If you're voting to save your dollars, which is what the OSS people are advocating, then buying a more expensive Macintosh is counter to your intended goals, and you still might end up running MSOffice on that Mac.
I guess you haven't seen the prices of today's Macs, they generally have the same prices as equivalently equipped PCs. Unfortunately Apple does not offer low priced expandable computers like most PC OEMs do. And not everyone uses MSOffice. The last verson I got is Office 97 and I haven't used it in a few years. Though I'm using a Windows PC, an HP PC, now I've decided when I get a new laptop I'll get a Macbook Pro. I was thinking about getting Apple's Keynotes for an office suite however I've decided I'll tryout the Mac version of OO, NeoOffice, first. If MS didn't treat it's customers like criminals then I probably wouldn't mind too much continuing to use Windows.
If they change the format they force us all to upgrade to maintain the ability to freely access and exchange our data with each other. MS can choose to change the rules at any time. Or they could just get out of the wordprocessing business altogether, leaving us high and dry.
Ah but MS does change the.doc format. Everytims MS releases a new Office/Word app the format is changed. While you can open an old document in a Office version and keep to formatting, you can't do the same and keep the formatting of a document created in the new version when opened in an old app. If I were to create a document in Office XP I would not be able to open it and have it properly displayed in Office 97 for instance. I have opened old documents in a newer Office only to have the app ask me if I want to convert the format to the new version.
This just proves how much of a threat MS perceives OO.o and other open source projects.
While I agree with this sentiment I don't like the fact the bill's author snuck in the bill at the last minute a clause advocating open data formats so no one woud notice it. And what really gets me about this is Florida is supposed to have a "Sunshine law" where all of government is supposed to open up information, meetings, and records. What he should of done instead was to have hearings on this.
If vinyl turntables (with USB, natch) used a laser pickup instead of a mechanical stylus, vinyl would be a lot more popular. Then records wouldn't wear out nearly as much. They could be sold used for more money with less damage. And a laser turntable could scan a record at high speed (maybe 333 1/3 RPM, 100x) for portable (lower-fi) playing on iPod, mobile phone, etc.
Want a turntable with a laser stylus? Check out ELP Laser Turntable. Wish I could afford one.
What do you think is coming over the USB connection? Analog audio? or digital audio? And what do you think your computer is doing when it plays it over the speakers. Playing the bits or converting them back to audio.
Listening to music on a computer may simply be a matter of convenience. I guess you missed where I said I liked to listen to my music on my reel-to-reel tape deck and that if I get a turntable I may also get a new tape deck. Personally I don't listen to music on my computer, at home I have a stereo with 2 tape decks built in and other than an analogue radio I play when I sleep and the car radio that's all I listen to music on. Well, and a flute I'm trying to learn to play, I used to play the clarinet but that was many years ago.
If records really want to make a comeback, they'll come up with a nondestructive way to read the disc, like a laser beam.
Forget cds, try this. It is a turntable with a laser needle.
I agree that high quality analog recordings are a good thing to keep around for posterity, but analog recordings certainly aren't better for home reproduction (they'll get a little worse every time you play them)
Do the same thing I used to do, the first tyme I played an LP/EP record I'd record it on my reel-to-reel tape deck then put the record away for safe keeping and play the tape. Yea, sure the tape eventually wears out but you've still got the vinyl you can record again.
Repeated play degrades a record, while it doesn't really degrade a CD.
With the newer needles records can't be scratched, there isn't really a physical needle instead lasers are used, at least in high end turntables. Here's one.
record player with USB? doesn't that defeat the purpose of analog sound quality?
No, you can still hookup the turntable to the amplifier. The usb port simply allows you to listen to the music on your computer, or you can digitize the music.
vinyl also has the benefit of wearing out and making you have to re-purchase albums periodically
Some of us were a bit more careful with our vinyl. As part of my stereo eq I had a reel-to-reel tape deck and the first tyme I played a new vinyl album I would record it on tape then I'd put the vinyl away and play the tape. I don't have my eq anymore but if I can find a store that sales new vinyl, preferably locally, I may go ahead and buy a new turntable and tape deck. Though I haven't seen any reel-to-reels in stores, I have found then online, I have seen turntables in stores.
