Does CNET really think that in private meetings with IBM, this technology wasn't discussed months if not over a year ago, with Apple? I love how the press thinks that when THEY find out about it, the rest of the world is first hearing about it too...
"Stupid Apple", they chant. Except:
IBM has said they can do it, but not for over a year. Intel is here, now, shipping.
IBM has historically had problems meeting supply. Intel doesn't.
IBM has made it clear they don't care about Apple- they were running around telling everyone how Apple represented a single-digit percentage of their output of PPC's. Not a good sign when your supplier is dismissing how 'trivial' you are.
Maybe these Power chips will end up in Xserves or something...seems fairly unlikely though.
I still haven't seen AOL clarify whether this applies to mailing lists or not; the PR statements and writeups seem to indicate it's any sort of bulk mailing.
Do emails get completely blocked, "possibly" tagged as spam, or are links+images stripped out?
I've seen people claim all three using wild suppositions, so please have some solid evidence to back up your claim...
But wouldn't it be effective if people could flag the types of posts that these measures are trying to curb?
People either don't know what flags do, don't care, or not enough of them see it. I've seen blatant scams in all manner of sections that don't get removed for quite some time.
On the same hand, I've posted stuff warning people about other posts which were blatant ripoffs or scams, and been flagged.
The one major item I bought from CL was a used iBook that turned out to have a defective logic board; the previous owner had dumped it cheap because she knew it crashed regularly, and even though I spent 30 minutes with the machine before I bought it, I didn't come across the problem. She wouldn't return phonecalls or emails from me the next day.
Every single person I've talked to about selling stuff says that they'll get 10 replies to an ad, and not a single person will actually show up. I've seen CL people price stuff ABOVE ebay prices (auctions are not market value, folks!) and found NO END of people trying to take advantage of each other.
Example? Canon 20D's had a rebate for over $100. In one week there were 6-12 listings for them, all at or slightly below the best online prices. Initially they'd mention the UPC codes were removed, but wised up.
Want another example? 750 xbox-360 postings on average right after they came out...with people asking prices anywhere from $750 to $2k. I repeatedly emailed abuse@craigslist.org asking them to just delete ANY ad with "xbox 360" in them, and never even got a reply.
For Craig and other CL people to rant about community this and that, but refuse to shut down those clearly abusing "the community"...is rather hypocritical.
"The big question at this point is how well third-party applications will run on the new machines, particularly pro-level applications. I had a chance to spend some time on one of the new 2.0 GHz versions of the Intel-based iMac in Apple's booth on the show floor this morning. While it was far from fully loaded with third-party software, it did have Adobe Photoshop CS2 running on it. Several quick tests showed that the software, running in emulation via Apple's Rosetta technology, performed adequately in processor-intensive tasks. For example, resizing a 4,000 x 4,000-pixel image to 16,000 x 16,000 took fewer than 10 seconds to complete, and resizing back down to 4,000 x 4,000 took fewer than five seconds. Various filters performed pretty much the way they perform on dual G5 CPUs. On a 4,000 x 4,000 image, Filter Gallery filters operated without any lag, as did various blur and render filters (Lighting Effects , Fibers and the like).
We will, of course, perform much more extensive tests when we have the new hardware in our own hands. But the limited Photoshop tests showed that, at least for 2D graphics, the Intel-based iMacs seem to be a match for pro-level PowerPC hardware, even when the test software is running in emulation mode."
Can it read signs? Judge weather conditions and drive appropriately? Respond appropriately if the vehicle gets out of control (say, crosses a patch of ice?), or if something unexpected happens?
Well, neither can most of the people on the road today.
Here's a shocker: let's give people a better education in how to drive, than spend billions on cars that "drive themselves".
Amazingly, it pays off in the long run, because parents have to teach their children how to drive (in many cases). The overall work needed to "educate" society in how to drive, drops over time. Eventually, we become less of a danger to ourselves on the roads, so that having 9 airbags instead of 2 doesn't become quite an issue.
Of course, it'd also be nice if highschools spent a few days in physics class on how physics affects cars (ie, basic vehicle dynamics.) Then again, that'd acknowledge a need to teach students real-world, useful information in school, instead of theoretical skills. When was the last time you saw "how to figure out if you're getting ripped a new one on your home mortgage" on a math teacher's curriculum?
Mr. Cohen said in an interview on Monday that he and Ms. Glick-Weil demanded the warrant because the FBI agents did not indicate that anyone at Brandeis faced a "clear and present danger." If there had been such a danger, Mr. Cohen added, agents probably would have seized the computers without even asking for them.
"Clear and present danger" was specifically NOT, as of 1969, a legitimate reason for punishing someone for speech. It certainly is not a legitimate reason for illegal search and seizure (ie, bypassing the court system.)
I hate it when people romanticize unconstitutional action; happens in the movies all the time. "You can't do that!" "Oh? Are you going to make me get a warrant to search this place? Little Timmy could be dead by then!"
Nice to see someone finally starting some backlash for the tapping, even if it's not against the government.
Do you seriously think the EFF doesn't have bigger fish to fry?
This is like the equivalent of going after Al Capone for tax evasion. Tax evasion gets you into his books. His books get you into his racketeering. His racketeering gets you into murders. Etc.
Going after AT&T for illegal wiretaps gets records of said wiretaps coming from the NSA, FBI, and (one hopes not, but who knows) the CIA. That gets you in the door to challenges against those agencies.
