A year ago 40GB drives weren't considered small
and 40GB for a DNS server?! You don't need anywhere near that amount of disk space. A DNS server could get by with just a Compact Flash card!.
Not to mention that 40GB of music(thousands of tracks) or data isn't exactly shabby, and if it isn't enough for you, it's certainly easy enough these days to add the drive to a RAID.
And who needs "disk utility software?" Just do
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdc
for the appropriate drive then add a DOS parition table using fdisk.
I don't care for iTunes for a player, but it's a DAMNED nice ripper/encoder for my albums. It's simultaneous rip/encode process means I can take a CD from insert to rip to encode to eject in 4 minutes (if I'm lucky and I score a 15X encode/rip time).. With it's auto-encode-on-insert and auto-eject-when-done modes, it makes it a real factory process.
iTunes IS a nice app, though the simultaneous rip/encode process is something I've done with grip for years. It may not be as fancy-shmancy as iTunes but it always gets the job done, plus lets me pick from a list of encoders.
No, actually. I'm simply saying an oral tradition has greater potential for embellishment of the original source, because stories can become essentially re-authored along the way. There are many good teachings in the Bible. I just personally do not believe that it contains credible *evidence* of how life on Earth came to be. It's just one explanation.
Evolutionists and creationists have the same data, we just have different explanations of the cause of that data.
But unlike the creationist view, evolution is based on research and analysis. Creationism is based on a nifty book written by people long ago who didn't even write it down for several generations. For example, a classic game of "telephone" probably led to the Bible's editions of the past several hundred years or so. And before 1611 it was mostly in Latin and Greek.
Somehow I feel I can trust evolution a bit more as a viable theory for how life came to be.
True - however it's not the apps themselves that are loathed so much, it's the licensing and the environment under which those originals (Word, Visio, etc) need to be run (though Mac OS is another option for all of those).
I would be less critical of M$ if they only wrote applications and did not write operating systems. For example, Photoshop dominates the image-editing market, but it doesn't make nearly as many people mad at Adobe (yes, now there is also the GIMP for *nix).
Nonetheless,.NET-related tools running on other OSes is interesting. Unfortunately, though, this doesn't mean a whole lot to portability of M$ applications - they will likely have win32 hooks in them.
This is good and bad. I'd say that many of the things I would want to watch might not be available.
This is a glorified pay-per-view, it would seem, with some added convienience.
Even if (as suggested by the article) it is based on a subscription model/flat rate model, what kind of money is worth paying for this? $20/mo? $50/mo? Anything more than that will put it out of reach.
It must be cost effective enough to make use of a movie-rental and/or DVR uninteresting. I think part of the question is basically how much I'm willing to pay given the amount of TV I watch.
freak families? Not everyone celebrates Christmas, remember. Plenty of non-Christian folk use Christmas-time as vacation - my best friend (who is Jewish) goes skiing over Christmas every year.
It's not just a cost savings but a space and (like you mentioned) power savings. It can significantly reduce complexity in the processor, and most embedded applications for PDAs. They don't need hard float for performance, action/FPS games are not a selling point for these products. Most PocketPC PDAs being made today are ARM based(some are MIPS)
I'm an embedded developer, I don't believe I've ever developed for an ARM device WITH an FPU, in fact.
Floating point alone won't necessarily expand the life of a PDA. For most people it's actually the physical construction of the PDA that determines it's life (if they actually intend to use it for it's scheduling/notetaking etc. purposes). PDAs are never designed around real gaming after all.
If you want portable gaming try Gameboy Advance. It happens to be based on an ARM processor, coincidentally, but I don't know if it has an FPU.
By contrast, I see speeds of about 5Mbit off of cable in NJ using Comcast(@Home). I managed to download large files at 400k/s (average) just yesterday - in other words, there are no limits, they seem only to crop up at certain hours due to congestion.
