This is very true. I recently got to play with an OLPC and was really blown away by what it was compared to what the online consensus of people who have never touched out.
Its a simple education toy that only looks like a laptop. Its more of a specialized educational gadget like a speak and spell than a Dell. Its keyboard is tiny and only for little kid fingers. Its slow and has a very simplified interface. It cant do WPA and has no ethernet port. Its screen is like a very cheap version of e-ink.
I dont see what this has in common with the eeepc. The eeepc is a ulw general purpose laptop. The XO is an educational device for children.
So what youre telling me is that there are different levels of service for 1700+ dollar laptops vs 300 dollar game machines?!?! Whoa stop the presses!
I'm really sick of this consumerist entitlement attitude so many people have. Its like we're in denial about how the economy is built on making things cheap and affordable, not on providing stellar service to the rich few, who are like you and can afford such an expensive laptop. For the rest of us that shop at target, buy bottom of the barrel pcs, etc we dont get such service becasue: We cant afford it. The only way we can afford such basic toys is because of the price race to the bottom.
Ive seen people get all angry and pissy at walmart, dollar stores, home depot, etc. THey expect to be treated like little aristocrats whose 9.99 purchase entitles them to a couple of hours of time with a full time employee, who is also a poor person being paid minimum and doesnt have a phd nor does he know what 'thing will fit in the thingy in your bathroom'. Sorry thats not the reality of economics. You could have that kind of service, but expect to pay 500 dollars for that 12v drill at home depot.
If I was in this kids boots I would have NEVER EVER sent that thing out. I know how things get factory service and its a scary process. This is a 300 dollar commodity piece of junk. Realize that. Accept that. Work around the problem. I dont consider bitching to slashdot an acceptable work-around. Oh, he might get some token handout from MS but that doesnt fix the realities of ecomomics, it just illustrates how the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Enjoy you free copy of halo and xbox live lifetime membership!
I guess its more fashionable to rail out at corporate greed than to understand economics. Pass the bowl man!
Whoa! Maybe you should stop watching so much South Park and Simpsons. It sounds like youve internalized the brands and self-identify with them to the point of calling people who watch almost identical counterparts like Family Guy or American Dad, morons. People like you are why advertisers drive luxury cars and sleep well at night.
Im really sick of seeing the acceptance of shameless corporate branding in geek culture. The bullshit Apple/PS3/whoever fanboy flaming. This is nothing but your generations version of Ford vs Chevy. Seriously. Maybe you should be the one reading more. Mods, honestly that shouldnt be +5 insightful it should be 0 troll.
>On the contrary, had the headline not been so sensational
Exactly. Lets face it, this is the People magazine of the tech world. Its rumors, sensationalism, gossip, etc. I like slashdot because its fun and goofy, but its far from respectable and nothing near journalism.
Sir, my name is Stanford and I am contacting you from Apple special support. It seems like you have stopped drinking your kool-aid. If you like we can send you 10 free packets of sugar-free Jobs next day air. Continue to drink your medication, I mean, promotional drink. Continue the mantra of "Apple is never wrong, white plastic is the most beautiful thing in the universe" over and over.
>In this case, that would mean sueing almost everyone in the world.
Err no. When you buy something from a manufacturer you get some kind of indemnity for its manufacture. I have no idea how many of the things I buy are made, and I should not be held liable if they are made carelessly or illegally. In fact, I could sue them for whatever harm it brings me.
Whats so great here? Is this the principled move you truly think it is?
Essentially we have a pan-government organization that is demanding one billion dollars to continue to do sale in its realm. This money is not earmarked for social programs or anything that would benefit humanity, but more for bureaucrats.
The principled thing to do is to say "Your products cannot be sold here for 5 years. Be gone." Instead the EU just took the money. I dont see how the EU is better than MS. They are both attempting to maximize their profits with the authority/market they have.
Im not some crazy anti-government type or some extreme free market type, but this is a significant fine and a significant precedent. In the long run this cant be good for other companies. "What? your ads arent in french and spanish and german? That's a billion dollars."
>Compared to Blu-ray's higher capacity, unscratchable coating, and higher data read rates. Each format had their benefits.
Understood. But the data layer on a bluray disc is.1mm from the surface. On HD (or on regular DVDs) its.6mm. Sony developed a scratch resistant layer and I dont doubt their effectiveness with modern materials, but we sure as heck havent seen this battle tested yet in the homes of average americans, especially those with netflix accounts or *gasp* kids.
