I don't know what this is talking about in terms of safety (I've never heard anyone argue over the odd safety points they mentioned), but it's not something most people here want. The thing is, practically every bit of energy from the windmills is going to be routed to NYC (we have no power problems here). And having a big farm of a few dozen windmills right in the back of every small town is rather ugly and noisy in the immediate area. My friend lives about half a mile away from a farm of about 8 I think that are maybe 10 miles outside of town, and they are still audible from his house with about half of them running (I think they supply power out of state). I'm not against clean power. I don't think many people against the windmills are. It just gets old catering to and living in the shadow of NYC. If _we_ needed them, it would be a different story. But this is just another time when New York is New York City, not New York State. Some might consider that greedy, but a community belongs to the people in it. Tall mechanical objects may seem ok to people in a reasonibly sized city dotted with skyscrapers, but when you live in a rural area, they really aren't something that improves or matches the look of the community. And sure, the land owner may get $3000 a year for placement of a turbine. But if my next door neighbor puts one in and gets paid $3000/year for it, isn't it just as obtrusive to me? I won't get any money for it.......
As much as I dislike Windows, on a decent machine, I'd much rather use XP MCE over Linux/MythTV. I've used MythTV for a while, and although it is extremely feature rich, it just doesn't feel speedy. I've got a Barton 2500+, and if that isn't enough to run the menu fast enough (I'm assuming faster computers still don't feel set-top-box worthy), there's something wrong. WMCE's interface w/ 3d-accelerated graphics seems very very slick and quick. Something that is needed for your casual user used to the typical quick TV menu responses. Maybe I'm just being picky though.....
For a price it appears. I've always loved RealPlayer Alternative and Quicktime Alternative, and wished they had a Linux variant (they work great). That would be an interesting path for a WMV codec to take.
It's the software on the OS. Sure, Linux Windows can run fine on legacy hardware (be it older versions or whatever) with what the article probably said. Let's see you fully load all needed software onto the Windows system. Track down old copies of the software from that day. Sounds like it could be somewhat difficult. It's much easier to just download a set of Redhat 7/8/9 discs and install everything you need from that one set of CDs that are pretty easy to find online.
I get rather sick of Microsofts "If we don't think they are a threat to our business, let's not cater to them" method. If they want something to become standard, they really need to support the reasonable popular platforms (yes, Macs aren't hugley popular, but I've seen enough of them on this campus to know they are a pretty big market). Hopefully this will at least push more content producers (be it trailers, movies, or just clips of something) to use Quicktime/H.264 since they are on PC and Mac. What will be next, Microsoft introducing a new version of WMV to go on HD-DVD (As I recall, it's supposed to be standard for the next-gen media to support both H.264 and WMV) that won't play on Macs, thus giving another reason not to get a Mac? That would be assuming the Standards could still be upgraded to the next WMV of course.
Sounds about right. A friend of mine (I never had a NES, all my friends did, and i wanted one... *cry*) actually I think exhaled on to them (like one might to fog up glasses and clean them) instead of blow on them. Seemed to work.
When (if) a quantum computer can eventually be made, it'll probably have more then enough power to crack many of the currently used encryption schemes. Such a big jump in computing ability (from that little I've read about quantum computing and my roommates ranting, it's that powerful) will definately present a problem for security schemes. Things may get interesting then......
If not for bastardizing Apple's work (which is legal to an extent), for calling it an iTablet (or iAnything), and duplicating the design of their product descriptions to a T on their site.
You buy something. The store tracks your purchases to recommend similar stuff. Amazon does it. Other stores do it. So what's the big deal w/ iTunes doing it? It can't just because instead of having a web interface like traditional stores it has it's own software interface? Another thing that isn't clear. Is this just doing this for music bought through iTunes (which seems ok), or all music, including all your illegally obtained mp3's in it (which is kinda iffie)? If just bought music, it seems no different then amazon. And not to mention nielson ratings. Every single thing you watch on TV someone probably knows about (although anonomous).