Comcast's network switches on Dec. 27th to "Comcast" cable internet from @Home, it will be interesting to see how transfer rates change. They sent a "kit" in the mail to prepare for the network change, but I don't know what good it will do me since there's a linux firewall here at my folks' place.
Yes, and I clearly stated that they may follow with more CDs, as the article states, but I believe that this first CD may be a litmus test - in other words, that they may realize there is no benefit from doing this eventually. Excuse my lack of clarity
The title of the article in itself is about "copy-protecting" A CD, so the/. headline is inaccurate.
More may follow from Universal eventually. . .
However, I think this will all quickly blow up in the face of record companies when they see that it doesn't help the sale of CDs at all. I mean, why else would they think to do it but to try and sell more CDs and lose less "market share" to music downloaders?
Perhaps I give record execs too much credit, but I think they've just reached desperation. This CD, after all, is just a litmus test for them, really, and if the reaction is negative they will scrap this whole idea, or eventually try to move music to a different format than CDs. (something that would be very very hard to do successfully)
It would seem to me this whole concept is a bit of a kludgy way to handle home networking.
You would still need a proper NIC for each machine on this network, so what does it really buy you? 100Mbit Hubs (and even switches now) don't cost much more than powerstrips (in fact hubs are downright cheap) and are not very complex. . . not to mention some CAT5 and a small hub is easier to pack than a bunch of power cables and a fat powerstrip for those LAN parties.
This technology is NOT a step forwards, it just supposedly makes things easier - but I would argue that the hardware portion of setting up a home network (i.e. Plugging CAT5 cables into a hub or switch from each computer)is much easier for newbies than the software/OS/IP networking setup.
Interesting use of game alterations, though it's just that. What you're doing their really doesn't constitute cheating in any manner, it's really just a form of "mod" at that point.
Cheats specifically make the game easier to play/finish, and unfortunately, in the online gaming world, can take the fun out of gaming completely
Is this next? Why do submissions like new versions of devel-kernels make it into Slashdot at all? It's not as if most users will download this and deploy it on ANY system.
I also don't see announcements of FreeBSD beta, only RELEASES.
And it should stay that way.
Some of my favorite stations have been college radio stations.
My personal example is WSOU, Seton Hall University's station in NJ. There's no way I can hear them w/o webcasting anymore because I've moved across the country.
Poor record companies - no one sympathizes with their "dilemma". The Internet has revolutionized music and it's about time they realized that the more they make access to music difficult, the less people want to buy their music, and the more people will find other ways to get it.
Some of the more interesting music I've heard has been on college radio. Treat an academic institution's radio station like an enterprise is beyond disgusting. The best part of college stations is that their playlists are often less strict, and much of what gets played wouldn't fit into the "mainstream", or even a format, for that matter. It's way better than having a radio station pump their "Heavy rotation" down my throat.
It's all a nice idea but there still remain so many barriers to colonization. I would say next 100 to 200 years is actually a low estimate. Creating an environment on another planet to mimic Earth-like conditions is quite a task. It's not just the ability to survive, but having a chance to actually have a life:-). Until we have Star Trek-like "replicators" and ways to produce food there. I mean, space shuttles are great and all, but travel is just the start of it.
Plus, I mean, social life on Mars is gonna be tough.
It's all fine and dandy from a scientific study perspective, but from a *human life* perspective it really sucks, because Mars wasn't meant for us, we would have to adapt it to our Earthly lifestyle. If Mars WAS meant for us, it would have evolved much differently.
I respect and understand the concern, though I suppose I don't have as dark a vision about our own government.
My dark visions come from more obvious physical threats that have affected many people in the last 3 months, and the potential for several years of increased violence worldwide.
A virus like this will be easily detected eventually - there are too many clever people and too many variables to make it as successful as it would idealistically be.
I don't for a moment think Magic Lantern is a brilliant idea, but at the same time I don't think it warrants rampant paranoia.
People fear things like this, yet they really don't have reason to unless they've been doing something worth investigating which is most likely some illegal activity. The FBI doesn't care to read your email or get access to your pr0n, their goal is to deal with threats to security and other illegal activity.