HDDVD also was moving towards a triple-layer disc at the time of its demise.
I still think that the worse format won. Now consumers are going to pay for the manufacturing premium and perhaps even lots of replacements as scratches a DVD could handle might destroy a blu-ray disc.
Here's hoping the scratch resistant layer is pretty damn tough!
>Microsoft has damaged its whole gaming platform by getting into a sparring match with Sony over video formats.
First off, MS barely sold those add-ons. What exactly is wrong with add-ons? If anything, its Sony wh o took the bigger risk.
Hell, whats so wrong with hd-dvd. It was the superior format with no region encoding, PIP early on, cheaper production, etc. Gasp, cant we admit MS was on the right side for once. If there is such a thing as being on the right side when it comes to proprietary drm format wars.
>There are lots of tolerant Muslim people out there.
Maybe but there sure isnt enough of them to say "Hey, lets do away with theocracy." The fact that theocratic governments are allowed makes me think that they arent as 'tolerant' as people like you claim.
Cue the moral relativist crowd and the people who are going to reply to this by blaming western powers in 3.. 2.. 1..
Its also worth noting that its very easy to cherry-pick sources from the past to make a certain point of view look silly. The GP is playing the 'all predictions about this are wrong' card but if you were to make a sincere effort to look into what people and studies showed about the economics of scarcity, you'd see it wasnt so cut and dried. This is usually a dishonest rhetorical trick.
Yeah but blutooth is only a couple of mbps and in practice seems to be much more susceptible to interference. The few times I've tried to use it for large data transfers have been pretty slow. Its just easier to grab a usb cable.
Right now there's a sort of race to come up with a bluetooth replacement. UWB, wireless USB, etc are the things this product wants to compete with.
Fine, roll your eyes. Real geeks need microcode updates. I just dont like seeing negative numbers when i ping stuff, so I grab the latest driver from AMD's site.
Yeah someone needs to clue this guy into what a burst is. Short bursts are pretty nice as you can break past your limit for a short period. Most users just need short transfers not long sustains.
Lastly, there might be an argument made that comcast has no interest in shaping traffic to bandwidth test sites and could raise the QoS to them. Why not? Its barely unethical.
These drives exist, yes, no one is denying that. Like I wrote above its not typical. Has the person who is making all these claims proven that the USB memory on these picture frames have this bit set? Yeah, I'm not holding my breath.
>You're obviously the one tossing around FUD. Shame on you.
Oh piss off, if youre unwilling to read my posts and think about what is being claimed then youre just another "me too" guy towing the slashdot line.
Q: What must I do to trigger Autorun on my USB storage device? The Autorun capabilities are restricted to CD-ROM drives and fixed disk drives. If you need to make a USB storage device perform Autorun, the device must not be marked as a removable media device and the device must contain an Autorun.inf file and a startup application.
The removable media device setting is a flag contained within the SCSI Inquiry Data response to the SCSI Inquiry command. Bit 7 of byte 1 (indexed from 0) is the Removable Media Bit (RMB). A RMB set to zero indicates that the device is not a removable media device. A RMB of one indicates that the device is a removable media device. Drivers obtain this information by using the StorageDeviceProperty request.
-----
In other words a typical removable device will not do autorun. The manufacterer must set it to NOT BE A REMOVABLE DEVICE/DRIVE for this to work. This is not typical.
>Is there a setup.exe that autoruns like on certain brands of USB drive (DUMB IDEA OF THE CENTURY)?
Is this true? windows autoruns on CDs and fixed disks. You need to go out of your way to enable autorun on a usb drive. The drive needs to support auto-assist notification. These usb drives dont. Ive handled many a digital frame and have not seen them do anything like this. I know this is slashdot which is the source for MS FUD, but does anyone have some proof that these infected frames actually do run code on insertaion. Or are we just going to accept being another source of FUD on the internet?
its actually common to see trojans or viruses on a consumer product. Its happened on mp3 players quite a few times. Most likely what is happening is that the machine they are using to copy the drives was actually infected. That doesnt mean you also can get infected via insertion.
Re:Copyright or corruption as his platform?
on
Lessig For Congress?
·
· Score: 1
He didnt change anything. The problem with reforming copyright is that you cant get legislatures to do this because they depend on big companies for their re-election donations. Thus the best way to fix this and a slew of other issues is to continue to reform donation laws so the big companies can't dictate to the legislature what to do by pulling the purse-strings.
Not only is it not out, but we have mac users who had this exact problem with the.2 update to leopard yet that didnt make the slashdot frontpage. Man, the bias here is embarassing.