Ah. I'm curious as to how this is going to fit into their strategy. They have had iBooks and PowerBooks as their only laptops for quite a few years now. Judging by ths specs of this, it seems like it could eventually replace the PowerBook (which makes sense since some may liken PowerBook to PowerPC, although I have no clue if that is where PowerBook came from). I'm not so sure about them dropping the iBook line though. The i has too much going for it now.....
The name of this thing sucks. Had Apple not already been using the iBook name for their low-end laptops and attaching i to everything, we would have probably been calling this an iBook (as in intelBook). They should have just kept it in the same series. Like PowerBook M or something like that to replace the PowerBook G4.
I've probably got hundreds of DVDs worth of data. But I'm currently a college student, so poor. I figure a couple years after I get out a grand won't be as _huge_ a deal for a file server with enough space to put everything from DVD on it with redundancy. I'll assume my DVDs will last 4 more years till I can do that though (I use Ritek stuff, so I figure it'll probably last long enough).
But I'm glad to see a story that finally doesn't have a "topic" per say. A story to discuss problems with story submissions. This is one reason I think Slashdot really needs a general forum for issues, such as trolls, story submissions, sig discussions, and other things that are traditionally off topic that will never be brought up. Although email can be used if there is really a problem, This is slashdot, and email just isn't "the thing".
Apple has a reputation for being terribly overpriced. A bit behind w/ some hardware (like memory/FSB speed in my iBook), but there prices aren't as bad as some make it seem. $1000 for a decent notebook is reasonable (iBook again). They just get unrealistically expensive with some of their fully loaded systems. Back on topic though. That's not too much cheaper then Apple's 30" display. With education discount, it's only $100 cheaper. And if you are spending $2000+ on a display, I don't think a couple hundred dollars is a huge deal. And I've heard Apple's displays are some of the best for accurate reproduction of color (although that might just be propaganda affecting me). I found there mid-sized display to be pretty competitive with newegg's displays of that size, even cheaper then many of the better known brands with the educational discount. It's good to see some competition though. Someday I will have one.........
I like that idea. I think the general idea behind iTunes selling videos is great. Except for one small cavet. It's a gimmick to sell more iPods. You can't get videos in a size that won't play on an iPod screen I'm quite sure (and yes, their H.264 video does look good, but low resolution is low resolution). If this offers videos in larger sizes at reasonable prices, I'm in..
I've always thought that there needed to be an updater platform with support for non-MS software, like integration into Windows Update. But this isn't bad if it works how I think it does. A bit limited in available software, but it's probably still much less of an annoyance then the HP Updater........
The truth of the matter is, no matter how hard we try, very few people were actually "meant" to code. People don't think like machines. And the few that do are probably working for companies that do high-integrity software that human lives depend on (and Google of course). I think very few people can write complicated bug-free code, and most of the ones that "do" get lucky and get their bugs caught during testing (and don't create more bugs fixing it). Companies are in a hurry. They don't like to devote too much time to QA. Since bugs are an inevitable part of complicated software, it's the companies decision as to how many estimated unknown bugs is considered "stable enough for release". Be it a text interface or some amazing simulation VR system, the more user interactivity and freedom they are given, the harder it will be to create bug-free software. When talking with non-technical folks when they bitch about their computer freaking out, I just tell them "It's easy to make something do what you want it to do. Making it not do what you don't want it to do is a lot more complex". I think the key to minimizing bugs other then proper testing is dividing the program up into as many reasonable simple parts as possible (Yes, I'm a fan of OOP) with strict guidelines for interaction outside of the class/method, and have the overall interactions of each class evaluated by a reasonable number of people so possible problems can be spotted. And I am done ranting.
Including the part about the inferior technology winning. I like Blu-Ray, but PC's have a lot of leverage. As does Microsoft. It has been proven what Microsoft wants, Microsoft can usually get (game studios like Rare and Bungie being two big gets I know of offhand). And if they want HD-DVD to beat out Blu-Ray that badly, it will. An industry standard is more then a game studio of course, but you'd be a fool to think that Microsoft couldn't use their ties to almost every electronics company that dabbles in computers to bend the market in their favor.
