I think you guys are missing the whole issue here.
Whatever your feelings on DRM (I personally won't buy anything DRM'd but do own an iPod; I use my CD collection) the regulation goverments are trying to do against Apple isn't whether they should or shouldn't have DRM, but rather whether or not they have to open the iTunes Store to competitors. The DRM would still be on every song.
So now that we are on the same page for whats going on and in Slashdot tradition, I am going to share my unasked for opinion on this subject.
Government to Apple: Hey apple, we know you put a ton of time and money into creating a fully integrated music/media solution for your users and were the first to really get consumers behind you...well how to put this, the other companies, nobody really wants to buy their stuff cause there are no integrated solutions for it. So do you think you could open up your online store and let everyone and their dog connect to it? We realize that this would lose you sales on your hardware which is where you make most (if not all) of your money. We also realize that when joe schmoe can't get his [insert brand] mp3 player to easily work with the store and automatically add purchased media to the mp3 player he is going to call you, despite that fact that you have nothing to do with the support of his mp3 player, thereby costing you more time and money in support. Further we understand that this will affect your image of "just works" because grandma will associate the hassle of getting her music she purchased through your store onto her [insert-brand] thereby causing damage to your image. So Apple, what do you think...you don't mind do you?
Apple to gov: Umm...how about no...
To me it just seems like the other companies (the ones too lazy to try to create their own fully integrated solution) are just trying to regulate their biggest competitor out of the business. What company would want to innovate like this in the future if they then have to open up everything they did to their competitors. It would be much easier to wait for the next guy to innovate and then force them to open up. Hence, resulting in further lack of consumer choice. And remember, if you don't like the choice, you don't have to take it (remember this isn't about DRM being there or not, the goverments aren't proposing getting rid of DRM).
The problem is not raytracing, but geometric complexity. Raytracing does not scale nicely with the amount of geometry - mainly because of the shadow rays that have to be scattered from each intersection.
Did you even read the article? I understand this is slashdot where no one RTFA but come on...
The whole benefit of raytracing, according to the article, is that it scales logarithmically with complexity (number of triangles) and shadows are free (shadows are just a side effect of raytracing, not something extra like with raster graphics). So in other words, concerning raytracing, you have to increase the complexity of a viewable scene (viewable meaning: if an object is hidden by another object, it doesn't add to the complexity) by 10 to double the computation needed vs. raster graphics which scale linearly with complexity in a scene (even non-viewable graphics add to the complexity) meaning a doubling of the complexity doubles the computation needed.
I love the spreading of FUD and FUD* in slashdot as much as the next guy, but come on...
*in this case I mean FUD as F'd Up Drivel.
You obviously read the article, but did you think to read any details on the actual device? The baseboard/motherboard has a ADC that can capture 10 million samples per second at 12 bits per sample. So doing simple math and ignoring protocol overhead to transmit all 10 million samples would require 12bits per smaple * 10 million samples per second = 120 million bits per second. USB2 has theoretical bandwidth of 480 million bits per second, so the rough back of the envelope calculations would suggest that the full 10 million samples the ADC can capture could be transmitted to the computer over USB2.
So if we assume that the all of the data can get to the computer, could the device grab all of the FM in such a format that it could be "decoded" into normal FM quality audio? Short answer, yes. The daughter cards for the baseboard/motherboard convert the signal down to an IF (intermediate frequency) within the range of the ADC. If you really want to know how IF and all that stuff works, look up FM radio on wikipedia.
What really annoys me is how you try (key word is "try") to explain that this device cannot do GPS. You do NOT need accurate timing to do GPS. Time is part of the GPS solution, so you only need a simple realitively accurate clock. The $100 handheld GPS units don't have anything more accurate than the clock in your pc, which this device would have access to (the clock in your pc, that is). In fact GPS is often used to provide timing for applications like NTP servers. Again you would need one of the daughter cards to convert the GPS signals down to an IF. The actual GPS signal (C/A-Code) is transmitted in the L1 band (1575.42 MHz) which when converted down to an IF could be handled by the ADC in the device. From there you would only need to aquire 4 satelites to get a simple PVT solution (position, velocity, and time). And, FYI, GPS in certain applications and situations can give accuracy to within cm range (mm range if using differential GPS and post processing which this device could do).