That happened to me recently except 90% of the APs were on channel 6. Channel 11 was clear sailing. You'd think manufacturers would randomize this stuff at the factory.
Well, I think the outcome is predictable (not that i think this bill has a chance of passing)
1. Comcast will just move to a tiered plan. Expect chronic users to pay 100-200 dollars and month and people metering their usage to they dont hit the limit. Casual downloaders will pay the current price.
2. Any shaping will lead to potential lawsuits. Suddenly your VOIP wont work as well because bitorrent has the same priority as VoIP. Whoops!
3. Lots of lawsuits. Did your webhost or email provider "shape" your packets in any way?
4. QoS dies because everyone legal department decides its too much of a risk to continue to use.
>Apple's notebook looks and feels like it was designed around a task, a need, and Lenovo's laptop looks more like it was designed around the tech specs.
What 'task' exactly? I use OSX all the time and its just a friggin OS. It runs programs. Programs that are not very different from programs on any modern GUI based system.
The idea that the Apple universe is full of sexy creative types who are above technical needs and that the Apple software magically fulfulls them is marketing bullshit.
Every person I've talked to (including sexy creative types) think no DVD drive and only USB port is a deal killer. This is just a luxury apple good that grows the brand and spreads their marketing. Its good for their image. It if was more practical than it would 'feel' like a dell. Istead its all design goodness for people with more money than sense.
So what youre saying is that the pricing and GB limit is not to your liking? That's why we have competition. oh wait, now youre saying you dont have competition. Hmm, perhaps that explains why comcast can even get away with any of this.
My point is that if this issue is strong enough to force a federal net neutrality bill then its strong enough to force a deregulation bill. The latter gives us many more choices than the former. But I doubt any of this will get passed, thus my practical stance on tiered pricing at near market prices.
There is no fios in chicago and wont be for a long, long time.
Slashdot Mirror
This is very true. I recently got to play with an OLPC and was really blown away by what it was compared to what the online consensus of people who have never touched out.
Its a simple education toy that only looks like a laptop. Its more of a specialized educational gadget like a speak and spell than a Dell. Its keyboard is tiny and only for little kid fingers. Its slow and has a very simplified interface. It cant do WPA and has no ethernet port. Its screen is like a very cheap version of e-ink.
I dont see what this has in common with the eeepc. The eeepc is a ulw general purpose laptop. The XO is an educational device for children.
So what youre telling me is that there are different levels of service for 1700+ dollar laptops vs 300 dollar game machines?!?! Whoa stop the presses!
I'm really sick of this consumerist entitlement attitude so many people have. Its like we're in denial about how the economy is built on making things cheap and affordable, not on providing stellar service to the rich few, who are like you and can afford such an expensive laptop. For the rest of us that shop at target, buy bottom of the barrel pcs, etc we dont get such service becasue: We cant afford it. The only way we can afford such basic toys is because of the price race to the bottom.
Ive seen people get all angry and pissy at walmart, dollar stores, home depot, etc. THey expect to be treated like little aristocrats whose 9.99 purchase entitles them to a couple of hours of time with a full time employee, who is also a poor person being paid minimum and doesnt have a phd nor does he know what 'thing will fit in the thingy in your bathroom'. Sorry thats not the reality of economics. You could have that kind of service, but expect to pay 500 dollars for that 12v drill at home depot.
If I was in this kids boots I would have NEVER EVER sent that thing out. I know how things get factory service and its a scary process. This is a 300 dollar commodity piece of junk. Realize that. Accept that. Work around the problem. I dont consider bitching to slashdot an acceptable work-around. Oh, he might get some token handout from MS but that doesnt fix the realities of ecomomics, it just illustrates how the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Enjoy you free copy of halo and xbox live lifetime membership!
I guess its more fashionable to rail out at corporate greed than to understand economics. Pass the bowl man!
Hi, you must be new here. Heck just saying "Bill Gates is the devil" is at least +1 insightful.
btw, Bill Gates is the devil.
>Maybe read some more. It helps.
Whoa! Maybe you should stop watching so much South Park and Simpsons. It sounds like youve internalized the brands and self-identify with them to the point of calling people who watch almost identical counterparts like Family Guy or American Dad, morons. People like you are why advertisers drive luxury cars and sleep well at night.
Im really sick of seeing the acceptance of shameless corporate branding in geek culture. The bullshit Apple/PS3/whoever fanboy flaming. This is nothing but your generations version of Ford vs Chevy. Seriously. Maybe you should be the one reading more. Mods, honestly that shouldnt be +5 insightful it should be 0 troll.
