Do they understand that the ribbon adds significant real-estate to the part of the browser that does not show content? That we're already trying to read web pages through a letter slot on netbooks as it is? Do they understand that widescreen displays have extra desk space on the sides but top to bottom have less room than a comparatively priced academy ratio monitor? And it's that same diminishing vertical space that is taken up by junk like this? Whoinhell makes these decisions?
What they really need, rather than mindlessly copying what M$ is doing, is a new paradigm. One that has a minimum frame around the content and some other way to manipulate the browser. Browser controls should not compete with content, dammit. The fastest growing PC segment is portable devices, not huge pieces of glass on reinforced desks. Gaah.
The problem as I see it is that images that have not had some kind of manipulation, say, exposure and white balance, are exceedingly rare. Being government (and French...) you know there won't be a reasonable definition of "altered", which means the notice must be included on all photos, hence making the message meaningless.
I dunno; I have an expensive laptop too, but it's bulky and the battery life is crap. I'd like something that's more convenient than my Latitude but more powerful than my Blackberry. The netbook looks like a pretty good fit.
To paraphrase another old saying, the best computer is the one you have with you. If I can stick it in a coat pocket, I'm much more likely to use it than if I have to carry a backpack.
Something you might want to think about: The iPod Touch with the latest firmware can fake most of what the iphone will do, without the phone part. It still has the cool Apple form factor and interface, and from medium distance nobody will know it's not the Jesus Phone.
Then, go get a good inexpensive phone that supports tethering with a carrier that doesn't jerk you around too much.
If you don't want to be seen using a non-Jesus phone, get a bluetooth earpiece and stuff the phone in an inside pocket in your stylish Macbook backpack. Nobody has to know.
Even better, if you get bluetooth tethering working with your macbook, you can attach your iPod Touch and pretend you're tethering through an iPhone, with the real work done by the Nokia in your backpack. It's brilliant. Style and functionality at the same time!
Agreed. There's so many unmined gems in the fiction world, this compulsion to rehash the same material over and over again is madness. That said, I still want to see The Hobbit. Mostly, I think because the last version (with the single exception of Richard Boone as Smaug) kinda sucked. Actually, it sucked a lot.
> Anyway, am I the only person who actually read The Hobbit, thought it was a great book, read Lord of the Rings and thought it was good, if long-winded, and then absolutely hated the films?
Geeze, these young people, they think everything started in the 1970's. You'd have to go back to at least the fifties to find radium coated clocks. (I have one from the forties.)
Installed k-Lite last night, no difference. I associated mkv to media player, also no difference. If I double click on a mkv file, it comes up in media player, but media center says it can not play the file. Suggestions welcome.
I would expect misidentification, as the kind of person who would freak out is more likely never to have seen an AK47 before. The prop in question more resembled a Barrett.50 cal, a much cooler weapon.
You're probably right about the memory card reader. It's internal to the box and plugs directly into the motherboard, but could be USB. When I first brought up Windows 7, it was listed as an "unknown device", but after the customary Windows Update after any new install, and another reboot, it came up correctly.
The issue I was referring to with multi-core support had to do with upgrading a Sempron to an Athlon64 dual core, and not seeing any measurable improvement with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Upon advice from The Green Button, I hunted down and installed two things: The AMD Dual Core Driver and AMD Dual Core Optimizer. Two separate patches. Until I installed the driver, XP wouldn't recognize the second core, and I didn't get a noticeable improvement in response until I installed the optimizer.
Caveat: Our daughter was home-schooled through much of grade school, so I'm not saying this as a public school proponent. (Far from it.)
The descriptions of "unschooling" I've read so far seem like just another take on home schooling, where a savvy and well-educated parent can turn practically anything into a learning experience. Enh ok, fine. Call it what you want. I worry slightly that "Unschooling" will become a convenient catch word for putting your kids behind a doggy gate while you work on that next level in World of Warcraft. (See "The Guild".) Not in every case, but in enough cases that it makes the rest of us look bad by association.
> And it assumes that an outing at the park -- or even hours spent playing a video game -- can be just as valuable a teaching resource as Hooked on Phonics.'
This may be true, but I suspect it's more a reflection on "Hooked on Phonics" than the value of video games.
When I make a cup of tea in the microwave, I can put in a cup of cold water and set the timer for 3 minutes, or I can fill from the "hot" tap, put in a cup of warm water, and set the timer for 2 minutes. Using solar to preheat the water means less coal burned for unit power. Even if you weren't trying to reduce your "carbon footprint", this is still an excellent thing to do.