So before posting as if you are an expert, look up some stuff on what you are writing...or at least explain that you aren't positive on how everything works but you don't think it could do what it claims. And yes, I actually work doing military GPS for a company and have a BS in EE with a concentration in communications (so I should hopefully know what I am talking about).
The Mac has things like the eject button on it -- there's no way on the case to open the DVD drive door -- and volume controls. How will that work?
Macs work fine using generic PC keyboards. For instance, on a keyboard without an eject button, Mac OS X uses the F12 key as the eject button. And for audio controls, if your keyboard has any audio controls, such as a Dell keyboard, from my experience the audio keys map perfectly fine. Also using Mac OS X, you can remap the keys pretty easily or add keyboard shortcuts to get you things like drive doors and volume controls.
As for mice, I have never had an issue using anykind of mouse with a Mac. Most mice work perfectly fine without any issue. Also the mouse buttons can be remapped to what ever you want. Though to get the full use of one of those 7 button mouses you will probably need to use either a driver or external program like USB Overdrive http://www.usboverdrive.com/. I personally usually use a microsoft optical mouse on my mac (its cheap, solid and works really well on my glass desk surface) and I have never had an issue with OS X supporting it perfectly. On a side note, I have also worked in a lab where some of the users were left handed or preferred specific mice, which means at one point we had 3 mice connected to a computer at the same time, and all of them were properly supported and worked (one mouse on the right side for us obviously superior right handed people (we live longer), one mouse on the left for you lefties out there, and the special mouse for the guy who refused to use the standard lab mice).
Macs do show a preview of the picture instead of the icon for JPEGs IF the user has clicked on the file in the finder window (the three panel view), in which case it also will have text telling the user the type of file. In this it would continue to display the JPEG icon instead of showing a preview of the picture and the text would tell you it was an "application (powerpc)" or something like that.
Another thing of note is that if this file was downloaded through safari, safari would attempt to uncompress the file and then warn the user that there are executable files in the compressed file, asking if the user wants to continue (uncompressing the file). So if it was downloaded through safari, the user would be notified of the file's applicationess vs. normal jpegness. Also, safari does not ever execute downloaded files for the user. I am not certain, but I would guess that using iChat would do the same with a downloaded/transfered file. Also, apple has a finder option to always display the file extension of every file (off by default) which would make this file be titled something like "newOSpreview.jpeg.app" which would hopefully catch the user's attention. One other thing to note is that if the user downloaded the file using safari, the default save location is the desktop which would mean the user wouldn't get the aforementioned preview of the file if they clicked on it (or double clicked).
The trade off here is that with customizable icons, the applications (which are often executed from the dock or the finder) are more identifiable to users vs. the way kde does it. Under Mac OS X the user would only have the application name to find a file, which is far more difficult then identifing an icon of the application wanted. However kde uses a "launch" button much like windows so identifing an application (or executable script or whatnot) by icon is not needed.
Anyone else think of what would happen if this became a standard feature. Sure it may be nice to not have to touch a single button, but as soon as Hollywood can have a show DRM'd to a specific person rather than a specific machine, don't you think they would.
Tinfoil hats aside, Hollywood dictating per-person DRM doesn't seem to be too big of a jump for me. I certainly can't wait for the day that I can't watch a recorded show just because I wasn't the one to record it. Go tivo!
Interesting, I wonder have you spent much time using panther on an older Mac?
I run Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) on an original Bondi Blue iMac and the Mac OS interface is just as responsive as OS 9 was on it and surprisingly faster than XP on my 900mzh IBM Thinkpad T22. To get XP to run acceptable on my laptop, I have turned off all the eyecandy because it slows down the computer too much.
Now I am not saying that Quartz won't run better on a machine with a nice graphics card, it will. On my iMac the processor usage is far higher than on a Mac that has a better graphics card...in this case, more than the 4 megs of video memory my Mac has.
Also as a side note, Quartz is the regular 2D rendering engine for the Mac, Quartz Extreme is the 2D rendering engine that offloads the graphics to the GPU. On an older mac like mine, 233mhz original iMac, Panther does not/cannot use Quartz extreme, the GPU is too crappy, heck it was crappy when the computer came out though it suited me. On newer Macs, there is a utility that comes with the developer kit that turns off Quartz extreme, for testing how an app will run on a computer with a GPU that doesn't meet the requirements for running Quartz Extreme. Using this tool one can compare how offloading the eyecandy and such can easily free up the processor and make the whole system run lightening fast. To restate, Quartz runs on older computers without a GPU that meets the requirements for Quartz Extreme. Without Quartz extreme running certain eyecandy features will not run, like the spinning cube when swiching between logged in users.
