Sony is late and wrong on everything MD. having bought a MD recorder back in the day (why did they even bother making MD that could only play and not record?) i've always felt it could have been so much better. First of all, it takes however long the track is to transfer it too and from the computer or other device. Maybe it's different with the optical in/out, but i never had anything to plug that into. If they had made it a dual functioning device to begin with (ie, audio read/write AND data read/write with no data loss) it would have been more well recieved. they wouldn't have even needed to allow for both types on the same disc.
How cool would it have been to use a MD recorder as a portable tape drive? i think it would have been very cool. Small, protected discs with decent storage capacity.
Sony over-specialized this product to death. It was nice to use to record an occasional concert, and to record myself and friends musical sessions. It just could have had so many more uses.
You almost had it right, Sony. I'd still consider buying something new and less specialized (no DRM, no one-way USB, better transfer methods in general) from someone if it was able to use minidiscs as the media. I'm still wishing I or someone else was able to do some hardware hack to make the original MD recorders more functional along these terms.
The media cost for MD wouldn't be so bad if it had other uses such as data backup. how much to tapes cost these days? a MD is what, maybe a dollar each? expensive compared to CD's but cheaper than tapes i imagine.
Sure, but these soldiers would have to kill their pissed of friends and family. the first "civilian" death by "federal" fire would be a downward spiral for the federal army moral and a boost in anger and rebellion for civilians. i speculate, anyway.
The slippery slope here is that the government does not retain the right to torture small children, thus you by default have that right via the 10th amendment.
in my opinion, that is where the state and local governments should step in. in fact, there are laws against asaults. the fact that the victim may or may not be a small child is irrelevant.
I'm sorry, I'm not using Linux because it's a strong desktop (it's good enough for me, i'd call it adequate). I don't fight to get the latest software, I use what works and don't need to have the hottest, newest bits running through my processor. Most security updates are irellevant as I have hardly any services running, but I update the ones I need. If I had accesories, i'd make sure they worked with Linux before buying them, or were from a company who has a history of devulging enough specs for people to write device drivers themselves.
I use personally use Linux to get away from the liscensing nonsense that MicroAppleSunSoft tries to cram down my throat and sockets. They force too much upon me. It's my hardware, not theirs. I use Linux because it is Free. I use OSX at work and MS-Windows at work because I have to. What management decides is out of my control.
"...without a call to your other Linux buddies..."
Half the fun of Linux is the community built around it.
Free Software Camp: But Photoshop isn't Free. so "bzzt" to you too.
Open Source Camp: Gimp might not cut it right now, but it is an evolving peice of software. These features Photoshop has that Gimp does not have just hasn't given anyone a sufficient itch yet.
Its not illegal for SCO executives to sell stock. They have filed the proper paperwork in advance, and they are following all of the rules. If you have evidence that suggests otherwise, by all means take it to the authorities. Otherwise, shut the hell up and let the grown ups talk about finance.
Sale of stock also is an indication of an employees confidence in the company. If the executives were confident SCO will win the case, resulting in a rise of the stock price, they would most likely, probably definately, hold onto their shares to sell at a later date, post lawsuit.
So as someone claimed (grandparent i think), this isn't a pump and dump scheme since you have to file months ahead of time with the SEC to sell your stocks. However I read your statements and got the implication that there could be a pattern of filing for sale of stock, then months later just about then that paperwork allows you to sell some stock, announcing some bold press release about what the company is going to do. This seems to legitimately cover up a pump and dump scheme by adding a "???" step into the mix. that "???" is just a "do nothing" phase while waiting for the paperwork to go through.
1. file with SEC to sell stock 2. ??? 3. press release/"Open Letters" 4. profit!
However this idea is all void if the person selling the stock is locked into a price at the time of filing for a sale of stock through the SEC. That would make the press release irrelavant since it wont't effect the price which they are locked in at.