"The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article"
Let me finish that sentence for you, Mr. Rahnema:
"...and using it to send viewers to Association member's webpages, bringing us new readers, and generating ad revenue we ordinarily wouldn't have. Sadly, it means we all have to compete against each other, whereas before, we enjoyed regional favoritism. We're absolutely terrified that someone in Boston might find better coverage of a story on the BBC's website, or Washington Post. Or that they can find as much as they want about Elephants, instead of having to read an entire paper, or poke around our site. And they won't pay for the privledge of searching our archives. Especially since much of the time, all we do is parrot an AP/Reuters wire story, word for word....we're terribly concerned about all this."
Hey, if they don't like it- they can always redirect any hit with a referral from news.google.com to "Sorry, we don't support google news." There's also nothing stopping them from blocking all the googlebot crawlers- either by IP range, or browser ID.
Except that then they'd loose a lot of viewers, and become a black hole to the world's most popular search engine. So instead, they run to the legislature...
Hey editors...if you're going to insist on a news story every time someone from Google gets up and makes a peanut butter sandwich, can you at least give us a Digest version?
You know...instead of 3 (or more- it's only lunchtime so far) stories a day about Google, ONE Googleback?
If you think I'm joking, you're right. What I really want is a section for just Google, so that I can click the "NOT ON MY HOMEPAGE" checkbox.
While you're at it, I'd also like a "web logs" section, so that I can block crap like "Boing-Boing gets a scary letter from a 15 year old kid who 'called the FBI on them for harassment on the intar-web'".
How many times do we have to hear, "Google is seeding clouds! Is this the end of Microsoft due to a massive hurricane Google is developing in the Pacific?"
I agree...the rabid Google-fanboyism is really getting on my nerves, especially since I don't see much in anything Google does, to be impressed by. Google maps, for example, wowed me with the drag-around map, but I can't save addresses. The magic is very much gone from Google Mail. They can't even get the branded search to work right (broke a month or so ago, still hasn't been fixed, returns a fraction of the total results.) They're falling very heavily into the same hole Apple did years ago, getting their fingers into every little cookie jar. Anyway, getting off on a tangent, sorry...
How would creating a Linux distribution even come *close* to being a Windows killer? And, more importantly, how would that make them any money?
Well, it wouldn't be a Windows "killer" for the public, it'd be a Windows "killer" for them internally. If they can lower licensing costs and have easier to maintain, more secure desktops...that sounds like a pretty big win to me. Training issues are largely moot- many of the kinds of employees that would appeal to Google already know Linux, and they don't exactly have a shortage of resumes coming in the door.
Here's hoping they don't fork it...contributing everything back to Ubuntu/Debian, and just changing logos et al on their internal version.
while i realise that postings to a dev list shouldn't be taken as gospel, why would a dev list posting of benchmarks be assumed to be doctored?
Nobody said they were doctored; the slashdot editor said "take it with a grain of salt". I see a lot of reasons to do so:
there is no sample size (ie, was each benchmark on each platform run 10 times, or just once?) or variance (if it WAS run 10 times- how much did the results vary?)
The benchmarks all have wildly different results. Either the benchmarks are that way normally, or WINE (or Linux) is inconsistent. The data is presented such that, again, we have no clue as to the consistency of the results.
In a number of the benchmark categories for PC Mark 2004, Linux is less than 1% faster. Usually that kind of difference is thrown in the "statistical anomaly" bucket, but the developer happily gave it the "green" mark, when it should have received a "grey" (ie, "not clear"). If the sub-1% wins had been thrown out, Windows would have won by at least an equal margin.
Equal weight was given to the insignificant "wins", as was the massive failures.
The developer breaks down the number of Wine failures into 4 categories, but groups Wine successes into one. As a result, it appears Wine is the overall winner, when in fact Wine was slower in 63 cases, and faster in 67.
Honestly? The results probably aren't manipulated, but the presentation is very clearly set up with a number of tricks (perhaps without him/her realizing it) to give the impression that Wine "kicked some serious ass", when for the most part, it did horribly.
The problem is we all have a different idea of "better". I don't like Azureus at all- I find its user interface clunky and pathetically slow, because it's java, and it has a TON of "one person finds this useful" functionality; they missed the boat, and should have made a very thin client with plugins, but instead made a bloated client with plugins. A torrent with over 1000 peers will often peg the machine- and it's a 1.4Ghz G4 Mini- not breaking any speed records, but not a slouch.
Sadly, it's the only decent mac client. The official client isn't very good at managing multiple downloads and rehashes torrents every time you start/stop them or quit+reopen the program; same for Tomato Torrent, which also violates virtually every Apple Human Interface Guideline in the book. Both are just GUI wrappers around the python clients, which means they have great compatibility, but not so great "modern" conveniences like the ability to "pause" and such. Tomato Torrent can't even adjust upload/download bandwidth. If uTorrent had a mac counterpart, I'd switch in a second.
By the way: with virtually all bittorrent clients, you'll see much better transfer speeds if you make sure your slots get an average of about 5-6kb/sec each, more with bigger chunk sizes. On a torrent with 1-2MB chunks (ugh, please do NOT make these!) I have to set 2-3 slots max.
It's not often that on a new product rollout something is said that directly translates into "Hey, don't go out and buy this right now."