Yeah...this is slashdot so ignorance is acceptable. Let me quickly explain how a space elevator is supposed to work.
An EXTREMELY strong tether is fixed to a large mass far out in orbit, this mass along with the earth's rotation hold the tether very taut and allows for smaller masses to scale up it. Much like if you tied a small weight to a string and whirled it around your head, imagine a small robot climbing the string...thats the idea of a space elevator.
The issue with the idea of a space elevator currently is the technology that would go into the tether. It is believed that many strands of carbon nano tubes, those tiny super strong tubes grown/created long and attached together, would be able to withstand the stress.
Next the tether would not be round like a rope, but flat like a belt. Being flat, it would be much harder to get twisted if sufficient force is applied to each end, pulling the ends apart.
It is secure and it allows encrypted communications to be spied on. What they don't tell you is that the encrypted comunications are encrypted using standard encryption methods around today. Things that can be cracked by exhaustive search.
Using a quantum computer it can search every possible key simultaneously, cracking the encryption almost instantly. An example to understand this, you are in a building searching for your briefcase. Normal computers would go through every room one by one until they find it. A quantum computer would find the briefcase by existing in every room at the same time, finally settling (existance wise) in the room with the briefcase.
They also mention quantum cryptography being uncrackable, this is true. If someone eaves drops on communication that is encrypted, it inherently destroys the data. The users will recognize intrusion and the eavesdropper cannot decrypt the message because the data has been destroyed.
So yes, quantum computers can decrypt normal encryption that can be broken by exhaustive search and they can be used to provide quantum cryptograph which is a theoretically unbreakable form of communication.
Actually that isn't information I heard word of mouth, but you are correct, the Windows media 9 DRM can be turned off. However it is on by default and from personal experiance, most users I run into have no idea any DRM is being applied or that there is any option to turning it off.
You are correct though, I should have given the whole story, that by default there is DRM but it can be turned off, rather than assuming people knew what I meant and further perpetuating a common misconception.
That being said, the rest of my orignial post should be correct. Though let it be known, I think windows media 9 audio encoding is about the worst quality of any encoding option, and the player is the worst option to go with when considering all the options. OGG in my opinion is good, and if AAC wasn't around I would probably be using it, however after comparing files ripped from cd to OGG and AAC, I (opinion here) think that AAC is the better encoding option if you aren't going lossless.
J2ME standands for Java 2 Micro Edition, a subset of J2SE, Java 2 Standard Edition. J2ME is meant for devices with limited resources. Wow, how did that get through to the front page...
DRM? I think you have your facts wrong there buddy...of course this is/. so misinformed seems to be a prerequisite for posting.
First off, AAC, the standard that iTunes compresses to, is an open standard based on mpeg 4. Unlike Windows media 9, it adds no DRM to music you rip from a cd. You can take those AAC files and play them in any player that supports the OPEN standard of AAC, Advanced Audio Codec, the Audio portion of Mpeg 4. Also you can play a ton of other formats on iPods, AIFF, mp3, wav... and so on. In case you have something against AAC, which in my opinion is the best sounding format by far, you can rip songs through iTunes to VBR MP3. The only time any DRM is involved is if you buy music from the iTMS, which you certainly don't have to do unless you want to.
As for Linux, I would bet that apple is trying to come up with a way to get iTunes to Linux. Of course you have to understand that there are many different distributions to support and they aren't about to distribute iTunes as source to be compiled on each individual distribution. Hence getting itunes to linux is harder than porting to windows. Think about how many different windowing environments there are.
Anyways, until hardware prices drop you aren't going to see Apple dropping their prices. And I think if they could drop their prices while maintaining their profit ratio, they would. Why wouldn't they want to gain more of the mp3 player market?
Just make sure you aren't misinforming other people here because you are only relaying information you heard word of mouth. Do some research before you go spouting opinions as fact.
It appears to me that you have never used a mac. For that matter have you used firefox? The new plugin architecture is said to be based off the mozilla plugin architecture. What apple would do, actually already done by mozilla rather well, is allow the user to install a plugin by clicking a link, rather than having to download a plugin/installer and manually put it in the correct folder or have to search the net for the correct plugin to work for their particular architecture and system.