I wonder how many ipods were sold for holiday purchases. probably a considerable amount.
how many of those people would have bought one if they knew this new version was comming out? probably about slim to none (mac people apparently love shiney plastic colors). However, how many old iPod users who bought it when it was first released will buy this new version? I bet atleast half. brilliant sales scheme for apple. instead of releasing and selling new products at christmas, dump your inventory (which isn't even old and outdated yet) and afterwards announce a new product.
I would however, feel a little alienated by this action.
So they are saying what versions.. so what? they still don't have distribution control over those versions because the code, if "offending", was released in under the GPL. The only thing they can do is tell us what the offending code is so we can remove it. They are not granted distribution rights over other peoples work in those specified versions of the linux kernel simply because they don't want to tell us what offending code there is.
I could be wrong, but any contract which has illegal agreements in it is invalid. they have not proven their legal rights to the ABI, so the contract would be void and unenforceable.
Good point. 6 hours would be fine (4 hours too, probably), but the only laptop I ever bought advertised 2 hours (which really would have been adequate for my needs, and was within my price range) and never once have I gotten more than 30 minutes. My friends iPod gets only half of it's advertised length. So if a 6 hour battery really gives me 6 hours, thats would be excellent.
Mine is a good "desktop" laptop (Sony Vaio PCG-FX215 or something like that), in that it has a nice sized keyboard and a clear, pretty, and good sized screen. Battery life and the amount of heat it gives off, I give it a failing grade. But now I want something I can take with me, pop open emacs and work on software projects until i'm saturated with coffee and monitor radiation. As long as it can compile my relatively small projects, and render some raytraced images in a decent amount of time, i'd be happy.
Atkins diet. Jeebus H. Christ. I swear if i hear that phrase one more time I'm going to lose it. It's everywhere. Menu's at resturaunts have "Atkins Friendly" sections now.
Whatever ever happened to a balanced diet? Atkins seems to me to be swinging the pendulum more and more away from equilibrium.
Pop culture diets: "Eat no carbs!" "Wait! You need carbs!" "Eat nothing but carbs!" "Wait, carbs are bad!" "Eat only protien!" "Eat anything but barf it up!"
rant not directed towards you, neiffer. just a rant. whatever to get your diabetes in control. People with a medical condition, maybe something like Atkins is a good thing. but for people who think they are fat, and don't want to excercise, a little more balance would seem better.
I'd love something with 12hours battery life, regardless of processing speed (granted, anything less than comparable to a 350Mhz x86 would be a bit slow) so I can go outside to code, or to a cafe without having to sit next to a power outlet.
I agree with you about a federal government with too much power. as an aside, federal government as it exists seems, to my little limited view of life, as only federal politics. I don't see much governing at all. these federal politics are going to do as you say, run our local governments into the ground.
i imaging that much like sports, practice speed is much slower than game speed. it takes time to get use to game speed once your in the game. anything to lessen the difference and learning time is a good thing, no?
based on what? that i'm single, have a good work environment in a nice company, i'm not married though have been in a relationship for nearly 2 years, and don't owe my soul to credit companies?
or based on the fact that i don't waste my life on 7 dollar beers in the village?
I eat and drink well, I am healthy, I spend my free time in good company. Judge your own life before judging mine.
To answer the AC who asked "Please describe some things that are naturally limitless", I say: Think theoretically for a minute. Think that there is a Very Large amount of Thing X for every person in the world, such that (amount of people)/(amount of Thing X) approaches Zero. If that doesn't work, think dirt. Dirt is essentially limitless, but is sold at gardening stores. Think software. It is trivial to copy software bit for bit. Ignoring the storage limitations and how you might transfer this copy, software is limitless. Storage might be essentially limitless as well if some nanotech storage works out.
In theoretical terms, I believe it is unethical to force a limit on a limitless resource to make a buck. Socially, it is different. Everyone in essence is pitted against one another to fight for their wellbeing.