Sure it is. Apple doesn't want "pros" to go out and buy 20" iMacs, hook up a second 20" display for dual-head (YES, it does this) and be happy campers, since the iMac runs photoshop et. al. at the same approximate speed as dual G5 powermacs...not to mention, enjoy the self-service program for iMacs so they can get back to work faster. Then they wouldn't run out and place orders on "Mac Pros" or whatever Apple calls the G5 replacement, and sales of the current G5 dualies would be hurt more than they already are. Who wants a 2Ghz Dual G5 for $2k, when you can have the same speed AND a 20" display, for $1700? $300 comes within $50-100 of buying you an on-sale Dell 20" second display, or extra ram, or a big fat fast firewire drive, or or...
Hence the "not really useable yet for pros" comments from Steve. When universal binaries come out(prediction: Apple has told Adobe + others not to do so until the "pro" intel macs come out), intel-iMac pro users will be laughing, while other "pros" are waiting 2-3 months for their ordered machines to show up. The G5 replacement will be faster than a current iMac, but it'll also be noisier, 2x-3x the price, and with no huge display built-in...
With enough confederate nodes, tor can certainly be tracked. It isn't likely to happen, but it is possible.
Just by running a tor node, you get the oppertunity to collect login+password information for any non-ssl site tor users log into. You also get to see cookie information to boot. Hey, at some point, the traffic has to exit the tor obfuscation network, and if you run a node, you're going to get a bunch of that traffic. It's only a matter of time.
That's why I refuse to use "anonymizer" networks like tor. You can't even login to your damn webmail, without giving away your account information.
Anyone else amused that they quoted the text saying not to "distribute or reproduce" any portion of the text? Hehe... Too late!
I'm too busy trying to figure out who managed to get a MacBook Pro before the "we claim Feburary" ship date. A developer? A Soon To Be Unemployed Apple Employee?
And YES, I saw that it came from "a source", but how did "the source" get a MacBook Pro?
I also found these credit cards with build in LCD displays. It sounds like the perfect solution for credit card fraud, with the card generating a One Time Password for each transaction.
Or clerks could stick to credit card processing policies. I walked into an Apple store today and asked an employee if it was OK to use a client's card, with a letter of authorization (in hand, signed by him, matching the sig on the back of the card.) The employee managed to finally get the attention of the manager, and the manager, who could barely be bothered, grunted "no". "Even with a signed authorization letter naming me, listing contact info that matches his account, and a signature that matches the card?" "NO." Oooookay.
So I collected my $500 in items for the client, went to the cash register, swiped the guy's card, and when asked for a photo ID, handed the dude the letter- the manager was distracted and working elsewhere. "This okay?" "Mmm...yeah." "Want to keep it for proof the charge is authorized?" "Nope, you're good."
Credit card companies establish merchant rates based on risk of fraud on the transaction. Some simply require "card presence", ie, a physical card MUST be swiped. Apple seems to require a photo ID, which probably knocks a couple tenths of a percent off their merchant fee or somesuch. Apple may transmit the signature or store it, and if the charge is contested, they can ask my client "is this your signature, or the signature of someone authorized to use it?" That's all the CC company cares about- that it was SOMEONE authorized to use it.
Then there are the retailers where they NEVER actually see the card- I swipe it, and they never need to look for a valid signature or see whose name is on the card; it could be an old CC with fraudulent info encoded, for example. Or the places that take the card, but the cashier never flips it over to look for a signature. Nobody's compared my signature the card in years, and it used to be everyone did (then again, I'm also older.)
I can't help but think that no matter which way this goes, Spybot is the one clearly coming out ahead; they'll loose some enterprise business if they really are corrupting Ghost images, but otherwise, a lot of people will hear about 'em. If Symantec was engaged in libel, then there is a whole David vs. Golliath thing going on. If Spybot was making up the whole thing, everyone grumbles a bit, but a lot of people checked out their website and/or decided to give the software a try.
All of which will make proving damages in court rather...interesting:-)
Maybe I'll re-run the calibration right now and get actual numbers and post them
Done. Here are the results for my 2 month old Dell 2005FPW, which has been on for about 2 hours before calibration.
Max brightness: 250 cd/m^2 at 100, but dropped 1 cd/m^2 EVERY SECOND I left it at that setting(and oddly enough, when I brought the setting back to 0, luminance climbed slightly over 5-10 seconds, then dropped back to 178-179). 0 is anywhere from 178.2-180.
Guess what? 250cd/m^2, or 250 lumens, is run of the mill. Dell claims an additional 50 lumens. To put that in perspective, that's as if the display had a brightness setting of around "200"(well, a little less, but you get the idea.)
Dell also claims a 600:1 contrast ratio. Except the calibration device measured a minimum luminance of.4 cd/m^2. 180 divided by.4 = 450:1 contrast ratio.
Apple claims a contrast ratio of 400:1 and a max luminance of 250cd/m2 on the Cinema 20", which is supposedly the same exact screen (but different front "glass" and backlight, I believe). How 'bout that.
Apple 400:1 Contrast Ratio
DELL 700:1 Contract Ratio
The difference is that Dell is claiming figures based on smoking crack, and Apple's is actually somewhat reasonable. The first thing I did when I got my 20" from Dell, was calibrate it.
According to the calibration device (Eye-one Display2), none of the specs were even close. I think the "true" contrast ratio turned out to be more like 1:250, and when I did brightness testing- brightness on the panel actually went DOWN with time at any setting over "75"; Dell's design pretty clearly overdrives the backlight(probably damaging it), and it is probably to be able to brag an extra 30-40cd over "the competition". Which is hilarious, since the thing is so damn bright, I have to keep it on the lowest brightness setting.
