection of dog toys (he has no dog) that he uses in his lectures, and his office is full of plastic water bottles from all over the world that he collects "pretty much by accident" - a white lie about a hobby that turned into a real hobby.
This video is part of a larger series by the University of Nottingham, shot and edited by Brady Haran. Their channel is http://www.youtube.com/user/periodicvideos - but they also have a separate one for the physics department called Sixty Symbols. The videos are excellent introductions to each of the elements (there's one for every one on the table) and various molecules, reactions and current events. There's one that looks at the chemistry involved in the red mud disaster in Europe this year, for example, and one about the Iceland volcano. It's well worth checking them out, if only to give my friends and colleagues some more exposure!
It's Linux and all open source right, just write your own....
Being the red headed step child of cross platform Windows software as an OS X user, I can only imagine how bad it is on Linux in these situations. Some of the ports to OS X have been laughably shocking (Flash, EvE Online, the first official MSN Messenger client, early Ventrillo releases).
Surprisingly, the OS X Skype client is ok (as is the Silverlight player - who'd have thought it?!).
It's not specced the same as a Revo though, is it?
While it does the same job in the same footprint it is a more powerful machine. Whether it is worth the extra money for the extra power and the ability to natively boot into OS X is another matter entirely. The two machines can't really stand toe to toe though.
Was your Win 7 PC the size of a couple of CDs stacked on top of each other?
Didn't think so.
It's not expensive because of the components it has inside it - they are pretty standard laptop hardware; it's expensive because they have been shoehorned into a very tiny space, even by laptop standards.
It's expensive for sure (perhaps even too expensive - the newest model was quite a jump compared to the earlier ones), but you must be able to see that price comparisons with a whitebox Win 7 PC are just nonsensical, and bordering on wilfully ignorant trolling.
They used a standard 15 pin video port on the early ones, accessed via the standard DVI port (adapter included), then switched to a mini-DVI and mini-Displayport side by side, then the current version swapped to HDMI and mini-Displayport side by side.
What creative professional is making that mistake? I would wager that whatever tool you put them in front of, if they are that dense then it wouldn't matter. You're skirting dangerously close to inferring that people who use FCP are clueless.
FCP's export toolchain features a whole raft of presets designed for all manner of output scenarios. You can even add WMV as an option with third party codec packs (it's not included by default). If they've just never opened Compressor before then why are they even working on the project in the first place?!
If it was meant to go into a further EDL or into someone else's timeline, then FCP has included codecs (and can be expanded with others) to make it play ball with the likes of Avid and Vegas.
Cue someone with a clue to clue you in that Carl Sagan was the project codename, not an attempt for product endorsement, since the name was never intended for public release.
If Vegas can use QuickTime, you can use it. Either way, you can format-convert it into something else on windows at the very least, although that is obviously suboptimal.
They were dumb then. You have to specifically select prores - if you asked for something else they could easily provide it. FCP supports far more codecs than just that one.
Apple's codec is not necessarily the default - you get to choose what format you want your timeline to use, and what format you want an export to use (either self contained or reference).
Back when I was doing it professionally, we were using sony's xdcam HD format right in fcp, since we were shooting on HD xdcam gear. We also had a small group of Sony z1's that shot in HDV for little projects.
We never used apple's pro res codec, and were never forced to. If you want fcp to work in a heterogeneous editing environment then it is easy to do from a format perspective - it supports many common professional formats, as well as its own prores codec, that you do not have to use if you don't want. Even if you somehow don't pay attention and get stuck with something in that format you can use compressor to convert it into something else. Just take the generation loss as a penalty for not paying attention to what formats you were using.
No one is talking about human certification - the article and the designers specifically mention it has been designed for small payloads, communications and science duties, not for passenger flight.
Reading the article, or even the TFS where this is stated explicitly would be useful.
Which is why Apple wrote a translation app called Rosetta to enable PPC-only binaries to run on Intel Macs (while pushing for universal binaries, since using Rosetta is obviously slower). It wasn't quite full emulation like a VM - just a dynamic translator, so it had some limitations but it was pretty successful in most cases.
I have no doubt the same could be done for x86 software written for Windows.
Ok, so proprietary hardware like ATI and NVidia graphics cards, Intel CPUs, standard RAM, SATA hard drives and SSDs, standard ethernet ports and 802.11b/g/n wireless.
Proprietary standards like html5, aac, h.264, well documented xml formats, open source calendar and contacts servers, WebDAV...
The point is not to make a closed off network. The point is to create tools that do the job to their own strengths rather than just trying to force everything into a Web UI, but still using open standards and protocols and networks to do it.
The data for this app (and the BBC and Guardian apps that are already on the store and not vapourware [I have used them both], fetch their data from the same servers at the web client does. It's just a different way to access it - and better on the iPad when you do it this way. On a normal computer, it is better to access it with a web page.
Of course this is a part of the internet. Unless you want the internet to be frozen in time, because it's just perfect the way it is. Oh wait, I understand, it can only grow in directions *you* think are ok - so essentially when Android apps do this it'll be ok (oh wait, Android already has).
