.. not "how much we paid Mozilla Foundation under contract", surely. If they had to do that they would be reporting how much money they paid EVERY large advertiser (of which there have to be many thousands, of not tens of thousands) and we all know they pretty much don't?
Would we have a better system if we let all 4 inventors share ideas and work on a mutually compatible telephone system? I doubt they would have agreed to it to be honest. Inventors are stubborn, "I'm right you're not" kind of people:)
We all complain about the battle for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, all those memory card standards, all number of things. Patents ARE like breaking windows; in such a free market it encourages thousands of "patent-avoiding" inventions. Companies (and inventors) would rather have their own patent portfolio than license someone else's.
But therein lies the rub: patents are useful. The window-breaking is what companies do when they refuse to license a patent from someone, and putting windows within a stone's throw and daring people to break it is what companies do when they refuse to put a patent out as licensable.
The free market should be free, and patents a revenue source, not a contrived lock-in for greedy corporations. And let's be clear again: it's the greedy corporations at fault here, and not the patent system.
Of course it's publically undisclosed. Why do they need to disclose it? They have no obligation to, really, as a private entity (rather than being on the stock market or so).
If they are raking in the money, great! Software developers need to get paid!:)
But the IGN Revolution site is so low on news and content I think they are grabbing at straws.
One thing about the hands though; anyone who remembers the original Xbox controllers will know that the size of hands varies quite a bit! Comparing it to the Gamecube controller is maybe the only solid bit of useful information..
The Nintendo GC disk format is basically MiniDVD with a few tweaks and a larger inner circle (so it starts a little further in and ordinary drives can't find start of disc). The Revolution format is going to be DVD sized, exactly the same format.
You never have to install a think. Any changes to the package tree get saved in a special overspill area; and it all gets cleaned up if you kill off the package.
Well I don't figure there is anything particularly wrong with IE.
But from Mozilla Foundation's standpoint there "is", and that is what they are trying to put across.
I level the same criticisms of FireFox as I would with IE - it isn't as standards compliant as they say, it's certainly not "more secure" considering the number of cross-site vulnerabilities, IDN handling bugs, code/shell execution, memory corruption, buffer underruns, spoofing and so on. It doesn't block adverts by default anyway.. most sites are using BODY onClick events to pop up adverts now, rather than onLoad.
About all I use Firefox for is tabs and the keyboard shortcut to change font sizes, and that awesome "view source for selection" which really helps when developing sites. Everything else I mix and match IE with.
Of course they need to resort to "immature" tactics like reporting download totals and making fun of IE.
Any non-geek user doesn't understand what is wrong with IE. You can't verbally demonstrate what is wrong with it. HTML standards compliance, full CSS2 support, Javascript, DOM1, wah wah wa. It goes over their heads.
You could show them the difference but CNN and MSN and Slashdot and so on all work in IE just fine, with no huge glitches or problems, no great security issues (I tend not to click things at random).
What I find more immature is site designers who make sites which ONLY work in Gecko (and not Opera and specially not IE!) and then complain that the other browsers are not standards compliant. These site designers were the first to blast websites that were "best viewed in IE" or designed using Microsoft JS extensions (document.all[]) and so on.
Not so much the development team or Mozilla marketing fanboys but basically a pretentious, self-righteous, deluded few.
The problem you have there is that you think less is best, and refuse to accept anything you can simply only use half of.
PowerCinema does EVERYTHING Front Row does and more. But you can use it for Front Row stuff alone. Or you can only use the music player. It's your choice.
As for those suggesting that AOpen's box is the only alternative? No, I'm afraid that's a little out.
It's the only alternative if you REQUIRE a 12x12x6 box to do all that stuff, but there are plenty of options for doing it in other ways.
Even in Apple's market, the Mini is a tiny little niche (eclipsed in sales by the laptops, and even the iMac - it is still being sold as a way into iTunes and iPod) and in AOpen's core business it is probably even smaller. For all the "hype" surrounding small PC's, nobody buys them. If they were that big a "deal" then Dell would be selling hundreds of thousands of them per week.