Maybe I'll re-run the calibration right now and get actual numbers and post them as a follow-up, so you can see how lousy true specs are compared to what is claimed on paper.
Executives at Gillette have announced the Mach 7 in response to Purdue's Mach 6 wind tunnel. "We simply cannot be outdone on Mach numbers."
When asked what the commercial for the Mach 7 will feature, the unnammed executive replied, "jet fighters, women, racecars, women, missiles, women, bullets...it will be more spectacular than watching the entire French airforce crash into a fireworks factory."
He has to apologize on his blog. That means he has to lie about what happened.
No, it means he has to apologize for publishing libelous comments about a professor, and for violating the student code of conduct.
If the school had just dumped him, he would have sued, (possibly won) and generated an even larger amount of bad press.
If he had sued, the judge would have taken one look at the text published, which called the professor a "cockmaster of a professor" and also declared the professor unfit to teach; unless he had evidence to back up that assertion, and if it damaged the reputation of the school or the professor, it's libel. The school would have submitted the student code of conduct, including sections about libel/hateful speech, provided proof the student knew he was required to read and abide by the code of conduct- and then motioned to dismiss the case.
Yet again, the big guys win.
What's with the drama? This isn't about Davis Vs. Golliath; this is about a student who violated his code of conduct and published borderline-libelous comments. Just like the LAST story about a student who was disciplined for VIOLATING HIS SCHOOL'S CODE OF CONDUCT.
Claiming or implying this is an issue of "free speech" is further proof of just how uneducated Americans are when it comes to civil liberties and basic legal concepts.
Just more proof that our civil liberties are being tossed right out the window.
And your post is more proof that people don't understand "civil liberties".
First, if he publishes "a false statement that negatively affects someone's reputation", he's guilty of libel, and the professor can sue him in civil court for damages.
Second, if he goes to a private university, agrees to a code of conduct, then violates it- that's not "civil liberties".
As is never mentioned in these stories when they're linked to in summaries such as here on slashdot, the comments aren't mentioned- and they're always rather obnoxious. His comments, or at least, the only ones now available:
"cockmaster of a teacher. I don't even gratify him by calling him a professor. He is one who teaches, as in should teach infants and children."
The "Marquette Warrior" blogger goes on a rant about how "students have probably had this discussion amongst themselves". And guess what? Shockingly, THAT ALSO is not okay; the spoken version of "libel" is called "slander".
Bloggers seem absolutely shocked at a centuries-old legal concept: one cannot just wander around saying (or publishing) whatever the hell one wants to. If you lie and it damages someone's reputation...that's not legal, and you can fully expect to be held accountable.
Which the mainstream media takes with a sly wink -- getting things wrong and then burying retractions or simply moving on to the next big scoop is a time honoured tradition.
That's hardly accurate.
News media answer to, in rough order: their editor, the ombudsman, the readers, and the civil court system. If a reporter continuously produces inaccurate reports, they're fired...and they're in a very visible profession...getting a job at another paper or station can be quite the challenge if they're a liablility, and reporters don't have the convenience of "buffing" their resume to a sparkle, because everything is out there. If they publish liable or slander, they're quite likely to get sued. If it's something the public cares about, people write letters to the editor, the ombudsman, etc...and ultimately, viewership/readership votes with their eyes. The news media can also be highly introspective, if they're in a competitive market; there's nothing one paper loves more than pointing out the mistakes of another paper.
Wikipedia answers, apparently, only to "the public". "The public" is in quotes, because what inevitably happens is that content only answers to those who are interested in it, and here's what often happens:
Something is edited/corrected -> Pet Editor/contributor undoes the edit, often claiming vandalism (I'm right, therefore your edit must be vandalism) -> Edit is reattempted -> repeat. Sprinkle "discussion" on the talk page, bake in the oven at 350 for 7 days until you get a watered-down factless vague entry nobody can figure out to, much less object...or the "corrector" says "fuck this" and walks away...and you're complete!
Note that in both cases- newspapers AND Wikipedia...SOMEONE NEEDS TO CARE. If Joe Blow misspells the name of J. Lo's puppy dog, nobody gives a shit. If the newspaper says some teacher sleeps with little boys and it turns out to be false- you can sure as hell bet there will be a fuss (in fact, there was a case where a teacher, in Boston, was accused of raping his driver ed students. The charges turned out to be false, and there was a LOT of debate afterwards over the terminology papers used to describe him, the charges, and his accusers.)
Furthermore, newspapers distinguish between FACT and OPINION. If it's news, you print only what you can verify, and you either don't speculate, or you are -extremely- guarded in your language when you do so. If it's an op-ed, you still better stick to facts, but it's understood you may present your opinion about said facts. A newspaper reporters knows what if he prints "the sky is pink", he'd better have 2-3 sources from scientists to back him up, and just in case, present an alternative viewpoint as a counter...or his ass is out the door the next morning if it turns out the sky is in fact, still blue. In the Wikipedia, there is no such requirement. I can put down in a bio that someone presidential advisor raped small children and worships satan...and unless someone notices AND cares enough to correct it, it stays...maybe for months.
Wikipedia's claim is that given enough monkeys, you will get the facts right. We have an established profession (called Journalism) which is pretty well proven to get the job done. That doesn't mean they're perfect, or even that all journalists are created equal. However, when it matters, journalists are ultimately held accountable, and they bear that in mind every time they flip open their notebook.