That's so last year. I'm going to digital Vinyl, I take my Vinyl records, convert them to MP3 then send this out over a modem which I then record as analog audio on the vinyl record. This way I don't encounter the dynamic range limitations of the vinyl.
Why wold you want to degrade music on vinyl like that? You're degrading it when you concert from analogue to digital then again coverting it back to analogue.
Personally I prefer my music analogue to begin with. What I used to do when I got a new album is the first tyme I played it I would record it on my reel-to-reel tape deck. I would then put the vinyl away and play the tape. Unfortunately I lost my stereo eq years ago, however I've been seeing turntables in stores the past several months, some with usb ports. So I've been thinking of getting a new turntable, and maybe a new tape deck, myself. But I'm looking for a store that sales new vinyl before I get one.
genetic engineering is vital to our survival and evolution as sepcies
I have yet to see any proof or concrete evidence that suggests never mind says that genetic engineering is essential to human survival in the next milia. It's certainly not needed to grow enough food for everyone. Enough food is already grown for everyone however because of politics and other human caused problems many people don't get the food they need. Take Zimbabwe. The country used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa. However once Pres. Mugabe forced white farmers off their farms and gave them to his cronies those farms became fallow, uncultivated, so it no longer produces the food it used to.
Or take Mexico. Many in the US are worried about all those "illegal aliens" or immigrants yet they rarely ask why they are here or trying to get to the US. Many of them do because they are Mexican farmers are being driven off their farms. This is due to NAFTA and the massive subsidies the US government gives to agribusinesses. These US companies are then able to export food to Mexico where they can sale it for less than Mexican farmers can grow the food themselves.
Uhm, that must be a web only article, it's dated 6 April 2007 and isn't in my paper edition for May 2007. And I don't recall it being in April's edition.
I'd think bees have killed far more people than mobile phones ever have.
I don't know about this, personally I think people talking on their cellphones while driving is a serious risk. While driving I frequently barely avoid accidents because some asshole was talking on their phone and not paying attention to traffic. I have a cellphone, it's the only phone I have, but I use a handless set and pull over when I receive a call. And I never make a call while driving.
I wonder if the use of GMO in the US has anything to do with it. Why it would I can not say but with changed dna in plants then it certainly would have changed the pollen as well.
Thouhg I don't know if any are on the market now, for human consumption, some crops are engineered to create thier own pestices, specifically Bt. Corn was engineered years ago to produce Bt, it had an adverse effect: Biotech corn toxic to butterflies, study finds. Who knows if this may be effecting bees as well. It might but I doubt GMO crops are grown everywhere where bees are dying off.
Duh, it's for the children. Don't you know how much bee stings hurt?:)
(And they really hurt me - I'm deathly allergic to the little buggers... But I'm not a children. I'm a fat, lazy, balding old man, so nobody would do anything on my account.)
I was the opposite. Growing up I used to freak out people by catching bees, well really I'd place my hand where bees would crawl on it. I only recall being stung once, when a wasp got trapped in a classroom of mine in high school I tried to get it to go outside when it stung me.
Oh, and for the record, that Puff Daddy song, I'll Be Missing You [wikipedia.org]? That was written by this dude called Sting, in a song called Every Breath You Take in 1983.
This reminds me of Madonna's song "lucky Star". Originally it was a Ragtime song from the early 1900's.
So that's where our warm weather went. It's unseasonably cold in the States right now. In Chicago we have been 15-20F below the norm. Give it back!
Funny, I'm in the Twin cities, Minneapolis/St Paul, northwest of you and it's warmer now than normal. Several days ago we had temps up to the 80s F one day. Then the next we got around one or two inchs of snow only to see it melted within several hours. I've got a thermometer I keep outside, and I just stepped out to check it and it says 58. Yet the temp have dropped some since today's high. Gosh, I love gardening. And I want to work on my garden, the day it got up to the lower 80's I went out to a few garden shops but after I saw no one had anything more than seeds I recalled the last frost date is in the second week of May here, a month away.