Apple never does anything without the user agreeing to it. What apple does is make it easy for the user to do what they want to do. Rather than on windows and linux where you have to hunt for every option you want. (not saying these systems have less functionality, in fact for the more complex and less used functions/power user functions, they can be easier to do on these systems.) You seem to be under the impression that apple thinks its users are idiots who shouldn't be told what is happening. Rather apple just provides an interface that in my opinion is better designed and therefore simpler to use.
I would argue that this is not making malware a write-once-run-anywhere thing. It would still come down to the idiot user installing the plugin (whether by clicking a simple link that works for all browsers or downloading and manually installing a plugin). My guess also is that in order to prevent malware, the plugins would have some restrictions on what they can do to the system. In other words I doubt malware plugins (because we will always have the idiot user who installs a plugin just because a web page tells him to, usually a porn page or something) that get installed will be destructive to the system, perhaps annoying, but not destructive.
This will be far superior to IE where if i just visit a site, i can get infected by malware. Rather there would have to be user interaction to install a plugin. Also unlike IE where if i shutdown the browser the malware is still running, if i shutdown the browsers with this standard plugin architecture the plugins will no longer run.
So before you go spouting off 'Facts' perhaps check them for yourself. It doesn't do any of us any good to just propogate rumors.
He was complaining about the OS...thats why continuously throughout the article he mentions how the thing froze and locked up...if that isn't OS related, what is? Sure he has many misconceptions of what is and isn't the OS, but he is right about the locking up.
The sluggish response can also be do to the OS. Anyone ever run windows and have everything completely slow down for a few minutes while the OS goes and takes a dump out back somewhere? It no doubt is probably due to a poor implementation of Linux, but none the less half the issues he mentions are do to the OS, not necessarily to it being Linux. He mentions how he knows Linux can be exceedingly good, but this particular implementation is crap.
Yeah, i realized that after i posted it...I reread 112(7)(a) and found that out. I gave up reading after a while, but somewhere in that thing i know that the clause for fair use including recording broadcast programs is mentioned. Thanks for the catch on it though.
This is interesting, I really don't see how this could be bad, aside from having an ugly house or yard. Actually Europe (more specifically france) has things like this, in their internet yellow pages, there is a picture of every single address. Works great when you are looking for hotels (which is how I found) and want to know what the area looks like.
I can really only see how this can help things, like historical data...how an area looked in a hundred years or something, or with research into an area.
You may not be in possesion of a license to the music, but you still have a right to record a copy for personal use. Look Here Section 112 part 7a, you have a right to make a recording of a broadcast. I am sure there are other references and such throughout the dissaster we call US copyright law.
The point is that the record industry is trying to take away a right we have and have had more or less since broadcasts came about, the right to make a copy of the broadcast for "personal use". THis is fair use as described in copyright law, you just don't have the right to distribute that copy.
The US doesn't cut off GPS or turn off satelites ever. What they can do is add an error to the signal being sent. The did this in the early years of GPS. The military knows the error so they can correct for it, however the general populous and other militaries do not know how to correct the error, so in effect, while everyone can still use GPS, the US militaries use of it is orders of magnitude better than anyone elses.
However, know that this option hasn't been used in at least the past 3 years. (I know this because I work on GPS/Inertial navigation systems used in every commercial airplane in the world.)
While it is completely true that financing a business with debt will usually allow for greater returns, in Apple's case, this would not make any sense.
Using debt is only good if you have investments to spend the money one. Apple has many investment opportunites, but do you really think they have $4.8 billion dollars worth of investing they can do inside their own company?
The $4.8 bil in "cash" that Apple has is not sitting in some bank somewhere. Apple actually has that money invested. And since Apple has all of the $4.8 bil invested, it makes no sense to keep $300M in debt. Now as I said before, they could not possible invest $4.8 billion in their own company, can you imagine being R&D with a budget of $4.8b? Rather they use the $4.8 billion to invest in other companies. They generate a lot of profit by using the money to loan out to other companies.
So while they front as being one of the best computer companies, they actually generate as much profit essentially being a bank to other companies. If you take a look at Apple's financial filings, it shows where all this money is being used and invested.
Hey whatever keeps the money coming in so they can keep making cool hardware and software...
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I think you guys are missing the whole issue here.