The average citizen or even seasoned geek doesn't have much to worry about.
I better hide my burned Linux CD's. They might think it's some weird hacking tool."
For one, that snyde remark is off the deep end. Meant in fun, but too obviously you have a right to use the OS - however,
Warez folks have gotten away with stealing software for a very long time, and stealing commericial software isn't a right or privilage, so I'm would hope to expect less negative response to this, like it's some civil liberty being taken away. I think the goal is to make people think twice about copying commercial software and then *distributing* it on the net. There will always be pirates, but the hope is to educate those that might take illegal commericial software re-distribution less seriously
Personally I use mostly free software on Linux and BSD, but the few commericial apps I actually find a need for (VMware, Music tools for Windows, Mac) I don't mind paying for. On a last note, I believe the argument that the price of software (such as Photoshop, etc) would go down if there was less privacy doesn't really hold water - it would just potentially make software companies richer.
Yes, but the PJ spec is crappy for embedded.This doesn't mean it won't continue to be used, sadly.
The company I work for makes embedded Java VMs, and we have better solutions than the AWT that the Personal Java spec uses.
It's too thick a layer for embedded, we've made much better performance using other GUI frameworks.
Well, there will certainly be apps, given the established community of Java programmers and the rising community of Qt programmers. But Java 1.1.8? Java 2 has been out for nearly 2 years, and Sun plans to end-of-life the 1.1 stream next year. I suspect that Sharp considers Java to be a stopgap technology, to be used only until the Qt software base reaches critical mass
Unfortunately, part of the reason that Java 1.1.8 is the highest supported version is b/c of the legal battle between M$ and Sun over M$ about violating their license. The M$ VM for IE is stuck at this versionr - so developers remain stuck on Java 1.1.8 for applets, b/c they are more or less "guaranteed to work" if they are written with this spec. This is a sad reality.
Even so, Is there really existing Java software that would be suitable on this device? I have two of these units in my office, and they did not ship with any Java apps, only a dumb gfx demo and an animated applet from the web.
But QNX has one HUGE advantage - their OS fits in on the much smaller devices. Even if used on larger devices, there's more room left over for apps - not to mention QNX's micro-kernel architecture.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention that 40GB of music(thousands of tracks) or data isn't exactly shabby, and if it isn't enough for you, it's certainly easy enough these days to add the drive to a RAID. And who needs "disk utility software?" Just do for the appropriate drive then add a DOS parition table using fdisk.
iTunes IS a nice app, though the simultaneous rip/encode process is something I've done with grip for years. It may not be as fancy-shmancy as iTunes but it always gets the job done, plus lets me pick from a list of encoders.
No, actually. I'm simply saying an oral tradition has greater potential for embellishment of the original source, because stories can become essentially re-authored along the way. There are many good teachings in the Bible. I just personally do not believe that it contains credible *evidence* of how life on Earth came to be. It's just one explanation.
But unlike the creationist view, evolution is based on research and analysis. Creationism is based on a nifty book written by people long ago who didn't even write it down for several generations. For example, a classic game of "telephone" probably led to the Bible's editions of the past several hundred years or so. And before 1611 it was mostly in Latin and Greek.
Somehow I feel I can trust evolution a bit more as a viable theory for how life came to be.
True - however it's not the apps themselves that are loathed so much, it's the licensing and the environment under which those originals (Word, Visio, etc) need to be run (though Mac OS is another option for all of those).
.NET-related tools running on other OSes is interesting. Unfortunately, though, this doesn't mean a whole lot to portability of M$ applications - they will likely have win32 hooks in them.
I would be less critical of M$ if they only wrote applications and did not write operating systems. For example, Photoshop dominates the image-editing market, but it doesn't make nearly as many people mad at Adobe (yes, now there is also the GIMP for *nix).