>On the contrary, had the headline not been so sensational
Exactly. Lets face it, this is the People magazine of the tech world. Its rumors, sensationalism, gossip, etc. I like slashdot because its fun and goofy, but its far from respectable and nothing near journalism.
Sir, my name is Stanford and I am contacting you from Apple special support. It seems like you have stopped drinking your kool-aid. If you like we can send you 10 free packets of sugar-free Jobs next day air. Continue to drink your medication, I mean, promotional drink. Continue the mantra of "Apple is never wrong, white plastic is the most beautiful thing in the universe" over and over.
>In this case, that would mean sueing almost everyone in the world.
Err no. When you buy something from a manufacturer you get some kind of indemnity for its manufacture. I have no idea how many of the things I buy are made, and I should not be held liable if they are made carelessly or illegally. In fact, I could sue them for whatever harm it brings me.
Whats so great here? Is this the principled move you truly think it is?
Essentially we have a pan-government organization that is demanding one billion dollars to continue to do sale in its realm. This money is not earmarked for social programs or anything that would benefit humanity, but more for bureaucrats.
The principled thing to do is to say "Your products cannot be sold here for 5 years. Be gone." Instead the EU just took the money. I dont see how the EU is better than MS. They are both attempting to maximize their profits with the authority/market they have.
Im not some crazy anti-government type or some extreme free market type, but this is a significant fine and a significant precedent. In the long run this cant be good for other companies. "What? your ads arent in french and spanish and german? That's a billion dollars."
>Compared to Blu-ray's higher capacity, unscratchable coating, and higher data read rates. Each format had their benefits.
.1mm from the surface. On HD (or on regular DVDs) its .6mm. Sony developed a scratch resistant layer and I dont doubt their effectiveness with modern materials, but we sure as heck havent seen this battle tested yet in the homes of average americans, especially those with netflix accounts or *gasp* kids.
Understood. But the data layer on a bluray disc is
HDDVD also was moving towards a triple-layer disc at the time of its demise.
I still think that the worse format won. Now consumers are going to pay for the manufacturing premium and perhaps even lots of replacements as scratches a DVD could handle might destroy a blu-ray disc.
Here's hoping the scratch resistant layer is pretty damn tough!
>Microsoft has damaged its whole gaming platform by getting into a sparring match with Sony over video formats.
First off, MS barely sold those add-ons. What exactly is wrong with add-ons? If anything, its Sony wh o took the bigger risk.
Hell, whats so wrong with hd-dvd. It was the superior format with no region encoding, PIP early on, cheaper production, etc. Gasp, cant we admit MS was on the right side for once. If there is such a thing as being on the right side when it comes to proprietary drm format wars.
>There are lots of tolerant Muslim people out there.
Maybe but there sure isnt enough of them to say "Hey, lets do away with theocracy." The fact that theocratic governments are allowed makes me think that they arent as 'tolerant' as people like you claim.
Cue the moral relativist crowd and the people who are going to reply to this by blaming western powers in 3.. 2.. 1..
Its also worth noting that its very easy to cherry-pick sources from the past to make a certain point of view look silly. The GP is playing the 'all predictions about this are wrong' card but if you were to make a sincere effort to look into what people and studies showed about the economics of scarcity, you'd see it wasnt so cut and dried. This is usually a dishonest rhetorical trick.
Yeah but blutooth is only a couple of mbps and in practice seems to be much more susceptible to interference. The few times I've tried to use it for large data transfers have been pretty slow. Its just easier to grab a usb cable.
Right now there's a sort of race to come up with a bluetooth replacement. UWB, wireless USB, etc are the things this product wants to compete with.
Fine, roll your eyes. Real geeks need microcode updates. I just dont like seeing negative numbers when i ping stuff, so I grab the latest driver from AMD's site.
Yeah someone needs to clue this guy into what a burst is. Short bursts are pretty nice as you can break past your limit for a short period. Most users just need short transfers not long sustains.
Lastly, there might be an argument made that comcast has no interest in shaping traffic to bandwidth test sites and could raise the QoS to them. Why not? Its barely unethical.
These drives exist, yes, no one is denying that. Like I wrote above its not typical. Has the person who is making all these claims proven that the USB memory on these picture frames have this bit set? Yeah, I'm not holding my breath.
>You're obviously the one tossing around FUD. Shame on you.