Hint: they just aren't. ITX is a bit of a flop because people don't want a totally unexpandable tiny board when they think of a PC. They want PCI slots and SLI and the ability to drop in a new processor when they think they need to upgrade, even if they never use the ability - it is some perceived Value Added feature of a larger, bulkier system. NanoITX moreso because Via can't even get their own (underpowered) systems out of the door, and producing a completely nonstandard form factor (won't fit in a standard ATX case, and needs a PSU adapter) isn't much fun for system builders, let alone end users.
Mac Mini has amazing new features? No. Still no. Front Row is not AMAZING. It's been done before. 4 USB ports has been done before. Intel Core Duo and an Intel chipset, is so mundane besides it's newness, that I dread to think how easily impressed some people are around here.
Are Apple guilty of hyping too much? No. I think you guys are going to take the blame for that one. Although I will forgive you for not thinking a folded bit of leather is the Second Coming, saying that the Mac Mini is now an AMAZING device is a little much.
When someone other than Via gets their mits to it, you'll see the same cool stuff as happened with MiniITX - who wants a Via chip? Nobody.
But a Pentium M MiniITX board would kick ass. And does. They're around somewhere.
It's about engineering it into a small space. Mac Mini was not "amazing" to get that small in the first place, putting an Intel chip in a space that small is not "amazing" either.
Those features are ten a penny on every PC these days.
You could say that the Mac Mini was underpowered in it's original incarnation. It's not like they COULDN'T have had these features (HD movie playback is a chipset support issue; Core Duo can't do it on it's own, either) on a PowerPC Mac Mini that size, they certainly had the Northbridge for it in the G4 Macs and PowerBooks.
Saying that the "Mac Mini has amazing features for it's size" is really just totally underestimating what you can do with technology these days. If you get rid of the PCI slots on your average PC board and solder the CPU down, you can get all those features in a board that size. Nano ITX is stark proof of this kind of miniaturisation.
Perhaps working for a company that designs solutions like that, I am jaded and cynical and simply unamazed at these obviously life-changing things Apple have put into this new box?
Or maybe in actual fact.. they just aren't amazing. I rest my case.
I loathe those Alps trackpads. There is something about them that makes them hard to use - once you disable tapping (so you can't mistakenly drag stuff around when you lift your finger by accident) and get over the fact you can't use them with anything but a finger press (I get the impression they work by heat, but I would rather it was more like a stylus or touchscreen so I could use my fingernail) and the scrolling stuff while SO useful, doesn't work in such a small space with 10% of it taken away for the scroll spaces.
The little nipple was a life saver. It also saves a lot of space on the laptop! If you want to cut the size down it's perfect.
Of course you can't use the nipple AND the keyboard at the same time in the same way. There is evidence that having your wrist on the laptop to use the nipple + buttons is kind of ergonomically dubious (it sure makes my wrists hurt). And if you hate the trackpad you'd use a mouse anyway (one of those cute little ones with the retractable cords no doubt)
I wish Tablet PC would have taken off more. I hope Apple are really bringing something to market that works, and it's not just a rumour. Why can't someone make a 12" Tablet PC with a lanyard with a bit of plastic on the end like the Nintendo DS has? That would be so perfect..
-- Matt (lamenting the lack of decent portable user input devices in the world)
Because blue lasers and discs are consumer ready NOW.
Holographic discs are still 3 or 4 years away (like we have the same discussion about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray 2 years ago..)
The problem with the technology is we need some kind of HD movie format *NOW* because HDTV is becoming super-popular *NOW*. It's not good for the status quo when you will hardly be able to buy a non-HDTV (-ready) set in the next couple of years, but still only be "working on" the HD rental/movie format because "holographic tech is much cooler".
Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD? HD-DVD will win it out just because it's cheaper. But this won't phase Sony one bit; at least it means PS3 games will be expensive to pirate.
The industry has been bleating about P2P for on-demand for years. It's the perfect solution for cable operators who have networks designed around INTERNAL traffic and pushing data around to subscribers. If the subscribers share the networking and you can have a city block feeding itself..