There is cheap, educated labor in the US as far as Software Engineering goes. However it seems that some companies do not even look for it as their first step. They assume a college graduate with a degree in Computer Engineering or Software Engineering will only work for +50k/year. A college graduate and an out of work developer would probably take a $40k job if offered. These are not the best of economic times, one should learn to live and spend responsibly. I'm living reasonably comfortable in NYC on less than 40k/year (granted I have no children, no car, and no debts beside college tuition, etc..)
"Outsourcing" equals "Capitalism" as much as "Theoretical Capitalism" equals "Captialism in Practice"
"90 Death to fax machines Send us an attachment instead."
Oh come on. Now I know this list isn't of the best quality, but email attachments are awfull. If you want me to see an image, find some place that hosts websites for free and put it up there. If you need me to watch a stupid flash movie of something else, send the URL in plain text. Don't ever send me 10 100k photos of your wedding in one email message.
The occasional PDF is ok *sometimes* but even those can get pretty hefty. Send me a URL and I'll download it when I can plan for my connection speed to drop for everything else I'm doing.
a simple interface to a combination of a webserver and email would be nice. something that lets you "attach" something but the "attachment" is just a reference to the file you wanted attached. That file then gets uploaded automagically to your "attachment space" and the reference to it is sent in the email. the webserver having authorization requirements so only the intended person gets it. doesn't seem too hard really. a response saying the person succesfully downloaded the attachment would be nice too so you can have them automatically expire.
Hmm, yet another project to work on. Too few hours in the day.
Slashdot Mirror
Sony is late and wrong on everything MD. having bought a MD recorder back in the day (why did they even bother making MD that could only play and not record?) i've always felt it could have been so much better. First of all, it takes however long the track is to transfer it too and from the computer or other device. Maybe it's different with the optical in/out, but i never had anything to plug that into. If they had made it a dual functioning device to begin with (ie, audio read/write AND data read/write with no data loss) it would have been more well recieved. they wouldn't have even needed to allow for both types on the same disc.
How cool would it have been to use a MD recorder as a portable tape drive? i think it would have been very cool. Small, protected discs with decent storage capacity.
Sony over-specialized this product to death. It was nice to use to record an occasional concert, and to record myself and friends musical sessions. It just could have had so many more uses.
You almost had it right, Sony. I'd still consider buying something new and less specialized (no DRM, no one-way USB, better transfer methods in general) from someone if it was able to use minidiscs as the media. I'm still wishing I or someone else was able to do some hardware hack to make the original MD recorders more functional along these terms.
The media cost for MD wouldn't be so bad if it had other uses such as data backup. how much to tapes cost these days? a MD is what, maybe a dollar each? expensive compared to CD's but cheaper than tapes i imagine.
Sure, but these soldiers would have to kill their pissed of friends and family. the first "civilian" death by "federal" fire would be a downward spiral for the federal army moral and a boost in anger and rebellion for civilians. i speculate, anyway.
The slippery slope here is that the government does not retain the right to torture small children, thus you by default have that right via the 10th amendment.
in my opinion, that is where the state and local governments should step in. in fact, there are laws against asaults. the fact that the victim may or may not be a small child is irrelevant.
you are confusing free with Free. a confusion which also is seen far too often. a quick google reveals this
GNU does force the terms on you, but they don't reserve the right to change those terms at any time. GNU, BSD, etc also restrict fewer behaviors.
you've mistaken my post for whining. i was simply stating that the other person missed reasons why someone might not want to switch to OS X.
flame elsewhere.
To each his own. I for one extremely dislike the rounded window borders of OSX, the dumb eyecandy minimizing effects and other such things.
different strokes for different folks.
I'm sorry, I'm not using Linux because it's a strong desktop (it's good enough for me, i'd call it adequate). I don't fight to get the latest software, I use what works and don't need to have the hottest, newest bits running through my processor. Most security updates are irellevant as I have hardly any services running, but I update the ones I need. If I had accesories, i'd make sure they worked with Linux before buying them, or were from a company who has a history of devulging enough specs for people to write device drivers themselves.