That's not what he said - he said that the prevalence of the web meant that the web UI was being shoehorned into everything. The Web itself is not a bad idea - it's one of the best in fact, but the idea that it should only be accessed by one UI is holding us all back.
Best tool for the job and all that. The data that this app accesses can just be a backend DB that the web interface also accesses. There's no need to have it all separate.
A 2 seater soft top sports car does less than a minivan, and costs more too, yet shockingly people still buy them... perhaps because they're looking for something the minivan doesn't offer.
It seems you are flabbergasted that people might actually like it as a product for what it does, even if it doesn't fit your personal tastes.
I personally detest gold watches, but people still buy them. This is a fact that does not flabbergast me.
Crap, someone better stop me doing my university degree!
Porn illegal too?
I'm fucked.
The Guardian app is a generalised newspaper content delivery system - it has other uses besides wikileaks information. The public perception of it isn't immediately "wikileaks". The other app though, serves no purpose other than to access wikileaks material, so the perception is somewhat different.
You can browse porn on YouTube and on PornTube - one of them is significantly more likely to be firewalled off in a controlled network than the other, despite *both* being a ready access to porn and other material some ay want to have blocked.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh I agree entirely - the recent decision to put the PSU inside the case was something of a strange one. The lack of an external brick is nice, but given that it lives behind the TV or under the desk for its entire life it wasn't really a pressing concern and it then gives you more room inside the Mini itself for better hardware or a cheaper manufacturing.
The point I was addressing there, though is that a $200 Win 7 PC can't really be anything but a big, compromised tower/mini-tower - just made from the cheapest possible parts. The OEM price for the mobile 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo in the Mini is £52 on its own (take off about 18% for VAT for US price) which doesn't leave a lot left over from your $200 budget for other components).
The desktop-version Core 2 Duo at 2.0Ghz is £32, so less, but not by much (and slower).
I have looked at the Revo as a potential HTPC and I am happy with the size - if the Mini was that size, it would be cheaper to build, no doubt.
There are four different ports over the lifetime of the device, one of which is shared across two generations.
Those are:
* DVI (not obscure by any stretch of the chalk)
* mini-DVI (slightly obscure, but cheap to convert to full size DVI with an adapter)
*mini-displayport (not obscure really - all current Macs ship with this port, as well as some laptops). This port is shared across the most recent generations of Minis, so if you bought the dongle once, you don;t need to replace it if you replace the mini (or move to any other modern Mac).
* HDMI (oh yes, so obscure my mind is melting).
You are just trying to invent problems and controversy where none exists, purely to bait "fanboys" (shouldn't that be 'fanbois').
The professor and the team have already addressed that in another video they recorded last week:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ48TwPKHiQ
A single atom of Uranium, no chance.
The amount of Polonium 110 used to kill Alexander Litvenenko was about 10 micrograms, which is significantly more than a single atom, and no airport detector is going to pick that up, especially if it's inside a container (it's an alpha emitter only).
More amusing was the "outrage" on talk radio shows here from members of the public (and the host himself) about why there weren't procedures and detectors in place to pick this sort of thing up at airports to prevent it happening. You think backscatter scanners are bad? Just wait until each person has to be searched for 10 micrograms of Polonium!
He taught me at undergraduate level - Atomic and Molecular Structure, and is very well known around the university. He's the brother of film director Stephen Poliakoff, and is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet.
He's also a huge nerd, and has an enormous collection of dog toys (he has no dog) that he uses in his lectures, and his office is full of plastic water bottles from all over the world that he collects "pretty much by accident" - a white lie about a hobby that turned into a real hobby.
This video is part of a larger series by the University of Nottingham, shot and edited by Brady Haran. Their channel is http://www.youtube.com/user/periodicvideos - but they also have a separate one for the physics department called Sixty Symbols. The videos are excellent introductions to each of the elements (there's one for every one on the table) and various molecules, reactions and current events. There's one that looks at the chemistry involved in the red mud disaster in Europe this year, for example, and one about the Iceland volcano. It's well worth checking them out, if only to give my friends and colleagues some more exposure!
[tongue firmly in cheek]
It's Linux and all open source right, just write your own....
Being the red headed step child of cross platform Windows software as an OS X user, I can only imagine how bad it is on Linux in these situations. Some of the ports to OS X have been laughably shocking (Flash, EvE Online, the first official MSN Messenger client, early Ventrillo releases).
Surprisingly, the OS X Skype client is ok (as is the Silverlight player - who'd have thought it?!).
There are other apps on the store that do video calling. If they were going to get pulled, they would have before now.
It's not specced the same as a Revo though, is it?
While it does the same job in the same footprint it is a more powerful machine. Whether it is worth the extra money for the extra power and the ability to natively boot into OS X is another matter entirely. The two machines can't really stand toe to toe though.
Was your Win 7 PC the size of a couple of CDs stacked on top of each other?
Didn't think so.
It's not expensive because of the components it has inside it - they are pretty standard laptop hardware; it's expensive because they have been shoehorned into a very tiny space, even by laptop standards.
It's expensive for sure (perhaps even too expensive - the newest model was quite a jump compared to the earlier ones), but you must be able to see that price comparisons with a whitebox Win 7 PC are just nonsensical, and bordering on wilfully ignorant trolling.
