Looking at the screenshot, does anyone else think someone at Microsoft might be trying to flee the country once Longhorn has been released? Because there seem to be an awful lot of "Booking cruises at the last minute", "BusRoutes" etc. documents in that folder...
"In Longhorn, applications will launch and load files 15 percent faster than with Windows XP."
How was the figure arrived at exactly? All applications and all files will load 15 percent faster?
"Additionally, Longhorn will feature a new instant-on capability that will see Longhorn-savvy systems resume from Standby in 2 seconds or less."
Doesn't "Longhorn-savvy" kind of imply specific hardware is required? Or is that just me? And to be honest, I wouldn't really sell this as a feature other OSs have had for years...OS X certainly starts up from standby on my iBook in under 2 seconds...
"Longhorn will more reliably resume from crashes,"
Surely time would have been better spent by programmers and engineers actually stopping the OS from crashing so much? I'm an OS X user, and I'll be the first to admit that when it does crash, it tends to crash badly, but at least (in my experience) the crashes are fairly rare (say, once a month) instead of upwards of one a day...
"One thing users should be aware of is that Longhorn will include a new kernel and will thus not offer the same level of compatibility with legacy 16-bit and 32-bit code that Windows XP does today. For business users, Microsoft believes that Virtual PC 2007 will help broaden corporations' compatibility options."
This seems like a bad idea - I'm guessing home users will also want to run legacy applications (that favourite game of your son's that you bought five years ago, that piece of productivity software you really like but can't afford an upgrade)...wouldn't it be better to do what Apple did during the switch between OS 9 & OS X, and bundle an emulator in with the OS? Rather than forcing home users to buy their own copy of Virtual PC 2007?
"Philosophically speaking, what right does one individual (the State) have to *force* another individual (me) never to choose the gender of my child?"
What right do you yourself have to choose the gender of the child? Until medical developments in scanning technology, the only way you could tell a baby's sex was when it was finally born. Back then, the only "choice" you had was the choice to kill your newborn baby, try again, and hope for the other sex. Not a particularly viable option.
Even with medical advances, you'd a damn hard time getting a (legit) abortion just because your baby "was a boy/girl".
"If it's entirely up to me what my child is given to learn while it's young, why would it be wrong then also to choose the gender of my child?"
Because the gender of your child is chosen by chance, not by what you yourself consider to be appropriate. They are two compeltely different situations, and it's pretty stupid to compare the two (although I get the impression you were inviting debate, rather than subscribing to that view).
Alternative "huge disc" format
on
Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD
·
· Score: 3, Funny
...if you really want a "huge disc" that can store video data, why not just pick up a LaserDisc - the "hugest" video disc if ever I saw one...
Because from the looks of it, this device is OS inpedendent. You could use it for anything that accepts a mouse input - even devices that use propietary OS (XBox can use a mouse, can't it?), and plus: you can take hardware with you. What if your friend doesn't have that driver installed?
...is human curiosity. Yes, there are many dangers from snooping, and there have been recent reports of prototype Bluetooth viruses - but even upgraded and securer versions of the protocol won't stop the fact that you just won't be able to refuse opening that interesting looking picture somebody is trying to send you.
I've seen it a lot at my school, whereby a particularly dodgy or deprecating picture (no goatse yet, but can't be long) is passed along in the lounges by somebody simply searching for Bluetooth phones and sending a pic, which simply can't be refused ("because it might be something important!!!"). I'd say it's even more tempting to accept a Bluetoothed file than an email attachment, because in Bluetooth you're only getting the bare information about a file (ie, the size of it and file type), whereas you can generally filter out automatically generated email viruses with ease...
The solution is to turn Bluetooth off all the time except when you want to use it (something I do anyway, since it conserves battery power), but a surprisingly large number of people seem to have it on all the time.
The BBC itself does actually want to try something similar, and you might have seen the articles here about the then director general Greg Dyke discussing a "BBC Archive", and I'm pretty sure the R&D dept. was messing around with Bit Torrent.
However, the main problem (as with the BBCs "listen again" radio feature, but far more problamatic for TV) is the Writers Guild of Great Britain, which is extremely upset that the BBC plans to offer these shows without paying royalties to the writers. They have yet to bash out an additional payment to allow this...
Re:People who liked it didn't just watch once anyw
on
New Dr. Who Episode Leaked
·
· Score: 2, Informative
"What did they lose, the ad revenue from one airing?"
You seem to have misunderstood the entire principle of the BBC...no ads at all on their UK channels.
I'm pretty sure I read ages and ages ago when I was using DAT to record things, that you could do a similar trick with normal tape and a DAT recorder...
...you would have noticed I'd preceded that quotation with "the global flyer has been designed for a speed record attempt".
I think it was fairly obvious I was referring to my previous comment, but then again, this is Slashdot, so everyone likes scoring cheap points off everyone else...