Oh piss off, if youre unwilling to read my posts and think about what is being claimed then youre just another "me too" guy towing the slashdot line.
Bullshit, this is what happens when you config an autorun.inf and use the open command to start a program:
http://dailycupoftech.com/usb-drive-autoruninf-tweaking/
Right a big GUI prompt, not a stealth start.
Straight from microsoft:
Q: What must I do to trigger Autorun on my USB storage device?
The Autorun capabilities are restricted to CD-ROM drives and fixed disk drives. If you need to make a USB storage device perform Autorun, the device must not be marked as a removable media device and the device must contain an Autorun.inf file and a startup application.
The removable media device setting is a flag contained within the SCSI Inquiry Data response to the SCSI Inquiry command. Bit 7 of byte 1 (indexed from 0) is the Removable Media Bit (RMB). A RMB set to zero indicates that the device is not a removable media device. A RMB of one indicates that the device is a removable media device. Drivers obtain this information by using the StorageDeviceProperty request.
-----
In other words a typical removable device will not do autorun. The manufacterer must set it to NOT BE A REMOVABLE DEVICE/DRIVE for this to work. This is not typical.
Again, more slashdot FUD.
>Is there a setup.exe that autoruns like on certain brands of USB drive (DUMB IDEA OF THE CENTURY)?
Is this true? windows autoruns on CDs and fixed disks. You need to go out of your way to enable autorun on a usb drive. The drive needs to support auto-assist notification. These usb drives dont. Ive handled many a digital frame and have not seen them do anything like this. I know this is slashdot which is the source for MS FUD, but does anyone have some proof that these infected frames actually do run code on insertaion. Or are we just going to accept being another source of FUD on the internet?
its actually common to see trojans or viruses on a consumer product. Its happened on mp3 players quite a few times. Most likely what is happening is that the machine they are using to copy the drives was actually infected. That doesnt mean you also can get infected via insertion.
He didnt change anything. The problem with reforming copyright is that you cant get legislatures to do this because they depend on big companies for their re-election donations. Thus the best way to fix this and a slew of other issues is to continue to reform donation laws so the big companies can't dictate to the legislature what to do by pulling the purse-strings.
Not only is it not out, but we have mac users who had this exact problem with the .2 update to leopard yet that didnt make the slashdot frontpage. Man, the bias here is embarassing.
That happened to me recently except 90% of the APs were on channel 6. Channel 11 was clear sailing. You'd think manufacturers would randomize this stuff at the factory.
Well, I think the outcome is predictable (not that i think this bill has a chance of passing)
1. Comcast will just move to a tiered plan. Expect chronic users to pay 100-200 dollars and month and people metering their usage to they dont hit the limit. Casual downloaders will pay the current price.
2. Any shaping will lead to potential lawsuits. Suddenly your VOIP wont work as well because bitorrent has the same priority as VoIP. Whoops!
3. Lots of lawsuits. Did your webhost or email provider "shape" your packets in any way?
4. QoS dies because everyone legal department decides its too much of a risk to continue to use.
>Apple's notebook looks and feels like it was designed around a task, a need, and Lenovo's laptop looks more like it was designed around the tech specs.
What 'task' exactly? I use OSX all the time and its just a friggin OS. It runs programs. Programs that are not very different from programs on any modern GUI based system.
The idea that the Apple universe is full of sexy creative types who are above technical needs and that the Apple software magically fulfulls them is marketing bullshit.
Every person I've talked to (including sexy creative types) think no DVD drive and only USB port is a deal killer. This is just a luxury apple good that grows the brand and spreads their marketing. Its good for their image. It if was more practical than it would 'feel' like a dell. Istead its all design goodness for people with more money than sense.
Christ how many times does this need to be repeated:
THE LOW PRICED AIR DOES NOT COME WITH A SSD.
THIS DOES.
THE SSD FOR THE AIR IS 1300 DOLLARS.
http://gizmodo.com/345101/adding-a-64gb-ssd-to-the-macbook-air-1300-extra-please
Sorry, the caps lock got the better of me.
So what youre saying is that the pricing and GB limit is not to your liking? That's why we have competition. oh wait, now youre saying you dont have competition. Hmm, perhaps that explains why comcast can even get away with any of this.
My point is that if this issue is strong enough to force a federal net neutrality bill then its strong enough to force a deregulation bill. The latter gives us many more choices than the former. But I doubt any of this will get passed, thus my practical stance on tiered pricing at near market prices.
There is no fios in chicago and wont be for a long, long time.