Meanwhile at Wikipedia, a thousand monkeys throw everything from gems to feces at a wall, and claim that what sticks is gold.
20 comments - the majority of which are 'French surrender' jokes. [...]Some originality would be nice. I thought 2006 was the year the American public would wake up to the way they're manipulated (can you remember having the same contempt for the french prior to their [justified] opposition to Iraq II?). Leave the french-hatred to countries that have a reason to hate the french.
Did it occur to you that we're making fun of all the people with an irrational hatred of the French, especially by making such an absurd inferrence?
If Bill O'Reilly says "Well, isn't that just like the french to surrender", he's manipulating his audience (if you think O'Reilly is saying something like that because he actually believes it, you're assuming he's a simpleton. I see people do the same thing with Bush- assume he's an idiot, not someone playing the fool and manipulating people.) If someone on slashdot jokes "Well, isn't it just like the French to surrender and use Firefox", they're making fun of people like Bill O'Reilly, not picking on the French.
Then again, complex humor has never been a strong suite on slashdot...
Oh, and you know what? As long as everyone is laughing, I have zero problems with people cracking jokes about each other. I love teasing my friends from Smith about attending a "finishing school", and they enjoy punching me (they hit like girls, so no worries.) As long as everyone stays laughing, it's a way to celebrate our differences. Or something like that. There are way too many people on this world who take everything so seriously and get offended at the drop of a hat.
Slashdot Mirror
Does CNET really think that in private meetings with IBM, this technology wasn't discussed months if not over a year ago, with Apple? I love how the press thinks that when THEY find out about it, the rest of the world is first hearing about it too...
"Stupid Apple", they chant. Except:
Maybe these Power chips will end up in Xserves or something...seems fairly unlikely though.
Do emails get completely blocked, "possibly" tagged as spam, or are links+images stripped out?
I've seen people claim all three using wild suppositions, so please have some solid evidence to back up your claim...
People either don't know what flags do, don't care, or not enough of them see it. I've seen blatant scams in all manner of sections that don't get removed for quite some time.
On the same hand, I've posted stuff warning people about other posts which were blatant ripoffs or scams, and been flagged.
The one major item I bought from CL was a used iBook that turned out to have a defective logic board; the previous owner had dumped it cheap because she knew it crashed regularly, and even though I spent 30 minutes with the machine before I bought it, I didn't come across the problem. She wouldn't return phonecalls or emails from me the next day.
Every single person I've talked to about selling stuff says that they'll get 10 replies to an ad, and not a single person will actually show up. I've seen CL people price stuff ABOVE ebay prices (auctions are not market value, folks!) and found NO END of people trying to take advantage of each other.
Example? Canon 20D's had a rebate for over $100. In one week there were 6-12 listings for them, all at or slightly below the best online prices. Initially they'd mention the UPC codes were removed, but wised up.
Want another example? 750 xbox-360 postings on average right after they came out...with people asking prices anywhere from $750 to $2k. I repeatedly emailed abuse@craigslist.org asking them to just delete ANY ad with "xbox 360" in them, and never even got a reply.
For Craig and other CL people to rant about community this and that, but refuse to shut down those clearly abusing "the community"...is rather hypocritical.
Ah, Steve said it's true, it must be so.
Except...it's not true. Rosetta on a dual-core iMac G5 runs core "pro" apps just fine, and as fast as a dual-core G5 2ghz. Oops:
"The big question at this point is how well third-party applications will run on the new machines, particularly pro-level applications. I had a chance to spend some time on one of the new 2.0 GHz versions of the Intel-based iMac in Apple's booth on the show floor this morning. While it was far from fully loaded with third-party software, it did have Adobe Photoshop CS2 running on it. Several quick tests showed that the software, running in emulation via Apple's Rosetta technology, performed adequately in processor-intensive tasks. For example, resizing a 4,000 x 4,000-pixel image to 16,000 x 16,000 took fewer than 10 seconds to complete, and resizing back down to 4,000 x 4,000 took fewer than five seconds. Various filters performed pretty much the way they perform on dual G5 CPUs. On a 4,000 x 4,000 image, Filter Gallery filters operated without any lag, as did various blur and render filters (Lighting Effects , Fibers and the like). We will, of course, perform much more extensive tests when we have the new hardware in our own hands. But the limited Photoshop tests showed that, at least for 2D graphics, the Intel-based iMacs seem to be a match for pro-level PowerPC hardware, even when the test software is running in emulation mode."
Can it read signs? Judge weather conditions and drive appropriately? Respond appropriately if the vehicle gets out of control (say, crosses a patch of ice?), or if something unexpected happens?
Well, neither can most of the people on the road today.
Here's a shocker: let's give people a better education in how to drive, than spend billions on cars that "drive themselves".
Amazingly, it pays off in the long run, because parents have to teach their children how to drive (in many cases). The overall work needed to "educate" society in how to drive, drops over time. Eventually, we become less of a danger to ourselves on the roads, so that having 9 airbags instead of 2 doesn't become quite an issue.
Of course, it'd also be nice if highschools spent a few days in physics class on how physics affects cars (ie, basic vehicle dynamics.) Then again, that'd acknowledge a need to teach students real-world, useful information in school, instead of theoretical skills. When was the last time you saw "how to figure out if you're getting ripped a new one on your home mortgage" on a math teacher's curriculum?
Uh...that's not how "clear and present danger" was ever meant to be used. The phrase comes from a 1919 US Supreme Court case on first amendment protected speech.