Obscure things?
They used a standard 15 pin video port on the early ones, accessed via the standard DVI port (adapter included), then switched to a mini-DVI and mini-Displayport side by side, then the current version swapped to HDMI and mini-Displayport side by side.
Hardly "obscure" by video connection standards.
What creative professional is making that mistake? I would wager that whatever tool you put them in front of, if they are that dense then it wouldn't matter. You're skirting dangerously close to inferring that people who use FCP are clueless.
FCP's export toolchain features a whole raft of presets designed for all manner of output scenarios. You can even add WMV as an option with third party codec packs (it's not included by default). If they've just never opened Compressor before then why are they even working on the project in the first place?!
If it was meant to go into a further EDL or into someone else's timeline, then FCP has included codecs (and can be expanded with others) to make it play ball with the likes of Avid and Vegas.
Cue someone with a clue to clue you in that Carl Sagan was the project codename, not an attempt for product endorsement, since the name was never intended for public release.
http://support.apple.com/downloads/Apple_ProRes_QuickTime_Decoder_1_0_for_Windows
If Vegas can use QuickTime, you can use it. Either way, you can format-convert it into something else on windows at the very least, although that is obviously suboptimal.
The codec is available for both Mac and windows on apple's site. Yes, a true example of "lock in".
They were dumb then. You have to specifically select prores - if you asked for something else they could easily provide it. FCP supports far more codecs than just that one.
PEBKAC error on their part I think.
Apple's codec is not necessarily the default - you get to choose what format you want your timeline to use, and what format you want an export to use (either self contained or reference).
Back when I was doing it professionally, we were using sony's xdcam HD format right in fcp, since we were shooting on HD xdcam gear. We also had a small group of Sony z1's that shot in HDV for little projects.
We never used apple's pro res codec, and were never forced to. If you want fcp to work in a heterogeneous editing environment then it is easy to do from a format perspective - it supports many common professional formats, as well as its own prores codec, that you do not have to use if you don't want. Even if you somehow don't pay attention and get stuck with something in that format you can use compressor to convert it into something else. Just take the generation loss as a penalty for not paying attention to what formats you were using.
No one is talking about human certification - the article and the designers specifically mention it has been designed for small payloads, communications and science duties, not for passenger flight.
Reading the article, or even the TFS where this is stated explicitly would be useful.
Which is why Apple wrote a translation app called Rosetta to enable PPC-only binaries to run on Intel Macs (while pushing for universal binaries, since using Rosetta is obviously slower). It wasn't quite full emulation like a VM - just a dynamic translator, so it had some limitations but it was pretty successful in most cases.
I have no doubt the same could be done for x86 software written for Windows.
Ok, so proprietary hardware like ATI and NVidia graphics cards, Intel CPUs, standard RAM, SATA hard drives and SSDs, standard ethernet ports and 802.11b/g/n wireless.
Proprietary standards like html5, aac, h.264, well documented xml formats, open source calendar and contacts servers, WebDAV...
The point is not to make a closed off network. The point is to create tools that do the job to their own strengths rather than just trying to force everything into a Web UI, but still using open standards and protocols and networks to do it.
The data for this app (and the BBC and Guardian apps that are already on the store and not vapourware [I have used them both], fetch their data from the same servers at the web client does. It's just a different way to access it - and better on the iPad when you do it this way. On a normal computer, it is better to access it with a web page.
Of course this is a part of the internet. Unless you want the internet to be frozen in time, because it's just perfect the way it is. Oh wait, I understand, it can only grow in directions *you* think are ok - so essentially when Android apps do this it'll be ok (oh wait, Android already has).
The point was "let's see you do that with OS X" and I have done so. I didn't pick up the cheapest one either.
That's not what he said - he said that the prevalence of the web meant that the web UI was being shoehorned into everything. The Web itself is not a bad idea - it's one of the best in fact, but the idea that it should only be accessed by one UI is holding us all back.
Best tool for the job and all that. The data that this app accesses can just be a backend DB that the web interface also accesses. There's no need to have it all separate.
I bought a second hand Mac Mini on ebay for around $250. It runs OS X.
A 2 seater soft top sports car does less than a minivan, and costs more too, yet shockingly people still buy them... perhaps because they're looking for something the minivan doesn't offer.
It seems you are flabbergasted that people might actually like it as a product for what it does, even if it doesn't fit your personal tastes.
I personally detest gold watches, but people still buy them. This is a fact that does not flabbergast me.
Instructions to make bombs are illegal?
Crap, someone better stop me doing my university degree!
Porn illegal too?
I'm fucked.
The Guardian app is a generalised newspaper content delivery system - it has other uses besides wikileaks information. The public perception of it isn't immediately "wikileaks". The other app though, serves no purpose other than to access wikileaks material, so the perception is somewhat different.
You can browse porn on YouTube and on PornTube - one of them is significantly more likely to be firewalled off in a controlled network than the other, despite *both* being a ready access to porn and other material some ay want to have blocked.
Not going to double post, but this is far from the classic EEE.
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1918138&cid=34625732