I expec...... Ok, maybe I didn't expect better. But year jokes (most notibly "Cya next year!") have got to be one of my biggest pet peeves.... Especially when the same person does it every year.......
I've used OS X for half a year now, and I find the dashboard widgets to be very useful for quick stuff. Although it is a _huge_ memory hog from what I've seen (as others have commented). Some widgets (especially third party) can take up 20+ megs of ram, and that adds up. I ended up getting 512M on top of 512M onboard just to run the widgets. Otherwise, it's a waste of time. Hopefully KDE will make their own type of widgets that don't take up as much memory and perhaps rely on shared memory for various things. I'm not a very skilled programmer yet, but I fail to see why this many widgets have to take up 20M+ each when most aren't really that complicated.
My burner just bit the dust (unburnt ring in middle sometimes, two years old), and I just got the best rated on on newegg ("beige" model since the black was out, same burner though). Good enough for me w/ it only costing $40.
I think the real question is is Microsoft still a monopoly, and are they a conglomorate. Yes, they are a monopoly, and unless Apple can manage to rip that monopoly out of there hands (I don't realistically see mainstream seeing any reason to ditch what they have always used for something new), they will probably be till computers in general are different. I think that the main thing they are trying to attain is becoming a conglomorate (much like Sony, and what Google is trying to do in the computer industry). We'll see how that pans out. They have had good new products, but a lot of them fade away due to doing terribly (routers, gamepads, joysticks, WebTV) and probably others I can't think of off the top of my head).
Hahaha, high quality on video ipod. That's oxymoronic. Perhaps looks good on video iPod, and perhaps looks ok on anything else (like a desktop), but my views of high quality are closer to 720p/1080i (which would of course be an unrealistic download).
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what this is talking about in terms of safety (I've never heard anyone argue over the odd safety points they mentioned), but it's not something most people here want. The thing is, practically every bit of energy from the windmills is going to be routed to NYC (we have no power problems here). And having a big farm of a few dozen windmills right in the back of every small town is rather ugly and noisy in the immediate area. My friend lives about half a mile away from a farm of about 8 I think that are maybe 10 miles outside of town, and they are still audible from his house with about half of them running (I think they supply power out of state). I'm not against clean power. I don't think many people against the windmills are. It just gets old catering to and living in the shadow of NYC. If _we_ needed them, it would be a different story. But this is just another time when New York is New York City, not New York State. Some might consider that greedy, but a community belongs to the people in it. Tall mechanical objects may seem ok to people in a reasonibly sized city dotted with skyscrapers, but when you live in a rural area, they really aren't something that improves or matches the look of the community. And sure, the land owner may get $3000 a year for placement of a turbine. But if my next door neighbor puts one in and gets paid $3000/year for it, isn't it just as obtrusive to me? I won't get any money for it.......
As much as I dislike Windows, on a decent machine, I'd much rather use XP MCE over Linux/MythTV. I've used MythTV for a while, and although it is extremely feature rich, it just doesn't feel speedy. I've got a Barton 2500+, and if that isn't enough to run the menu fast enough (I'm assuming faster computers still don't feel set-top-box worthy), there's something wrong. WMCE's interface w/ 3d-accelerated graphics seems very very slick and quick. Something that is needed for your casual user used to the typical quick TV menu responses. Maybe I'm just being picky though.....
For a price it appears. I've always loved RealPlayer Alternative and Quicktime Alternative, and wished they had a Linux variant (they work great). That would be an interesting path for a WMV codec to take.
It's the software on the OS. Sure, Linux Windows can run fine on legacy hardware (be it older versions or whatever) with what the article probably said. Let's see you fully load all needed software onto the Windows system. Track down old copies of the software from that day. Sounds like it could be somewhat difficult. It's much easier to just download a set of Redhat 7/8/9 discs and install everything you need from that one set of CDs that are pretty easy to find online.