Incidentally, that case was overturned in 1969.
"Clear and present danger" was specifically NOT, as of 1969, a legitimate reason for punishing someone for speech. It certainly is not a legitimate reason for illegal search and seizure (ie, bypassing the court system.)
I hate it when people romanticize unconstitutional action; happens in the movies all the time. "You can't do that!" "Oh? Are you going to make me get a warrant to search this place? Little Timmy could be dead by then!"
Do you seriously think the EFF doesn't have bigger fish to fry?
This is like the equivalent of going after Al Capone for tax evasion. Tax evasion gets you into his books. His books get you into his racketeering. His racketeering gets you into murders. Etc.
Going after AT&T for illegal wiretaps gets records of said wiretaps coming from the NSA, FBI, and (one hopes not, but who knows) the CIA. That gets you in the door to challenges against those agencies.
Let me finish that sentence for you, Mr. Rahnema:
"...and using it to send viewers to Association member's webpages, bringing us new readers, and generating ad revenue we ordinarily wouldn't have. Sadly, it means we all have to compete against each other, whereas before, we enjoyed regional favoritism. We're absolutely terrified that someone in Boston might find better coverage of a story on the BBC's website, or Washington Post. Or that they can find as much as they want about Elephants, instead of having to read an entire paper, or poke around our site. And they won't pay for the privledge of searching our archives. Especially since much of the time, all we do is parrot an AP/Reuters wire story, word for word....we're terribly concerned about all this."
Hey, if they don't like it- they can always redirect any hit with a referral from news.google.com to "Sorry, we don't support google news." There's also nothing stopping them from blocking all the googlebot crawlers- either by IP range, or browser ID.
Except that then they'd loose a lot of viewers, and become a black hole to the world's most popular search engine. So instead, they run to the legislature...
Hey editors...if you're going to insist on a news story every time someone from Google gets up and makes a peanut butter sandwich, can you at least give us a Digest version?
You know...instead of 3 (or more- it's only lunchtime so far) stories a day about Google, ONE Googleback?
If you think I'm joking, you're right. What I really want is a section for just Google, so that I can click the "NOT ON MY HOMEPAGE" checkbox.
While you're at it, I'd also like a "web logs" section, so that I can block crap like "Boing-Boing gets a scary letter from a 15 year old kid who 'called the FBI on them for harassment on the intar-web'".
I agree...the rabid Google-fanboyism is really getting on my nerves, especially since I don't see much in anything Google does, to be impressed by. Google maps, for example, wowed me with the drag-around map, but I can't save addresses. The magic is very much gone from Google Mail. They can't even get the branded search to work right (broke a month or so ago, still hasn't been fixed, returns a fraction of the total results.) They're falling very heavily into the same hole Apple did years ago, getting their fingers into every little cookie jar. Anyway, getting off on a tangent, sorry...
How would creating a Linux distribution even come *close* to being a Windows killer? And, more importantly, how would that make them any money?
Well, it wouldn't be a Windows "killer" for the public, it'd be a Windows "killer" for them internally. If they can lower licensing costs and have easier to maintain, more secure desktops...that sounds like a pretty big win to me. Training issues are largely moot- many of the kinds of employees that would appeal to Google already know Linux, and they don't exactly have a shortage of resumes coming in the door.
Here's hoping they don't fork it...contributing everything back to Ubuntu/Debian, and just changing logos et al on their internal version.
Whoops. That should read "overwhelming", not "overall".
Nobody said they were doctored; the slashdot editor said "take it with a grain of salt". I see a lot of reasons to do so:
Honestly? The results probably aren't manipulated, but the presentation is very clearly set up with a number of tricks (perhaps without him/her realizing it) to give the impression that Wine "kicked some serious ass", when for the most part, it did horribly.
The problem is we all have a different idea of "better". I don't like Azureus at all- I find its user interface clunky and pathetically slow, because it's java, and it has a TON of "one person finds this useful" functionality; they missed the boat, and should have made a very thin client with plugins, but instead made a bloated client with plugins. A torrent with over 1000 peers will often peg the machine- and it's a 1.4Ghz G4 Mini- not breaking any speed records, but not a slouch.
Sadly, it's the only decent mac client. The official client isn't very good at managing multiple downloads and rehashes torrents every time you start/stop them or quit+reopen the program; same for Tomato Torrent, which also violates virtually every Apple Human Interface Guideline in the book. Both are just GUI wrappers around the python clients, which means they have great compatibility, but not so great "modern" conveniences like the ability to "pause" and such. Tomato Torrent can't even adjust upload/download bandwidth. If uTorrent had a mac counterpart, I'd switch in a second.
By the way: with virtually all bittorrent clients, you'll see much better transfer speeds if you make sure your slots get an average of about 5-6kb/sec each, more with bigger chunk sizes. On a torrent with 1-2MB chunks (ugh, please do NOT make these!) I have to set 2-3 slots max.
Sure it is. Apple doesn't want "pros" to go out and buy 20" iMacs, hook up a second 20" display for dual-head (YES, it does this) and be happy campers, since the iMac runs photoshop et. al. at the same approximate speed as dual G5 powermacs...not to mention, enjoy the self-service program for iMacs so they can get back to work faster. Then they wouldn't run out and place orders on "Mac Pros" or whatever Apple calls the G5 replacement, and sales of the current G5 dualies would be hurt more than they already are. Who wants a 2Ghz Dual G5 for $2k, when you can have the same speed AND a 20" display, for $1700? $300 comes within $50-100 of buying you an on-sale Dell 20" second display, or extra ram, or a big fat fast firewire drive, or or...