Whatever your feelings on DRM (I personally won't buy anything DRM'd but do own an iPod; I use my CD collection) the regulation goverments are trying to do against Apple isn't whether they should or shouldn't have DRM, but rather whether or not they have to open the iTunes Store to competitors. The DRM would still be on every song.
So now that we are on the same page for whats going on and in Slashdot tradition, I am going to share my unasked for opinion on this subject.
Government to Apple: Hey apple, we know you put a ton of time and money into creating a fully integrated music/media solution for your users and were the first to really get consumers behind you...well how to put this, the other companies, nobody really wants to buy their stuff cause there are no integrated solutions for it. So do you think you could open up your online store and let everyone and their dog connect to it? We realize that this would lose you sales on your hardware which is where you make most (if not all) of your money. We also realize that when joe schmoe can't get his [insert brand] mp3 player to easily work with the store and automatically add purchased media to the mp3 player he is going to call you, despite that fact that you have nothing to do with the support of his mp3 player, thereby costing you more time and money in support. Further we understand that this will affect your image of "just works" because grandma will associate the hassle of getting her music she purchased through your store onto her [insert-brand] thereby causing damage to your image. So Apple, what do you think...you don't mind do you?
Apple to gov: Umm...how about no...
To me it just seems like the other companies (the ones too lazy to try to create their own fully integrated solution) are just trying to regulate their biggest competitor out of the business. What company would want to innovate like this in the future if they then have to open up everything they did to their competitors. It would be much easier to wait for the next guy to innovate and then force them to open up. Hence, resulting in further lack of consumer choice. And remember, if you don't like the choice, you don't have to take it (remember this isn't about DRM being there or not, the goverments aren't proposing getting rid of DRM).
Just my 2c (or 2p for you Euro guys).
Did you even read the article? I understand this is slashdot where no one RTFA but come on...
The whole benefit of raytracing, according to the article, is that it scales logarithmically with complexity (number of triangles) and shadows are free (shadows are just a side effect of raytracing, not something extra like with raster graphics). So in other words, concerning raytracing, you have to increase the complexity of a viewable scene (viewable meaning: if an object is hidden by another object, it doesn't add to the complexity) by 10 to double the computation needed vs. raster graphics which scale linearly with complexity in a scene (even non-viewable graphics add to the complexity) meaning a doubling of the complexity doubles the computation needed.
I love the spreading of FUD and FUD* in slashdot as much as the next guy, but come on...
*in this case I mean FUD as F'd Up Drivel.
You obviously read the article, but did you think to read any details on the actual device? The baseboard/motherboard has a ADC that can capture 10 million samples per second at 12 bits per sample. So doing simple math and ignoring protocol overhead to transmit all 10 million samples would require 12bits per smaple * 10 million samples per second = 120 million bits per second. USB2 has theoretical bandwidth of 480 million bits per second, so the rough back of the envelope calculations would suggest that the full 10 million samples the ADC can capture could be transmitted to the computer over USB2.
So if we assume that the all of the data can get to the computer, could the device grab all of the FM in such a format that it could be "decoded" into normal FM quality audio? Short answer, yes. The daughter cards for the baseboard/motherboard convert the signal down to an IF (intermediate frequency) within the range of the ADC. If you really want to know how IF and all that stuff works, look up FM radio on wikipedia.
What really annoys me is how you try (key word is "try") to explain that this device cannot do GPS. You do NOT need accurate timing to do GPS. Time is part of the GPS solution, so you only need a simple realitively accurate clock. The $100 handheld GPS units don't have anything more accurate than the clock in your pc, which this device would have access to (the clock in your pc, that is). In fact GPS is often used to provide timing for applications like NTP servers. Again you would need one of the daughter cards to convert the GPS signals down to an IF. The actual GPS signal (C/A-Code) is transmitted in the L1 band (1575.42 MHz) which when converted down to an IF could be handled by the ADC in the device. From there you would only need to aquire 4 satelites to get a simple PVT solution (position, velocity, and time). And, FYI, GPS in certain applications and situations can give accuracy to within cm range (mm range if using differential GPS and post processing which this device could do).
So before posting as if you are an expert, look up some stuff on what you are writing...or at least explain that you aren't positive on how everything works but you don't think it could do what it claims. And yes, I actually work doing military GPS for a company and have a BS in EE with a concentration in communications (so I should hopefully know what I am talking about).