I use personally use Linux to get away from the liscensing nonsense that MicroAppleSunSoft tries to cram down my throat and sockets. They force too much upon me. It's my hardware, not theirs. I use Linux because it is Free. I use OSX at work and MS-Windows at work because I have to. What management decides is out of my control.
"...without a call to your other Linux buddies..."
Half the fun of Linux is the community built around it.
Free Software Camp: But Photoshop isn't Free. so "bzzt" to you too.
Open Source Camp: Gimp might not cut it right now, but it is an evolving peice of software. These features Photoshop has that Gimp does not have just hasn't given anyone a sufficient itch yet.
you mean those robot voices aren't really saying "hello" to me?
i thought i found a lost robot..
Its not illegal for SCO executives to sell stock. They have filed the proper paperwork in advance, and they are following all of the rules. If you have evidence that suggests otherwise, by all means take it to the authorities. Otherwise, shut the hell up and let the grown ups talk about finance.
Sale of stock also is an indication of an employees confidence in the company. If the executives were confident SCO will win the case, resulting in a rise of the stock price, they would most likely, probably definately, hold onto their shares to sell at a later date, post lawsuit.
So as someone claimed (grandparent i think), this isn't a pump and dump scheme since you have to file months ahead of time with the SEC to sell your stocks. However I read your statements and got the implication that there could be a pattern of filing for sale of stock, then months later just about then that paperwork allows you to sell some stock, announcing some bold press release about what the company is going to do. This seems to legitimately cover up a pump and dump scheme by adding a "???" step into the mix. that "???" is just a "do nothing" phase while waiting for the paperwork to go through.
1. file with SEC to sell stock
2. ???
3. press release/"Open Letters"
4. profit!
However this idea is all void if the person selling the stock is locked into a price at the time of filing for a sale of stock through the SEC. That would make the press release irrelavant since it wont't effect the price which they are locked in at.
I'm just speculating and thinking outloud.
I wonder how many ipods were sold for holiday purchases. probably a considerable amount.
how many of those people would have bought one if they knew this new version was comming out? probably about slim to none (mac people apparently love shiney plastic colors). However, how many old iPod users who bought it when it was first released will buy this new version? I bet atleast half. brilliant sales scheme for apple. instead of releasing and selling new products at christmas, dump your inventory (which isn't even old and outdated yet) and afterwards announce a new product.
I would however, feel a little alienated by this action.
So they are saying what versions.. so what? they still don't have distribution control over those versions because the code, if "offending", was released in under the GPL. The only thing they can do is tell us what the offending code is so we can remove it. They are not granted distribution rights over other peoples work in those specified versions of the linux kernel simply because they don't want to tell us what offending code there is.
I could be wrong, but any contract which has illegal agreements in it is invalid. they have not proven their legal rights to the ABI, so the contract would be void and unenforceable.
Good point. 6 hours would be fine (4 hours too, probably), but the only laptop I ever bought advertised 2 hours (which really would have been adequate for my needs, and was within my price range) and never once have I gotten more than 30 minutes. My friends iPod gets only half of it's advertised length. So if a 6 hour battery really gives me 6 hours, thats would be excellent.
Mine is a good "desktop" laptop (Sony Vaio PCG-FX215 or something like that), in that it has a nice sized keyboard and a clear, pretty, and good sized screen. Battery life and the amount of heat it gives off, I give it a failing grade. But now I want something I can take with me, pop open emacs and work on software projects until i'm saturated with coffee and monitor radiation. As long as it can compile my relatively small projects, and render some raytraced images in a decent amount of time, i'd be happy.
Atkins diet. Jeebus H. Christ. I swear if i hear that phrase one more time I'm going to lose it. It's everywhere. Menu's at resturaunts have "Atkins Friendly" sections now.