I get rather sick of Microsofts "If we don't think they are a threat to our business, let's not cater to them" method. If they want something to become standard, they really need to support the reasonable popular platforms (yes, Macs aren't hugley popular, but I've seen enough of them on this campus to know they are a pretty big market). Hopefully this will at least push more content producers (be it trailers, movies, or just clips of something) to use Quicktime/H.264 since they are on PC and Mac. What will be next, Microsoft introducing a new version of WMV to go on HD-DVD (As I recall, it's supposed to be standard for the next-gen media to support both H.264 and WMV) that won't play on Macs, thus giving another reason not to get a Mac? That would be assuming the Standards could still be upgraded to the next WMV of course.
Sounds about right. A friend of mine (I never had a NES, all my friends did, and i wanted one... *cry*) actually I think exhaled on to them (like one might to fog up glasses and clean them) instead of blow on them. Seemed to work.
When (if) a quantum computer can eventually be made, it'll probably have more then enough power to crack many of the currently used encryption schemes. Such a big jump in computing ability (from that little I've read about quantum computing and my roommates ranting, it's that powerful) will definately present a problem for security schemes. Things may get interesting then......
If not for bastardizing Apple's work (which is legal to an extent), for calling it an iTablet (or iAnything), and duplicating the design of their product descriptions to a T on their site.
You buy something. The store tracks your purchases to recommend similar stuff. Amazon does it. Other stores do it. So what's the big deal w/ iTunes doing it? It can't just because instead of having a web interface like traditional stores it has it's own software interface? Another thing that isn't clear. Is this just doing this for music bought through iTunes (which seems ok), or all music, including all your illegally obtained mp3's in it (which is kinda iffie)? If just bought music, it seems no different then amazon. And not to mention nielson ratings. Every single thing you watch on TV someone probably knows about (although anonomous).
Ah. I'm curious as to how this is going to fit into their strategy. They have had iBooks and PowerBooks as their only laptops for quite a few years now. Judging by ths specs of this, it seems like it could eventually replace the PowerBook (which makes sense since some may liken PowerBook to PowerPC, although I have no clue if that is where PowerBook came from). I'm not so sure about them dropping the iBook line though. The i has too much going for it now.....
The name of this thing sucks. Had Apple not already been using the iBook name for their low-end laptops and attaching i to everything, we would have probably been calling this an iBook (as in intelBook). They should have just kept it in the same series. Like PowerBook M or something like that to replace the PowerBook G4.
I've probably got hundreds of DVDs worth of data. But I'm currently a college student, so poor. I figure a couple years after I get out a grand won't be as _huge_ a deal for a file server with enough space to put everything from DVD on it with redundancy. I'll assume my DVDs will last 4 more years till I can do that though (I use Ritek stuff, so I figure it'll probably last long enough).
But I'm glad to see a story that finally doesn't have a "topic" per say. A story to discuss problems with story submissions. This is one reason I think Slashdot really needs a general forum for issues, such as trolls, story submissions, sig discussions, and other things that are traditionally off topic that will never be brought up. Although email can be used if there is really a problem, This is slashdot, and email just isn't "the thing".
Seeing as how stars are white and black holes are black, yeah, that does sound about right.
Apple has a reputation for being terribly overpriced. A bit behind w/ some hardware (like memory/FSB speed in my iBook), but there prices aren't as bad as some make it seem. $1000 for a decent notebook is reasonable (iBook again). They just get unrealistically expensive with some of their fully loaded systems. Back on topic though. That's not too much cheaper then Apple's 30" display. With education discount, it's only $100 cheaper. And if you are spending $2000+ on a display, I don't think a couple hundred dollars is a huge deal. And I've heard Apple's displays are some of the best for accurate reproduction of color (although that might just be propaganda affecting me). I found there mid-sized display to be pretty competitive with newegg's displays of that size, even cheaper then many of the better known brands with the educational discount. It's good to see some competition though. Someday I will have one.........