Hence the "not really useable yet for pros" comments from Steve. When universal binaries come out(prediction: Apple has told Adobe + others not to do so until the "pro" intel macs come out), intel-iMac pro users will be laughing, while other "pros" are waiting 2-3 months for their ordered machines to show up. The G5 replacement will be faster than a current iMac, but it'll also be noisier, 2x-3x the price, and with no huge display built-in...
Just by running a tor node, you get the oppertunity to collect login+password information for any non-ssl site tor users log into. You also get to see cookie information to boot. Hey, at some point, the traffic has to exit the tor obfuscation network, and if you run a node, you're going to get a bunch of that traffic. It's only a matter of time.
That's why I refuse to use "anonymizer" networks like tor. You can't even login to your damn webmail, without giving away your account information.
I'm too busy trying to figure out who managed to get a MacBook Pro before the "we claim Feburary" ship date. A developer? A Soon To Be Unemployed Apple Employee?
And YES, I saw that it came from "a source", but how did "the source" get a MacBook Pro?
Or clerks could stick to credit card processing policies. I walked into an Apple store today and asked an employee if it was OK to use a client's card, with a letter of authorization (in hand, signed by him, matching the sig on the back of the card.) The employee managed to finally get the attention of the manager, and the manager, who could barely be bothered, grunted "no". "Even with a signed authorization letter naming me, listing contact info that matches his account, and a signature that matches the card?" "NO." Oooookay.
So I collected my $500 in items for the client, went to the cash register, swiped the guy's card, and when asked for a photo ID, handed the dude the letter- the manager was distracted and working elsewhere. "This okay?" "Mmm...yeah." "Want to keep it for proof the charge is authorized?" "Nope, you're good."
Credit card companies establish merchant rates based on risk of fraud on the transaction. Some simply require "card presence", ie, a physical card MUST be swiped. Apple seems to require a photo ID, which probably knocks a couple tenths of a percent off their merchant fee or somesuch. Apple may transmit the signature or store it, and if the charge is contested, they can ask my client "is this your signature, or the signature of someone authorized to use it?" That's all the CC company cares about- that it was SOMEONE authorized to use it.
Then there are the retailers where they NEVER actually see the card- I swipe it, and they never need to look for a valid signature or see whose name is on the card; it could be an old CC with fraudulent info encoded, for example. Or the places that take the card, but the cashier never flips it over to look for a signature. Nobody's compared my signature the card in years, and it used to be everyone did (then again, I'm also older.)
Or an example of really clever free press.
I can't help but think that no matter which way this goes, Spybot is the one clearly coming out ahead; they'll loose some enterprise business if they really are corrupting Ghost images, but otherwise, a lot of people will hear about 'em. If Symantec was engaged in libel, then there is a whole David vs. Golliath thing going on. If Spybot was making up the whole thing, everyone grumbles a bit, but a lot of people checked out their website and/or decided to give the software a try.
All of which will make proving damages in court rather...interesting :-)
Done. Here are the results for my 2 month old Dell 2005FPW, which has been on for about 2 hours before calibration.
Max brightness: 250 cd/m^2 at 100, but dropped 1 cd/m^2 EVERY SECOND I left it at that setting(and oddly enough, when I brought the setting back to 0, luminance climbed slightly over 5-10 seconds, then dropped back to 178-179). 0 is anywhere from 178.2-180.
Guess what? 250cd/m^2, or 250 lumens, is run of the mill. Dell claims an additional 50 lumens. To put that in perspective, that's as if the display had a brightness setting of around "200"(well, a little less, but you get the idea.)
Dell also claims a 600:1 contrast ratio. Except the calibration device measured a minimum luminance of .4 cd/m^2. 180 divided by .4 = 450:1 contrast ratio.
Apple claims a contrast ratio of 400:1 and a max luminance of 250cd/m2 on the Cinema 20", which is supposedly the same exact screen (but different front "glass" and backlight, I believe). How 'bout that.
DELL 700:1 Contract Ratio
The difference is that Dell is claiming figures based on smoking crack, and Apple's is actually somewhat reasonable. The first thing I did when I got my 20" from Dell, was calibrate it.
According to the calibration device (Eye-one Display2), none of the specs were even close. I think the "true" contrast ratio turned out to be more like 1:250, and when I did brightness testing- brightness on the panel actually went DOWN with time at any setting over "75"; Dell's design pretty clearly overdrives the backlight(probably damaging it), and it is probably to be able to brag an extra 30-40cd over "the competition". Which is hilarious, since the thing is so damn bright, I have to keep it on the lowest brightness setting.
Maybe I'll re-run the calibration right now and get actual numbers and post them as a follow-up, so you can see how lousy true specs are compared to what is claimed on paper.
Executives at Gillette have announced the Mach 7 in response to Purdue's Mach 6 wind tunnel. "We simply cannot be outdone on Mach numbers."
When asked what the commercial for the Mach 7 will feature, the unnammed executive replied, "jet fighters, women, racecars, women, missiles, women, bullets...it will be more spectacular than watching the entire French airforce crash into a fireworks factory."
No, it means he has to apologize for publishing libelous comments about a professor, and for violating the student code of conduct.
If the school had just dumped him, he would have sued, (possibly won) and generated an even larger amount of bad press.