1) your HD-DVD is encoded at 1080i which it may not be - 720p content is entirely possible and a lot of "720p" content is barely 900x500 in resolution anyway due to overscan borders, extra widescreen bars
2) everyone is going to be pissed off at playing 720p content at non-noticably lower resolutions
3) OMG you never watched a DVD at such a low resolution
It seems like a fairly okay downsizing. It's still an advantage to have an HDTV (over SD or ED) but you might want to invest in HDMI at some later date. Remember when you had to buy a new HDTV so you could connect your brand new satellite/cable HDTV box up to it anyway? Yeah because your standard CRT TV was useless. You may have "early adopted" that box less than 18 months before to get progressive scan DVD and Playstation gaming, but you still got rid of it to get an HDTV, right?
Early adoption is all about taking the RISK of having new things come out later.
If we all want to live in a status quo universe where we can safely watch movies at a "normal" resolution without fear of ever having new technologies to make you pine for, let's go back to 100-line black and white with mono audio?
Because blue is relaxing, Windows etc. have all aimed to show the aimless waltz of clouds sky and running water, rolling hills and the occasional pretty dance of some kind of plasma.
When you're greeted with your desktop for the first time they've determined that "clouds and trees and bunnies" are more pleasing to people than a bunch of cogs, dark oily substances, and coffee.
2.5 minutes. That's 150 seconds. Try something: Sit there and count off 150 seconds. That's rather a long freakin' time to be waiting for a video to start, no? It takes less time to make a bag of microwave popcorn.
So sit your kid down, have him watch the copyright notices, and make him popcorn for when the movie starts?
People can't spend 3 minutes with their children these days with their hectic lives, in order not to have to watch the previews etc.?
I think this is getting pretty sick. I agree throwing them in front of the TV is a great tactic. But 3 minutes effort entertaining them for the beauty of 3 hours (again! again!) of howling at Toy Story 2 for the 18th time.. while you do other stuff. That's almost priceless.
Slashdot Mirror
It is pretty much the same as AdSense For Search though.
.. not "how much we paid Mozilla Foundation under contract", surely. If they had to do that they would be reporting how much money they paid EVERY large advertiser (of which there have to be many thousands, of not tens of thousands) and we all know they pretty much don't?
Would we have a better system if we let all 4 inventors share ideas and work on a mutually compatible telephone system? I doubt they would have agreed to it to be honest. Inventors are stubborn, "I'm right you're not" kind of people :)
We all complain about the battle for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, all those memory card standards, all number of things. Patents ARE like breaking windows; in such a free market it encourages thousands of "patent-avoiding" inventions. Companies (and inventors) would rather have their own patent portfolio than license someone else's.
But therein lies the rub: patents are useful. The window-breaking is what companies do when they refuse to license a patent from someone, and putting windows within a stone's throw and daring people to break it is what companies do when they refuse to put a patent out as licensable.
The free market should be free, and patents a revenue source, not a contrived lock-in for greedy corporations. And let's be clear again: it's the greedy corporations at fault here, and not the patent system.
Sounds like they are playing the guilt-trip card.
:)
Of course it's publically undisclosed. Why do they need to disclose it? They have no obligation to, really, as a private entity (rather than being on the stock market or so).
If they are raking in the money, great! Software developers need to get paid!
It is a dumb article.
But the IGN Revolution site is so low on news and content I think they are grabbing at straws.
One thing about the hands though; anyone who remembers the original Xbox controllers will know that the size of hands varies quite a bit! Comparing it to the Gamecube controller is maybe the only solid bit of useful information..
It's called a Non-Disclosure Agreement.
The Nintendo GC disk format is basically MiniDVD with a few tweaks and a larger inner circle (so it starts a little further in and ordinary drives can't find start of disc). The Revolution format is going to be DVD sized, exactly the same format.
http://www.qnx.com/developers/articles/article_920 _1.html
Have a look at their Package Filesystem.
You never have to install a think. Any changes to the package tree get saved in a special overspill area; and it all gets cleaned up if you kill off the package.
It's really quite neat.
Of all the useful things...
Is there an alternative to it that might actually be part of the kernel eventually and not a maintained patchset?
Well I don't figure there is anything particularly wrong with IE.
But from Mozilla Foundation's standpoint there "is", and that is what they are trying to put across.
I level the same criticisms of FireFox as I would with IE - it isn't as standards compliant as they say, it's certainly not "more secure" considering the number of cross-site vulnerabilities, IDN handling bugs, code/shell execution, memory corruption, buffer underruns, spoofing and so on. It doesn't block adverts by default anyway.. most sites are using BODY onClick events to pop up adverts now, rather than onLoad.