Whatever ever happened to a balanced diet? Atkins seems to me to be swinging the pendulum more and more away from equilibrium.
Pop culture diets: "Eat no carbs!" "Wait! You need carbs!" "Eat nothing but carbs!" "Wait, carbs are bad!" "Eat only protien!" "Eat anything but barf it up!"
rant not directed towards you, neiffer. just a rant. whatever to get your diabetes in control. People with a medical condition, maybe something like Atkins is a good thing. but for people who think they are fat, and don't want to excercise, a little more balance would seem better.
I was a potential graduate and the last few months of my senior year really really sucked. ;-)
;-)"?
should this read, "I was a potential graduate and the last few years of my senior year really really sucked.
This is slashdot, you know.
Can you apply and recieve these post-graduation in order to pay back your accumulated student loans? ;)
I'd love something with 12hours battery life, regardless of processing speed (granted, anything less than comparable to a 350Mhz x86 would be a bit slow) so I can go outside to code, or to a cafe without having to sit next to a power outlet.
I agree with you about a federal government with too much power. as an aside, federal government as it exists seems, to my little limited view of life, as only federal politics. I don't see much governing at all. these federal politics are going to do as you say, run our local governments into the ground.
You are 100% dead on.
Score: -1, Use of the word "Terrorist" to strengthen argument
i imaging that much like sports, practice speed is much slower than game speed. it takes time to get use to game speed once your in the game. anything to lessen the difference and learning time is a good thing, no?
based on what? that i'm single, have a good work environment in a nice company, i'm not married though have been in a relationship for nearly 2 years, and don't owe my soul to credit companies?
or based on the fact that i don't waste my life on 7 dollar beers in the village?
I eat and drink well, I am healthy, I spend my free time in good company. Judge your own life before judging mine.
To answer the AC who asked "Please describe some things that are naturally limitless", I say: Think theoretically for a minute. Think that there is a Very Large amount of Thing X for every person in the world, such that (amount of people)/(amount of Thing X) approaches Zero. If that doesn't work, think dirt. Dirt is essentially limitless, but is sold at gardening stores. Think software. It is trivial to copy software bit for bit. Ignoring the storage limitations and how you might transfer this copy, software is limitless. Storage might be essentially limitless as well if some nanotech storage works out.
In theoretical terms, I believe it is unethical to force a limit on a limitless resource to make a buck. Socially, it is different. Everyone in essence is pitted against one another to fight for their wellbeing.
There is cheap, educated labor in the US as far as Software Engineering goes. However it seems that some companies do not even look for it as their first step. They assume a college graduate with a degree in Computer Engineering or Software Engineering will only work for +50k/year. A college graduate and an out of work developer would probably take a $40k job if offered. These are not the best of economic times, one should learn to live and spend responsibly. I'm living reasonably comfortable in NYC on less than 40k/year (granted I have no children, no car, and no debts beside college tuition, etc..)
"Outsourcing" equals "Capitalism" as much as "Theoretical Capitalism" equals "Captialism in Practice"
"90 Death to fax machines Send us an attachment instead."
Oh come on. Now I know this list isn't of the best quality, but email attachments are awfull. If you want me to see an image, find some place that hosts websites for free and put it up there. If you need me to watch a stupid flash movie of something else, send the URL in plain text. Don't ever send me 10 100k photos of your wedding in one email message.
The occasional PDF is ok *sometimes* but even those can get pretty hefty. Send me a URL and I'll download it when I can plan for my connection speed to drop for everything else I'm doing.
a simple interface to a combination of a webserver and email would be nice. something that lets you "attach" something but the "attachment" is just a reference to the file you wanted attached. That file then gets uploaded automagically to your "attachment space" and the reference to it is sent in the email. the webserver having authorization requirements so only the intended person gets it. doesn't seem too hard really. a response saying the person succesfully downloaded the attachment would be nice too so you can have them automatically expire.
Hmm, yet another project to work on. Too few hours in the day.