If he had sued, the judge would have taken one look at the text published, which called the professor a "cockmaster of a professor" and also declared the professor unfit to teach; unless he had evidence to back up that assertion, and if it damaged the reputation of the school or the professor, it's libel. The school would have submitted the student code of conduct, including sections about libel/hateful speech, provided proof the student knew he was required to read and abide by the code of conduct- and then motioned to dismiss the case. Yet again, the big guys win.
What's with the drama? This isn't about Davis Vs. Golliath; this is about a student who violated his code of conduct and published borderline-libelous comments. Just like the LAST story about a student who was disciplined for VIOLATING HIS SCHOOL'S CODE OF CONDUCT.
Claiming or implying this is an issue of "free speech" is further proof of just how uneducated Americans are when it comes to civil liberties and basic legal concepts.
And your post is more proof that people don't understand "civil liberties".
First, if he publishes "a false statement that negatively affects someone's reputation", he's guilty of libel, and the professor can sue him in civil court for damages.
Second, if he goes to a private university, agrees to a code of conduct, then violates it- that's not "civil liberties".
As is never mentioned in these stories when they're linked to in summaries such as here on slashdot, the comments aren't mentioned- and they're always rather obnoxious. His comments, or at least, the only ones now available:
"cockmaster of a teacher. I don't even gratify him by calling him a professor. He is one who teaches, as in should teach infants and children."
The "Marquette Warrior" blogger goes on a rant about how "students have probably had this discussion amongst themselves". And guess what? Shockingly, THAT ALSO is not okay; the spoken version of "libel" is called "slander".
Bloggers seem absolutely shocked at a centuries-old legal concept: one cannot just wander around saying (or publishing) whatever the hell one wants to. If you lie and it damages someone's reputation...that's not legal, and you can fully expect to be held accountable.
That's hardly accurate.
News media answer to, in rough order: their editor, the ombudsman, the readers, and the civil court system. If a reporter continuously produces inaccurate reports, they're fired...and they're in a very visible profession...getting a job at another paper or station can be quite the challenge if they're a liablility, and reporters don't have the convenience of "buffing" their resume to a sparkle, because everything is out there. If they publish liable or slander, they're quite likely to get sued. If it's something the public cares about, people write letters to the editor, the ombudsman, etc...and ultimately, viewership/readership votes with their eyes. The news media can also be highly introspective, if they're in a competitive market; there's nothing one paper loves more than pointing out the mistakes of another paper.
Wikipedia answers, apparently, only to "the public". "The public" is in quotes, because what inevitably happens is that content only answers to those who are interested in it, and here's what often happens:
Something is edited/corrected -> Pet Editor/contributor undoes the edit, often claiming vandalism (I'm right, therefore your edit must be vandalism) -> Edit is reattempted -> repeat. Sprinkle "discussion" on the talk page, bake in the oven at 350 for 7 days until you get a watered-down factless vague entry nobody can figure out to, much less object...or the "corrector" says "fuck this" and walks away...and you're complete!
Note that in both cases- newspapers AND Wikipedia...SOMEONE NEEDS TO CARE. If Joe Blow misspells the name of J. Lo's puppy dog, nobody gives a shit. If the newspaper says some teacher sleeps with little boys and it turns out to be false- you can sure as hell bet there will be a fuss (in fact, there was a case where a teacher, in Boston, was accused of raping his driver ed students. The charges turned out to be false, and there was a LOT of debate afterwards over the terminology papers used to describe him, the charges, and his accusers.)
Furthermore, newspapers distinguish between FACT and OPINION. If it's news, you print only what you can verify, and you either don't speculate, or you are -extremely- guarded in your language when you do so. If it's an op-ed, you still better stick to facts, but it's understood you may present your opinion about said facts. A newspaper reporters knows what if he prints "the sky is pink", he'd better have 2-3 sources from scientists to back him up, and just in case, present an alternative viewpoint as a counter...or his ass is out the door the next morning if it turns out the sky is in fact, still blue. In the Wikipedia, there is no such requirement. I can put down in a bio that someone presidential advisor raped small children and worships satan...and unless someone notices AND cares enough to correct it, it stays...maybe for months.
Wikipedia's claim is that given enough monkeys, you will get the facts right. We have an established profession (called Journalism) which is pretty well proven to get the job done. That doesn't mean they're perfect, or even that all journalists are created equal. However, when it matters, journalists are ultimately held accountable, and they bear that in mind every time they flip open their notebook.
Meanwhile at Wikipedia, a thousand monkeys throw everything from gems to feces at a wall, and claim that what sticks is gold.
Did it occur to you that we're making fun of all the people with an irrational hatred of the French, especially by making such an absurd inferrence?
If Bill O'Reilly says "Well, isn't that just like the french to surrender", he's manipulating his audience (if you think O'Reilly is saying something like that because he actually believes it, you're assuming he's a simpleton. I see people do the same thing with Bush- assume he's an idiot, not someone playing the fool and manipulating people.) If someone on slashdot jokes "Well, isn't it just like the French to surrender and use Firefox", they're making fun of people like Bill O'Reilly, not picking on the French.
Then again, complex humor has never been a strong suite on slashdot...
Oh, and you know what? As long as everyone is laughing, I have zero problems with people cracking jokes about each other. I love teasing my friends from Smith about attending a "finishing school", and they enjoy punching me (they hit like girls, so no worries.) As long as everyone stays laughing, it's a way to celebrate our differences. Or something like that. There are way too many people on this world who take everything so seriously and get offended at the drop of a hat.