Macs work fine using generic PC keyboards. For instance, on a keyboard without an eject button, Mac OS X uses the F12 key as the eject button. And for audio controls, if your keyboard has any audio controls, such as a Dell keyboard, from my experience the audio keys map perfectly fine. Also using Mac OS X, you can remap the keys pretty easily or add keyboard shortcuts to get you things like drive doors and volume controls.
As for mice, I have never had an issue using anykind of mouse with a Mac. Most mice work perfectly fine without any issue. Also the mouse buttons can be remapped to what ever you want. Though to get the full use of one of those 7 button mouses you will probably need to use either a driver or external program like USB Overdrive http://www.usboverdrive.com/. I personally usually use a microsoft optical mouse on my mac (its cheap, solid and works really well on my glass desk surface) and I have never had an issue with OS X supporting it perfectly. On a side note, I have also worked in a lab where some of the users were left handed or preferred specific mice, which means at one point we had 3 mice connected to a computer at the same time, and all of them were properly supported and worked (one mouse on the right side for us obviously superior right handed people (we live longer), one mouse on the left for you lefties out there, and the special mouse for the guy who refused to use the standard lab mice).
Macs do show a preview of the picture instead of the icon for JPEGs IF the user has clicked on the file in the finder window (the three panel view), in which case it also will have text telling the user the type of file. In this it would continue to display the JPEG icon instead of showing a preview of the picture and the text would tell you it was an "application (powerpc)" or something like that.
Another thing of note is that if this file was downloaded through safari, safari would attempt to uncompress the file and then warn the user that there are executable files in the compressed file, asking if the user wants to continue (uncompressing the file). So if it was downloaded through safari, the user would be notified of the file's applicationess vs. normal jpegness. Also, safari does not ever execute downloaded files for the user. I am not certain, but I would guess that using iChat would do the same with a downloaded/transfered file. Also, apple has a finder option to always display the file extension of every file (off by default) which would make this file be titled something like "newOSpreview.jpeg.app" which would hopefully catch the user's attention. One other thing to note is that if the user downloaded the file using safari, the default save location is the desktop which would mean the user wouldn't get the aforementioned preview of the file if they clicked on it (or double clicked).
The trade off here is that with customizable icons, the applications (which are often executed from the dock or the finder) are more identifiable to users vs. the way kde does it. Under Mac OS X the user would only have the application name to find a file, which is far more difficult then identifing an icon of the application wanted. However kde uses a "launch" button much like windows so identifing an application (or executable script or whatnot) by icon is not needed.
Anyone else think of what would happen if this became a standard feature. Sure it may be nice to not have to touch a single button, but as soon as Hollywood can have a show DRM'd to a specific person rather than a specific machine, don't you think they would.
Tinfoil hats aside, Hollywood dictating per-person DRM doesn't seem to be too big of a jump for me. I certainly can't wait for the day that I can't watch a recorded show just because I wasn't the one to record it. Go tivo!
Interesting, I wonder have you spent much time using panther on an older Mac?
I run Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) on an original Bondi Blue iMac and the Mac OS interface is just as responsive as OS 9 was on it and surprisingly faster than XP on my 900mzh IBM Thinkpad T22. To get XP to run acceptable on my laptop, I have turned off all the eyecandy because it slows down the computer too much.
Now I am not saying that Quartz won't run better on a machine with a nice graphics card, it will. On my iMac the processor usage is far higher than on a Mac that has a better graphics card...in this case, more than the 4 megs of video memory my Mac has.
Also as a side note, Quartz is the regular 2D rendering engine for the Mac, Quartz Extreme is the 2D rendering engine that offloads the graphics to the GPU. On an older mac like mine, 233mhz original iMac, Panther does not/cannot use Quartz extreme, the GPU is too crappy, heck it was crappy when the computer came out though it suited me. On newer Macs, there is a utility that comes with the developer kit that turns off Quartz extreme, for testing how an app will run on a computer with a GPU that doesn't meet the requirements for running Quartz Extreme. Using this tool one can compare how offloading the eyecandy and such can easily free up the processor and make the whole system run lightening fast. To restate, Quartz runs on older computers without a GPU that meets the requirements for Quartz Extreme. Without Quartz extreme running certain eyecandy features will not run, like the spinning cube when swiching between logged in users.