Nonetheless,
This is good and bad. I'd say that many of the things I would want to watch might not be available. This is a glorified pay-per-view, it would seem, with some added convienience.
Even if (as suggested by the article) it is based on a subscription model/flat rate model, what kind of money is worth paying for this? $20/mo? $50/mo? Anything more than that will put it out of reach. It must be cost effective enough to make use of a movie-rental and/or DVR uninteresting. I think part of the question is basically how much I'm willing to pay given the amount of TV I watch.
freak families? Not everyone celebrates Christmas, remember. Plenty of non-Christian folk use Christmas-time as vacation - my best friend (who is Jewish) goes skiing over Christmas every year.
It's not just a cost savings but a space and (like you mentioned) power savings. It can significantly reduce complexity in the processor, and most embedded applications for PDAs. They don't need hard float for performance, action/FPS games are not a selling point for these products. Most PocketPC PDAs being made today are ARM based(some are MIPS) I'm an embedded developer, I don't believe I've ever developed for an ARM device WITH an FPU, in fact.
Floating point alone won't necessarily expand the life of a PDA. For most people it's actually the physical construction of the PDA that determines it's life (if they actually intend to use it for it's scheduling/notetaking etc. purposes). PDAs are never designed around real gaming after all.
If you want portable gaming try Gameboy Advance. It happens to be based on an ARM processor, coincidentally, but I don't know if it has an FPU.
By contrast, I see speeds of about 5Mbit off of cable in NJ using Comcast(@Home). I managed to download large files at 400k/s (average) just yesterday - in other words, there are no limits, they seem only to crop up at certain hours due to congestion.
Comcast's network switches on Dec. 27th to "Comcast" cable internet from @Home, it will be interesting to see how transfer rates change. They sent a "kit" in the mail to prepare for the network change, but I don't know what good it will do me since there's a linux firewall here at my folks' place.
Yes, and I clearly stated that they may follow with more CDs, as the article states, but I believe that this first CD may be a litmus test - in other words, that they may realize there is no benefit from doing this eventually. Excuse my lack of clarity
There is also a response from LynuxWorks
The title of the article in itself is about "copy-protecting" A CD, so the /. headline is inaccurate.
More may follow from Universal eventually. . .
However, I think this will all quickly blow up in the face of record companies when they see that it doesn't help the sale of CDs at all. I mean, why else would they think to do it but to try and sell more CDs and lose less "market share" to music downloaders?
Perhaps I give record execs too much credit, but I think they've just reached desperation. This CD, after all, is just a litmus test for them, really, and if the reaction is negative they will scrap this whole idea, or eventually try to move music to a different format than CDs. (something that would be very very hard to do successfully)
It would seem to me this whole concept is a bit of a kludgy way to handle home networking. You would still need a proper NIC for each machine on this network, so what does it really buy you? 100Mbit Hubs (and even switches now) don't cost much more than powerstrips (in fact hubs are downright cheap) and are not very complex. . . not to mention some CAT5 and a small hub is easier to pack than a bunch of power cables and a fat powerstrip for those LAN parties.
This technology is NOT a step forwards, it just supposedly makes things easier - but I would argue that the hardware portion of setting up a home network (i.e. Plugging CAT5 cables into a hub or switch from each computer)is much easier for newbies than the software/OS/IP networking setup.
Interesting use of game alterations, though it's just that. What you're doing their really doesn't constitute cheating in any manner, it's really just a form of "mod" at that point.
Cheats specifically make the game easier to play/finish, and unfortunately, in the online gaming world, can take the fun out of gaming completely
Is this next? Why do submissions like new versions of devel-kernels make it into Slashdot at all? It's not as if most users will download this and deploy it on ANY system.
I also don't see announcements of FreeBSD beta, only RELEASES. And it should stay that way.
Maybe it's about time for some fancy inter-stellar windshield wipers. I suppose it's hard to refill wiper-fluid in space though ;-)
Some of my favorite stations have been college radio stations. My personal example is WSOU, Seton Hall University's station in NJ. There's no way I can hear them w/o webcasting anymore because I've moved across the country.