I was thinking about this after lunch. Remember when sound cards were really expensive and compatibility was really problematic? I remember paying $300 list for a sound card long ago only to have it obsoleted by Windows 95. (The vendor never developed native drivers for it.) Eventually sound cards became commodity items and now you get 5.1 digital on the motherboard.
Similarly, video cards used to be really spendy, over $300 for a good 2D board with a 3D addon. Then they became commodity items, and now nobody really talks about 2D/3D performance anymore, you get pretty good performance right on the motherboard, or really good performance if you want to spring for $100 or so and install a better card.
This is normal and expected. The cost of hardware comes down, due to economies of scale and better manufacturing techniques. Taking this argument to ridiculous extremes, the original AT was something like $10K, and now for $1K you can build a machine that's killer even by today's standards.
I'm wondering if there really is still a market for $300 operating systems. (Windows 7 Ultimate full version, for the sake of this argument.) Back in the old days, when PCs were on the steep end of the curve, there really were huge changes being made, and you'd expect that huge engineering costs would need to be recouped. But now? A few tweaks on the ui, a little more native driver support, and better support for DirectX 10, which (dunno about you) I will probably never need.
It seems like we're being asked to pay ever increasing prices for smaller and smaller improvements, which is counter to the usual paradigm. They have frakkin' economy of scale -- most of the known universe is running their OS. Engineering costs? Seems unlikely, unless software engineers are independently wealthy these days.
I guess I'm puzzled why we're still paying steep-curve prices when we're clearly on the flat end of the curve.
Given current trends, I can see a time when the computer will be a free prize inside the Windows box, like a crackerjack toy. And Windows will cost as much as a car.
Slashdot Mirror
Do they understand that the ribbon adds significant real-estate to the part of the browser that does not show content? That we're already trying to read web pages through a letter slot on netbooks as it is? Do they understand that widescreen displays have extra desk space on the sides but top to bottom have less room than a comparatively priced academy ratio monitor? And it's that same diminishing vertical space that is taken up by junk like this? Whoinhell makes these decisions?
What they really need, rather than mindlessly copying what M$ is doing, is a new paradigm. One that has a minimum frame around the content and some other way to manipulate the browser. Browser controls should not compete with content, dammit. The fastest growing PC segment is portable devices, not huge pieces of glass on reinforced desks. Gaah.
Yes it does.
I would have said "perverse", but that doesn't mean it won't happen.
The problem as I see it is that images that have not had some kind of manipulation, say, exposure and white balance, are exceedingly rare. Being government (and French...) you know there won't be a reasonable definition of "altered", which means the notice must be included on all photos, hence making the message meaningless.
Your (or someone's) tax dollars at work.
I dunno; I have an expensive laptop too, but it's bulky and the battery life is crap. I'd like something that's more convenient than my Latitude but more powerful than my Blackberry. The netbook looks like a pretty good fit.
To paraphrase another old saying, the best computer is the one you have with you. If I can stick it in a coat pocket, I'm much more likely to use it than if I have to carry a backpack.
Something you might want to think about: The iPod Touch with the latest firmware can fake most of what the iphone will do, without the phone part. It still has the cool Apple form factor and interface, and from medium distance nobody will know it's not the Jesus Phone.
Then, go get a good inexpensive phone that supports tethering with a carrier that doesn't jerk you around too much.
If you don't want to be seen using a non-Jesus phone, get a bluetooth earpiece and stuff the phone in an inside pocket in your stylish Macbook backpack. Nobody has to know.
Even better, if you get bluetooth tethering working with your macbook, you can attach your iPod Touch and pretend you're tethering through an iPhone, with the real work done by the Nokia in your backpack. It's brilliant. Style and functionality at the same time!
You have to imagine him with a giant squid head.
Oh, hell yes.
Agreed. There's so many unmined gems in the fiction world, this compulsion to rehash the same material over and over again is madness. That said, I still want to see The Hobbit. Mostly, I think because the last version (with the single exception of Richard Boone as Smaug) kinda sucked. Actually, it sucked a lot.
> Anyway, am I the only person who actually read The Hobbit, thought it was a great book, read Lord of the Rings and thought it was good, if long-winded, and then absolutely hated the films?
Yes.