I like that idea. I think the general idea behind iTunes selling videos is great. Except for one small cavet. It's a gimmick to sell more iPods. You can't get videos in a size that won't play on an iPod screen I'm quite sure (and yes, their H.264 video does look good, but low resolution is low resolution). If this offers videos in larger sizes at reasonable prices, I'm in..
I've always thought that there needed to be an updater platform with support for non-MS software, like integration into Windows Update. But this isn't bad if it works how I think it does. A bit limited in available software, but it's probably still much less of an annoyance then the HP Updater........
The truth of the matter is, no matter how hard we try, very few people were actually "meant" to code. People don't think like machines. And the few that do are probably working for companies that do high-integrity software that human lives depend on (and Google of course). I think very few people can write complicated bug-free code, and most of the ones that "do" get lucky and get their bugs caught during testing (and don't create more bugs fixing it). Companies are in a hurry. They don't like to devote too much time to QA. Since bugs are an inevitable part of complicated software, it's the companies decision as to how many estimated unknown bugs is considered "stable enough for release". Be it a text interface or some amazing simulation VR system, the more user interactivity and freedom they are given, the harder it will be to create bug-free software. When talking with non-technical folks when they bitch about their computer freaking out, I just tell them "It's easy to make something do what you want it to do. Making it not do what you don't want it to do is a lot more complex". I think the key to minimizing bugs other then proper testing is dividing the program up into as many reasonable simple parts as possible (Yes, I'm a fan of OOP) with strict guidelines for interaction outside of the class/method, and have the overall interactions of each class evaluated by a reasonable number of people so possible problems can be spotted. And I am done ranting.
Including the part about the inferior technology winning. I like Blu-Ray, but PC's have a lot of leverage. As does Microsoft. It has been proven what Microsoft wants, Microsoft can usually get (game studios like Rare and Bungie being two big gets I know of offhand). And if they want HD-DVD to beat out Blu-Ray that badly, it will. An industry standard is more then a game studio of course, but you'd be a fool to think that Microsoft couldn't use their ties to almost every electronics company that dabbles in computers to bend the market in their favor.
I expec...... Ok, maybe I didn't expect better. But year jokes (most notibly "Cya next year!") have got to be one of my biggest pet peeves.... Especially when the same person does it every year.......
I've used OS X for half a year now, and I find the dashboard widgets to be very useful for quick stuff. Although it is a _huge_ memory hog from what I've seen (as others have commented). Some widgets (especially third party) can take up 20+ megs of ram, and that adds up. I ended up getting 512M on top of 512M onboard just to run the widgets. Otherwise, it's a waste of time. Hopefully KDE will make their own type of widgets that don't take up as much memory and perhaps rely on shared memory for various things. I'm not a very skilled programmer yet, but I fail to see why this many widgets have to take up 20M+ each when most aren't really that complicated.
My burner just bit the dust (unburnt ring in middle sometimes, two years old), and I just got the best rated on on newegg ("beige" model since the black was out, same burner though). Good enough for me w/ it only costing $40.
I think I can speak for 99% of other users and say: No thanks.........
I think the real question is is Microsoft still a monopoly, and are they a conglomorate. Yes, they are a monopoly, and unless Apple can manage to rip that monopoly out of there hands (I don't realistically see mainstream seeing any reason to ditch what they have always used for something new), they will probably be till computers in general are different. I think that the main thing they are trying to attain is becoming a conglomorate (much like Sony, and what Google is trying to do in the computer industry). We'll see how that pans out. They have had good new products, but a lot of them fade away due to doing terribly (routers, gamepads, joysticks, WebTV) and probably others I can't think of off the top of my head).
Hahaha, high quality on video ipod. That's oxymoronic. Perhaps looks good on video iPod, and perhaps looks ok on anything else (like a desktop), but my views of high quality are closer to 720p/1080i (which would of course be an unrealistic download).