Poor record companies - no one sympathizes with their "dilemma". The Internet has revolutionized music and it's about time they realized that the more they make access to music difficult, the less people want to buy their music, and the more people will find other ways to get it.
Some of the more interesting music I've heard has been on college radio. Treat an academic institution's radio station like an enterprise is beyond disgusting. The best part of college stations is that their playlists are often less strict, and much of what gets played wouldn't fit into the "mainstream", or even a format, for that matter. It's way better than having a radio station pump their "Heavy rotation" down my throat.
It's all a nice idea but there still remain so many barriers to colonization. I would say next 100 to 200 years is actually a low estimate. Creating an environment on another planet to mimic Earth-like conditions is quite a task. It's not just the ability to survive, but having a chance to actually have a life :-). Until we have Star Trek-like "replicators" and ways to produce food there. I mean, space shuttles are great and all, but travel is just the start of it.
Plus, I mean, social life on Mars is gonna be tough. It's all fine and dandy from a scientific study perspective, but from a *human life* perspective it really sucks, because Mars wasn't meant for us, we would have to adapt it to our Earthly lifestyle. If Mars WAS meant for us, it would have evolved much differently.
I respect and understand the concern, though I suppose I don't have as dark a vision about our own government. My dark visions come from more obvious physical threats that have affected many people in the last 3 months, and the potential for several years of increased violence worldwide. A virus like this will be easily detected eventually - there are too many clever people and too many variables to make it as successful as it would idealistically be.
I don't for a moment think Magic Lantern is a brilliant idea, but at the same time I don't think it warrants rampant paranoia.
People fear things like this, yet they really don't have reason to unless they've been doing something worth investigating which is most likely some illegal activity. The FBI doesn't care to read your email or get access to your pr0n, their goal is to deal with threats to security and other illegal activity. The average citizen or even seasoned geek doesn't have much to worry about.
For one, that snyde remark is off the deep end. Meant in fun, but too obviously you have a right to use the OS - however, Warez folks have gotten away with stealing software for a very long time, and stealing commericial software isn't a right or privilage, so I'm would hope to expect less negative response to this, like it's some civil liberty being taken away. I think the goal is to make people think twice about copying commercial software and then *distributing* it on the net. There will always be pirates, but the hope is to educate those that might take illegal commericial software re-distribution less seriously
Personally I use mostly free software on Linux and BSD, but the few commericial apps I actually find a need for (VMware, Music tools for Windows, Mac) I don't mind paying for. On a last note, I believe the argument that the price of software (such as Photoshop, etc) would go down if there was less privacy doesn't really hold water - it would just potentially make software companies richer.
Yes, but the PJ spec is crappy for embedded.This doesn't mean it won't continue to be used, sadly. The company I work for makes embedded Java VMs, and we have better solutions than the AWT that the Personal Java spec uses. It's too thick a layer for embedded, we've made much better performance using other GUI frameworks.
Applets are the least exciting thing about Java.
Unfortunately, part of the reason that Java 1.1.8 is the highest supported version is b/c of the legal battle between M$ and Sun over M$ about violating their license. The M$ VM for IE is stuck at this versionr - so developers remain stuck on Java 1.1.8 for applets, b/c they are more or less "guaranteed to work" if they are written with this spec. This is a sad reality. Even so, Is there really existing Java software that would be suitable on this device? I have two of these units in my office, and they did not ship with any Java apps, only a dumb gfx demo and an animated applet from the web.
But QNX has one HUGE advantage - their OS fits in on the much smaller devices. Even if used on larger devices, there's more room left over for apps - not to mention QNX's micro-kernel architecture.
The Photon GUI is quite small and very pretty.
You can even run a Java environment on QNX using less storage space than Embedded NT/XP/etc, using an embedded VM such as IBM's VisualAge MicroEdition with (the J9 VM)
You should be using ProFTPD anyway.