...there's a difference between the Global Flyer and the Galactic, in that the Global Flyer is a non commercial interest. The galactic carries paying passengers - I doubt the Global Flyer will ever do such a thing, given its capacity.
Further more, the global flyer has been designed for a speed record attempt, and so must be at the bleeding edge to beat what's gone before. Sure, the Galactic would also be a record breaking craft, but it isn't going to be chasing speed records. The Global Flyer has to be the fastest machine, and therefore utilise more unproven technology than, say, the Galactic.
...the logic will Walmart being able to do that, is if a supplier refuses to bow to a Walmart price cut, Walmart can simply find another supplier of the goods - the original supplier has no choice but to lower prices, or lose their contract.
However, if all the major music labels were to demand a price raise, Walmart couldn't play the same card - they can't go "We'll just find another major record label", if they're all working in a cartel.
Seems rather ironic that one dodgy business practice is beaten by another...
In a dupe story posted a few weeks back, I compared the editors of Slashdot jokingly to porn producers, and then asked how I could have made such a connection.
Well, here's another one to add to the list:
Like porn producers, Slashdot editors shamlessly take other producers' content, and don't bother to look at it.
Aside from the fact anyone with a sane mind would be able to work out it was a fake, here are a few details that might help you:
1) "FireFox is an alternative browser" - you'd never, ever, find Microsoft saying that now. They'd say "FireFox is an internet browser".
2) "May perform operations differently from the default browser" - similarly, you could have Firefox as the default browser. Microsoft would never say these on anything they produce, because it would be seen as insinuating Internet Explorer was the only "official" net browser for Windows.
But hey, when did anything like logical reasoning ever stop Slashdot editors?
Seeing as the UK already has the highest number of CCTV cameras per person in the world, and thus the dubious honour of "most watched nation", I doubt 150 would make much difference:)
It's likely that a multiplex would screen the same film on two different screens with overlapping times, so would require more than 1 copy of the film anyway.
According to a Sun press release (Sun providing the render gear for Pixar before they moved to Apple), Toy Story "uses a resolution of 1536 by 922 with an effective 48 bits per pixel."
For following films, I'm pretty sure they upped it to 2048x1536.
Slashdot Mirror
Looking at the screenshot, does anyone else think someone at Microsoft might be trying to flee the country once Longhorn has been released? Because there seem to be an awful lot of "Booking cruises at the last minute", "BusRoutes" etc. documents in that folder...
Microsoft are producing piles of shit that take so long to get out they cause the producer of said shit to suffer from piles?
From the article:
"In Longhorn, applications will launch and load files 15 percent faster than with Windows XP."
How was the figure arrived at exactly? All applications and all files will load 15 percent faster?
"Additionally, Longhorn will feature a new instant-on capability that will see Longhorn-savvy systems resume from Standby in 2 seconds or less."
Doesn't "Longhorn-savvy" kind of imply specific hardware is required? Or is that just me? And to be honest, I wouldn't really sell this as a feature other OSs have had for years...OS X certainly starts up from standby on my iBook in under 2 seconds...
"Longhorn will more reliably resume from crashes,"
Surely time would have been better spent by programmers and engineers actually stopping the OS from crashing so much? I'm an OS X user, and I'll be the first to admit that when it does crash, it tends to crash badly, but at least (in my experience) the crashes are fairly rare (say, once a month) instead of upwards of one a day...
"One thing users should be aware of is that Longhorn will include a new kernel and will thus not offer the same level of compatibility with legacy 16-bit and 32-bit code that Windows XP does today. For business users, Microsoft believes that Virtual PC 2007 will help broaden corporations' compatibility options."
This seems like a bad idea - I'm guessing home users will also want to run legacy applications (that favourite game of your son's that you bought five years ago, that piece of productivity software you really like but can't afford an upgrade)...wouldn't it be better to do what Apple did during the switch between OS 9 & OS X, and bundle an emulator in with the OS? Rather than forcing home users to buy their own copy of Virtual PC 2007?
"Philosophically speaking, what right does one individual (the State) have to *force* another individual (me) never to choose the gender of my child?"
What right do you yourself have to choose the gender of the child? Until medical developments in scanning technology, the only way you could tell a baby's sex was when it was finally born. Back then, the only "choice" you had was the choice to kill your newborn baby, try again, and hope for the other sex. Not a particularly viable option.
Even with medical advances, you'd a damn hard time getting a (legit) abortion just because your baby "was a boy/girl".
"If it's entirely up to me what my child is given to learn while it's young, why would it be wrong then also to choose the gender of my child?"
Because the gender of your child is chosen by chance, not by what you yourself consider to be appropriate. They are two compeltely different situations, and it's pretty stupid to compare the two (although I get the impression you were inviting debate, rather than subscribing to that view).
...if you really want a "huge disc" that can store video data, why not just pick up a LaserDisc - the "hugest" video disc if ever I saw one...