About all I use Firefox for is tabs and the keyboard shortcut to change font sizes, and that awesome "view source for selection" which really helps when developing sites. Everything else I mix and match IE with.
Of course they need to resort to "immature" tactics like reporting download totals and making fun of IE.
Any non-geek user doesn't understand what is wrong with IE. You can't verbally demonstrate what is wrong with it. HTML standards compliance, full CSS2 support, Javascript, DOM1, wah wah wa. It goes over their heads.
You could show them the difference but CNN and MSN and Slashdot and so on all work in IE just fine, with no huge glitches or problems, no great security issues (I tend not to click things at random).
What I find more immature is site designers who make sites which ONLY work in Gecko (and not Opera and specially not IE!) and then complain that the other browsers are not standards compliant. These site designers were the first to blast websites that were "best viewed in IE" or designed using Microsoft JS extensions (document.all[]) and so on.
Not so much the development team or Mozilla marketing fanboys but basically a pretentious, self-righteous, deluded few.
The problem you have there is that you think less is best, and refuse to accept anything you can simply only use half of.
PowerCinema does EVERYTHING Front Row does and more. But you can use it for Front Row stuff alone. Or you can only use the music player. It's your choice.
As for those suggesting that AOpen's box is the only alternative? No, I'm afraid that's a little out.
It's the only alternative if you REQUIRE a 12x12x6 box to do all that stuff, but there are plenty of options for doing it in other ways.
Even in Apple's market, the Mini is a tiny little niche (eclipsed in sales by the laptops, and even the iMac - it is still being sold as a way into iTunes and iPod) and in AOpen's core business it is probably even smaller. For all the "hype" surrounding small PC's, nobody buys them. If they were that big a "deal" then Dell would be selling hundreds of thousands of them per week.
Hint: they just aren't. ITX is a bit of a flop because people don't want a totally unexpandable tiny board when they think of a PC. They want PCI slots and SLI and the ability to drop in a new processor when they think they need to upgrade, even if they never use the ability - it is some perceived Value Added feature of a larger, bulkier system. NanoITX moreso because Via can't even get their own (underpowered) systems out of the door, and producing a completely nonstandard form factor (won't fit in a standard ATX case, and needs a PSU adapter) isn't much fun for system builders, let alone end users.
Mac Mini has amazing new features? No. Still no. Front Row is not AMAZING. It's been done before. 4 USB ports has been done before. Intel Core Duo and an Intel chipset, is so mundane besides it's newness, that I dread to think how easily impressed some people are around here.
Are Apple guilty of hyping too much? No. I think you guys are going to take the blame for that one. Although I will forgive you for not thinking a folded bit of leather is the Second Coming, saying that the Mac Mini is now an AMAZING device is a little much.
Windows Media Center edition?
I actually run PowerCinema. It does more than Front Row in much the same way.
When someone other than Via gets their mits to it, you'll see the same cool stuff as happened with MiniITX - who wants a Via chip? Nobody.
But a Pentium M MiniITX board would kick ass. And does. They're around somewhere.
It's about engineering it into a small space. Mac Mini was not "amazing" to get that small in the first place, putting an Intel chip in a space that small is not "amazing" either.
Those features are ten a penny on every PC these days.
You could say that the Mac Mini was underpowered in it's original incarnation. It's not like they COULDN'T have had these features (HD movie playback is a chipset support issue; Core Duo can't do it on it's own, either) on a PowerPC Mac Mini that size, they certainly had the Northbridge for it in the G4 Macs and PowerBooks.
Saying that the "Mac Mini has amazing features for it's size" is really just totally underestimating what you can do with technology these days. If you get rid of the PCI slots on your average PC board and solder the CPU down, you can get all those features in a board that size. Nano ITX is stark proof of this kind of miniaturisation.
Perhaps working for a company that designs solutions like that, I am jaded and cynical and simply unamazed at these obviously life-changing things Apple have put into this new box?
Or maybe in actual fact.. they just aren't amazing. I rest my case.
What Amazing Features are in the new Mac Mini?
It has Exactly The Same features, just some extra ports on the back and an Apple remote (which you can buy anyway..)