Yeah...this is slashdot so ignorance is acceptable. Let me quickly explain how a space elevator is supposed to work.
y /space_elevator_020327-1.html
An EXTREMELY strong tether is fixed to a large mass far out in orbit, this mass along with the earth's rotation hold the tether very taut and allows for smaller masses to scale up it. Much like if you tied a small weight to a string and whirled it around your head, imagine a small robot climbing the string...thats the idea of a space elevator.
The issue with the idea of a space elevator currently is the technology that would go into the tether. It is believed that many strands of carbon nano tubes, those tiny super strong tubes grown/created long and attached together, would be able to withstand the stress.
Next the tether would not be round like a rope, but flat like a belt. Being flat, it would be much harder to get twisted if sufficient force is applied to each end, pulling the ends apart.
So that is the general idea the theory behind space elevators...I am sure I left some details out and all, but here is a decent link if you want to learn more. http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technolog
It is secure and it allows encrypted communications to be spied on. What they don't tell you is that the encrypted comunications are encrypted using standard encryption methods around today. Things that can be cracked by exhaustive search.
Using a quantum computer it can search every possible key simultaneously, cracking the encryption almost instantly. An example to understand this, you are in a building searching for your briefcase. Normal computers would go through every room one by one until they find it. A quantum computer would find the briefcase by existing in every room at the same time, finally settling (existance wise) in the room with the briefcase.
They also mention quantum cryptography being uncrackable, this is true. If someone eaves drops on communication that is encrypted, it inherently destroys the data. The users will recognize intrusion and the eavesdropper cannot decrypt the message because the data has been destroyed.
So yes, quantum computers can decrypt normal encryption that can be broken by exhaustive search and they can be used to provide quantum cryptograph which is a theoretically unbreakable form of communication.
Actually that isn't information I heard word of mouth, but you are correct, the Windows media 9 DRM can be turned off. However it is on by default and from personal experiance, most users I run into have no idea any DRM is being applied or that there is any option to turning it off.
You are correct though, I should have given the whole story, that by default there is DRM but it can be turned off, rather than assuming people knew what I meant and further perpetuating a common misconception.
That being said, the rest of my orignial post should be correct. Though let it be known, I think windows media 9 audio encoding is about the worst quality of any encoding option, and the player is the worst option to go with when considering all the options. OGG in my opinion is good, and if AAC wasn't around I would probably be using it, however after comparing files ripped from cd to OGG and AAC, I (opinion here) think that AAC is the better encoding option if you aren't going lossless.
That should clear things up I hope.
J2ME standands for Java 2 Micro Edition, a subset of J2SE, Java 2 Standard Edition. J2ME is meant for devices with limited resources. Wow, how did that get through to the front page...
Heres a link...http://java.sun.com/j2me/index.jsp
DRM? I think you have your facts wrong there buddy...of course this is /. so misinformed seems to be a prerequisite for posting.
... and so on. In case you have something against AAC, which in my opinion is the best sounding format by far, you can rip songs through iTunes to VBR MP3. The only time any DRM is involved is if you buy music from the iTMS, which you certainly don't have to do unless you want to.
First off, AAC, the standard that iTunes compresses to, is an open standard based on mpeg 4. Unlike Windows media 9, it adds no DRM to music you rip from a cd. You can take those AAC files and play them in any player that supports the OPEN standard of AAC, Advanced Audio Codec, the Audio portion of Mpeg 4. Also you can play a ton of other formats on iPods, AIFF, mp3, wav
As for Linux, I would bet that apple is trying to come up with a way to get iTunes to Linux. Of course you have to understand that there are many different distributions to support and they aren't about to distribute iTunes as source to be compiled on each individual distribution. Hence getting itunes to linux is harder than porting to windows. Think about how many different windowing environments there are.
Anyways, until hardware prices drop you aren't going to see Apple dropping their prices. And I think if they could drop their prices while maintaining their profit ratio, they would. Why wouldn't they want to gain more of the mp3 player market?
Just make sure you aren't misinforming other people here because you are only relaying information you heard word of mouth. Do some research before you go spouting opinions as fact.
It appears to me that you have never used a mac. For that matter have you used firefox? The new plugin architecture is said to be based off the mozilla plugin architecture. What apple would do, actually already done by mozilla rather well, is allow the user to install a plugin by clicking a link, rather than having to download a plugin/installer and manually put it in the correct folder or have to search the net for the correct plugin to work for their particular architecture and system.