Because from the looks of it, this device is OS inpedendent. You could use it for anything that accepts a mouse input - even devices that use propietary OS (XBox can use a mouse, can't it?), and plus: you can take hardware with you. What if your friend doesn't have that driver installed?
...is human curiosity. Yes, there are many dangers from snooping, and there have been recent reports of prototype Bluetooth viruses - but even upgraded and securer versions of the protocol won't stop the fact that you just won't be able to refuse opening that interesting looking picture somebody is trying to send you.
I've seen it a lot at my school, whereby a particularly dodgy or deprecating picture (no goatse yet, but can't be long) is passed along in the lounges by somebody simply searching for Bluetooth phones and sending a pic, which simply can't be refused ("because it might be something important!!!"). I'd say it's even more tempting to accept a Bluetoothed file than an email attachment, because in Bluetooth you're only getting the bare information about a file (ie, the size of it and file type), whereas you can generally filter out automatically generated email viruses with ease...
The solution is to turn Bluetooth off all the time except when you want to use it (something I do anyway, since it conserves battery power), but a surprisingly large number of people seem to have it on all the time.
...at the sheer cheek of putting up a "performance comparison table" on the CherryOS website between CherryOS and PearPC...
I mean, even the name itself smacks of copyright infringement...
...there actually have been Doctor Who stage shows. Amateur things, but scripts do exist (I remember one way back about 20 years ago)...
The BBC itself does actually want to try something similar, and you might have seen the articles here about the then director general Greg Dyke discussing a "BBC Archive", and I'm pretty sure the R&D dept. was messing around with Bit Torrent.
However, the main problem (as with the BBCs "listen again" radio feature, but far more problamatic for TV) is the Writers Guild of Great Britain, which is extremely upset that the BBC plans to offer these shows without paying royalties to the writers. They have yet to bash out an additional payment to allow this...
"What did they lose, the ad revenue from one airing?"
You seem to have misunderstood the entire principle of the BBC...no ads at all on their UK channels.
I'm pretty sure I read ages and ages ago when I was using DAT to record things, that you could do a similar trick with normal tape and a DAT recorder...
...a cuddly toy. That connects to a network. And has the possibility of taking video and pictures?
Because there's nothing like increasing the range of technology available to peadophiles...
...you would have noticed I'd preceded that quotation with "the global flyer has been designed for a speed record attempt".
I think it was fairly obvious I was referring to my previous comment, but then again, this is Slashdot, so everyone likes scoring cheap points off everyone else...
...there's a difference between the Global Flyer and the Galactic, in that the Global Flyer is a non commercial interest. The galactic carries paying passengers - I doubt the Global Flyer will ever do such a thing, given its capacity.
Further more, the global flyer has been designed for a speed record attempt, and so must be at the bleeding edge to beat what's gone before. Sure, the Galactic would also be a record breaking craft, but it isn't going to be chasing speed records. The Global Flyer has to be the fastest machine, and therefore utilise more unproven technology than, say, the Galactic.
...the logic will Walmart being able to do that, is if a supplier refuses to bow to a Walmart price cut, Walmart can simply find another supplier of the goods - the original supplier has no choice but to lower prices, or lose their contract.
However, if all the major music labels were to demand a price raise, Walmart couldn't play the same card - they can't go "We'll just find another major record label", if they're all working in a cartel.
Seems rather ironic that one dodgy business practice is beaten by another...
Someone should make a audio file ringtone that says "I'm terribly sorry - it's my phone"... :)
...from this point in time onwards, anyone posting a reply saying "I can't believe they did this" will be laughed at mercilessly...
...and I predict the next Slashdot story will be: "Gullible not in dictionary" "Posted by Cmdr Taco"
In a dupe story posted a few weeks back, I compared the editors of Slashdot jokingly to porn producers, and then asked how I could have made such a connection. Well, here's another one to add to the list: Like porn producers, Slashdot editors shamlessly take other producers' content, and don't bother to look at it.
Aside from the fact anyone with a sane mind would be able to work out it was a fake, here are a few details that might help you:
1) "FireFox is an alternative browser" - you'd never, ever, find Microsoft saying that now. They'd say "FireFox is an internet browser".
2) "May perform operations differently from the default browser" - similarly, you could have Firefox as the default browser. Microsoft would never say these on anything they produce, because it would be seen as insinuating Internet Explorer was the only "official" net browser for Windows.
But hey, when did anything like logical reasoning ever stop Slashdot editors?
...is it me, or does the music produced sound suspiciously like the Civ 3 music??? :)
Seeing as the UK already has the highest number of CCTV cameras per person in the world, and thus the dubious honour of "most watched nation", I doubt 150 would make much difference :)
It's likely that a multiplex would screen the same film on two different screens with overlapping times, so would require more than 1 copy of the film anyway.
According to a Sun press release (Sun providing the render gear for Pixar before they moved to Apple), Toy Story "uses a resolution of 1536 by 922 with an effective 48 bits per pixel."
For following films, I'm pretty sure they upped it to 2048x1536.