I wish they would bring it back already!
I loathe those Alps trackpads. There is something about them that makes them hard to use - once you disable tapping (so you can't mistakenly drag stuff around when you lift your finger by accident) and get over the fact you can't use them with anything but a finger press (I get the impression they work by heat, but I would rather it was more like a stylus or touchscreen so I could use my fingernail) and the scrolling stuff while SO useful, doesn't work in such a small space with 10% of it taken away for the scroll spaces.
The little nipple was a life saver. It also saves a lot of space on the laptop! If you
want to cut the size down it's perfect.
Of course you can't use the nipple AND the keyboard at the same time in the same way. There is evidence that having your wrist on the laptop to use the nipple + buttons is kind of ergonomically dubious (it sure makes my wrists hurt). And if you hate the trackpad you'd use a mouse anyway (one of those cute little ones with the retractable
cords no doubt)
I wish Tablet PC would have taken off more. I hope Apple are really bringing something to market that works, and it's not just a rumour. Why can't someone make a 12" Tablet PC with a lanyard with a bit of plastic on the end like the Nintendo DS has? That would be so perfect..
-- Matt (lamenting the lack of decent portable user input devices in the world)
Because blue lasers and discs are consumer ready NOW.
Holographic discs are still 3 or 4 years away (like we have the same discussion about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray 2 years ago..)
The problem with the technology is we need some kind of HD movie format *NOW* because HDTV is becoming super-popular *NOW*. It's not good for the status quo when you will hardly be able to buy a non-HDTV (-ready) set in the next couple of years, but still only be "working on" the HD rental/movie format because "holographic tech is much cooler".
Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD? HD-DVD will win it out just because it's cheaper. But this won't phase Sony one bit; at least it means PS3 games will be expensive to pirate.
Cringely States The Obvious.
The industry has been bleating about P2P for on-demand for years. It's the perfect solution for cable operators who have networks designed around INTERNAL traffic and pushing data around to subscribers. If the subscribers share the networking and you can have a city block feeding itself..
So he makes 8 boards less than his original idea of production then.
Oh my God!
Whatever will he do?
If you can't afford $400 for the CAD software how on earth do you expect afford production?
The backlash assumes that
1) your HD-DVD is encoded at 1080i which it may not be - 720p content is entirely possible and a lot of "720p" content is barely 900x500 in resolution anyway due to overscan borders, extra widescreen bars
2) everyone is going to be pissed off at playing 720p content at non-noticably lower resolutions
3) OMG you never watched a DVD at such a low resolution
It seems like a fairly okay downsizing. It's still an advantage to have an HDTV (over SD or ED) but you might want to invest in HDMI at some later date. Remember when you had to buy a new HDTV so you could connect your brand new satellite/cable HDTV box up to it anyway? Yeah because your standard CRT TV was useless. You may have "early adopted" that box less than 18 months before to get progressive scan DVD and Playstation gaming, but you still got rid of it to get an HDTV, right?
Early adoption is all about taking the RISK of having new things come out later.
If we all want to live in a status quo universe where we can safely watch movies at a "normal" resolution without fear of ever having new technologies to make you pine for, let's go back to 100-line black and white with mono audio?
But it is dredging up the old engine.
"Doesn't require Half-Life 2 to play" just means "doesn't require 1.2GB of Half-Life 2 game data to play".
The same way I can install HL: Opposing Force through Steam without downloading the Half-Life content, right?
Because blue is relaxing, Windows etc. have all aimed to show the aimless waltz of clouds sky and running water, rolling hills and the occasional pretty dance of some kind of plasma.
When you're greeted with your desktop for the first time they've determined that "clouds and trees and bunnies" are more pleasing to people than a bunch of cogs, dark oily substances, and coffee.
So sit your kid down, have him watch the copyright notices, and make him popcorn for when the movie starts?
People can't spend 3 minutes with their children these days with their hectic lives, in order not to have to watch the previews etc.?
I think this is getting pretty sick. I agree throwing them in front of the TV is a great tactic. But 3 minutes effort entertaining them for the beauty of 3 hours (again! again!) of howling at Toy Story 2 for the 18th time.. while you do other stuff. That's almost priceless.