Apple never does anything without the user agreeing to it. What apple does is make it easy for the user to do what they want to do. Rather than on windows and linux where you have to hunt for every option you want. (not saying these systems have less functionality, in fact for the more complex and less used functions/power user functions, they can be easier to do on these systems.) You seem to be under the impression that apple thinks its users are idiots who shouldn't be told what is happening. Rather apple just provides an interface that in my opinion is better designed and therefore simpler to use.
I would argue that this is not making malware a write-once-run-anywhere thing. It would still come down to the idiot user installing the plugin (whether by clicking a simple link that works for all browsers or downloading and manually installing a plugin). My guess also is that in order to prevent malware, the plugins would have some restrictions on what they can do to the system. In other words I doubt malware plugins (because we will always have the idiot user who installs a plugin just because a web page tells him to, usually a porn page or something) that get installed will be destructive to the system, perhaps annoying, but not destructive.
This will be far superior to IE where if i just visit a site, i can get infected by malware. Rather there would have to be user interaction to install a plugin. Also unlike IE where if i shutdown the browser the malware is still running, if i shutdown the browsers with this standard plugin architecture the plugins will no longer run.
So before you go spouting off 'Facts' perhaps check them for yourself. It doesn't do any of us any good to just propogate rumors.
My $.02 -Peace
He was complaining about the OS...thats why continuously throughout the article he mentions how the thing froze and locked up...if that isn't OS related, what is? Sure he has many misconceptions of what is and isn't the OS, but he is right about the locking up.
The sluggish response can also be do to the OS. Anyone ever run windows and have everything completely slow down for a few minutes while the OS goes and takes a dump out back somewhere? It no doubt is probably due to a poor implementation of Linux, but none the less half the issues he mentions are do to the OS, not necessarily to it being Linux. He mentions how he knows Linux can be exceedingly good, but this particular implementation is crap.
Yeah, i realized that after i posted it...I reread 112(7)(a) and found that out. I gave up reading after a while, but somewhere in that thing i know that the clause for fair use including recording broadcast programs is mentioned. Thanks for the catch on it though.
This is interesting, I really don't see how this could be bad, aside from having an ugly house or yard. Actually Europe (more specifically france) has things like this, in their internet yellow pages, there is a picture of every single address. Works great when you are looking for hotels (which is how I found) and want to know what the area looks like.
I can really only see how this can help things, like historical data...how an area looked in a hundred years or something, or with research into an area.
You may not be in possesion of a license to the music, but you still have a right to record a copy for personal use. Look Here Section 112 part 7a, you have a right to make a recording of a broadcast. I am sure there are other references and such throughout the dissaster we call US copyright law.
The point is that the record industry is trying to take away a right we have and have had more or less since broadcasts came about, the right to make a copy of the broadcast for "personal use". THis is fair use as described in copyright law, you just don't have the right to distribute that copy.
The US doesn't cut off GPS or turn off satelites ever. What they can do is add an error to the signal being sent. The did this in the early years of GPS. The military knows the error so they can correct for it, however the general populous and other militaries do not know how to correct the error, so in effect, while everyone can still use GPS, the US militaries use of it is orders of magnitude better than anyone elses.
However, know that this option hasn't been used in at least the past 3 years. (I know this because I work on GPS/Inertial navigation systems used in every commercial airplane in the world.)
While it is completely true that financing a business with debt will usually allow for greater returns, in Apple's case, this would not make any sense.
Using debt is only good if you have investments to spend the money one. Apple has many investment opportunites, but do you really think they have $4.8 billion dollars worth of investing they can do inside their own company?
The $4.8 bil in "cash" that Apple has is not sitting in some bank somewhere. Apple actually has that money invested. And since Apple has all of the $4.8 bil invested, it makes no sense to keep $300M in debt. Now as I said before, they could not possible invest $4.8 billion in their own company, can you imagine being R&D with a budget of $4.8b? Rather they use the $4.8 billion to invest in other companies. They generate a lot of profit by using the money to loan out to other companies.
So while they front as being one of the best computer companies, they actually generate as much profit essentially being a bank to other companies. If you take a look at Apple's financial filings, it shows where all this money is being used and invested.
Hey whatever keeps the money coming in so they can keep making cool hardware and software...