Geeze, these young people, they think everything started in the 1970's. You'd have to go back to at least the fifties to find radium coated clocks. (I have one from the forties.)
Installed k-Lite last night, no difference. I associated mkv to media player, also no difference. If I double click on a mkv file, it comes up in media player, but media center says it can not play the file. Suggestions welcome.
Canadians will be going over the border to buy ipods. Makes sense.
I would expect misidentification, as the kind of person who would freak out is more likely never to have seen an AK47 before. The prop in question more resembled a Barrett .50 cal, a much cooler weapon.
It's worth a try, thanks. But post a dxdiag in this forum? I would expect pitchforks.
Ohferchrissake. It was an illustration, not a recommendation. Geeze.
Wow. Thanks. I thought at first that it was too obvious a point to post, (mod redundant) but I guess not.
I skipped Vista also. And if you ignore the gooey, it's still just increased hardware compatibility.
You're probably right about the memory card reader. It's internal to the box and plugs directly into the motherboard, but could be USB. When I first brought up Windows 7, it was listed as an "unknown device", but after the customary Windows Update after any new install, and another reboot, it came up correctly.
The issue I was referring to with multi-core support had to do with upgrading a Sempron to an Athlon64 dual core, and not seeing any measurable improvement with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Upon advice from The Green Button, I hunted down and installed two things: The AMD Dual Core Driver and AMD Dual Core Optimizer. Two separate patches. Until I installed the driver, XP wouldn't recognize the second core, and I didn't get a noticeable improvement in response until I installed the optimizer.
Caveat: Our daughter was home-schooled through much of grade school, so I'm not saying this as a public school proponent. (Far from it.)
The descriptions of "unschooling" I've read so far seem like just another take on home schooling, where a savvy and well-educated parent can turn practically anything into a learning experience. Enh ok, fine. Call it what you want. I worry slightly that "Unschooling" will become a convenient catch word for putting your kids behind a doggy gate while you work on that next level in World of Warcraft. (See "The Guild".) Not in every case, but in enough cases that it makes the rest of us look bad by association.
> And it assumes that an outing at the park -- or even hours spent playing a video game -- can be just as valuable a teaching resource as Hooked on Phonics.'
This may be true, but I suspect it's more a reflection on "Hooked on Phonics" than the value of video games.
> Any Slashdotters who have experience with 'unschooling?'
Not deliberately.
Don't wear your expensive suit.
When I make a cup of tea in the microwave, I can put in a cup of cold water and set the timer for 3 minutes, or I can fill from the "hot" tap, put in a cup of warm water, and set the timer for 2 minutes. Using solar to preheat the water means less coal burned for unit power. Even if you weren't trying to reduce your "carbon footprint", this is still an excellent thing to do.
I was thinking about this after lunch. Remember when sound cards were really expensive and compatibility was really problematic? I remember paying $300 list for a sound card long ago only to have it obsoleted by Windows 95. (The vendor never developed native drivers for it.) Eventually sound cards became commodity items and now you get 5.1 digital on the motherboard.
Similarly, video cards used to be really spendy, over $300 for a good 2D board with a 3D addon. Then they became commodity items, and now nobody really talks about 2D/3D performance anymore, you get pretty good performance right on the motherboard, or really good performance if you want to spring for $100 or so and install a better card.
This is normal and expected. The cost of hardware comes down, due to economies of scale and better manufacturing techniques. Taking this argument to ridiculous extremes, the original AT was something like $10K, and now for $1K you can build a machine that's killer even by today's standards.
I'm wondering if there really is still a market for $300 operating systems. (Windows 7 Ultimate full version, for the sake of this argument.) Back in the old days, when PCs were on the steep end of the curve, there really were huge changes being made, and you'd expect that huge engineering costs would need to be recouped. But now? A few tweaks on the ui, a little more native driver support, and better support for DirectX 10, which (dunno about you) I will probably never need.
It seems like we're being asked to pay ever increasing prices for smaller and smaller improvements, which is counter to the usual paradigm. They have frakkin' economy of scale -- most of the known universe is running their OS. Engineering costs? Seems unlikely, unless software engineers are independently wealthy these days.
I guess I'm puzzled why we're still paying steep-curve prices when we're clearly on the flat end of the curve.
Given current trends, I can see a time when the computer will be a free prize inside the Windows box, like a crackerjack toy. And Windows will cost as much as a car.