To me the theory being greeted by a number of bad jokes can mean that people think it's an implausible theory, but it can equally well mean that they don't like the possibility that it might be correct. In this case, given this audience, I suspect that the latter is in operation whether the first is in operation or not.
I'd bet the vast majority of those either making jokes or denigating the suggestion cellphones might be causing problems with bees no nothing about bees or beekeeping. Anything that treatens their technology is to be ridiculed whether it deserves it or not.
This is pretty cool. Now there are non-human posters on slashdot.
Since you have the advantage of objectivity, seeing as how you distinguish yourself from the human race, and this is slashdot, would this be the appropriate place to welcome our non-human, environmentally-noble overlords?
Demogogery is so much more effective than reason is it?
Henry Ford did build a car that not only used hemp in the construction but also ran on ethanol alcohol made from hemp. Before this Rudolph Deisel designed his deisel engine to run on hemp oil as well as other vegetable oils. In 1898 when he demonstrated his engine at the Paris Expo he had it running on peanut oil. A History of Biodiesel/Biofuels. In the 1930s a study by MIT found an acre of hemp would produce more paper than an acre of forest. Yet despite, actually as it treatened many wealthy and power people because of, the industrial advantages of hemp hemp was made illegal via the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act. Then as president Nixon had a study group to study whether hemp should be made legal again. However he said no matter what they concluded he would never agree to make it legal, which is what the study concluded.
The biggest shortcoming of the current internet (to me) is that anonymity wasn't designed in from the ground up.
Hopefully, this "next big thing" will be designed so there is no information (like IP address) that can be used to trace an internet persona to an actual person or geographic area.
More like they'll design it so no body can hide. All of your communications, whether political speach or not, will be kept in a file with your name on it. J. Edgar Hoover and COINTEL all over again. The NAZIs and KGB wouild of loved this.
My Mac SE/30 (purchased in January 1989, although I had to wait several weeks to get it) worked perfectly for 14 years. By the end it was running NetBSD rather than MacOS, but it still worked fine.
My SE/30 ran System 7. I've also got a Powermac 7300/200 which runs System 8. It lasted me several years, from 2000 'til early last year when it wouldn't bootup. Now I'm planning on getting a Macbook Pro and was thinking about setting it up to dualboot, OSX and Linux, Ubuntu maybe. But Windows will be barred. If I have to run a Windows app, and I haven't found a Windows app for which there is not an equivent app for Macs, I'll tryout Crossover. There was one I wasn't sure I could find a replacement for, XMLSpy, but a few other/.ers pointed me to <oXygen/> XML Editor.
But lets face facts. Discerning users never used MacOS prior to OSX. It sucked worse then Windows 3.0 in every way.
I used both Macs and PC when Windows 3.x came out. I used 3.x and DOS before that in programming classes I took but for everything else I used Macs, whether it be word processing, drawing, or Quark Express. And I would rather of had used Macs in programming as well.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're voting to save your dollars, which is what the OSS people are advocating, then buying a more expensive Macintosh is counter to your intended goals, and you still might end up running MSOffice on that Mac.
I guess you haven't seen the prices of today's Macs, they generally have the same prices as equivalently equipped PCs. Unfortunately Apple does not offer low priced expandable computers like most PC OEMs do. And not everyone uses MSOffice. The last verson I got is Office 97 and I haven't used it in a few years. Though I'm using a Windows PC, an HP PC, now I've decided when I get a new laptop I'll get a Macbook Pro. I was thinking about getting Apple's Keynotes for an office suite however I've decided I'll tryout the Mac version of OO, NeoOffice, first. If MS didn't treat it's customers like criminals then I probably wouldn't mind too much continuing to use Windows.
FalconIf they change the format they force us all to upgrade to maintain the ability to freely access and exchange our data with each other. MS can choose to change the rules at any time. Or they could just get out of the wordprocessing business altogether, leaving us high and dry.
Ah but MS does change the .doc format. Everytims MS releases a new Office/Word app the format is changed. While you can open an old document in a Office version and keep to formatting, you can't do the same and keep the formatting of a document created in the new version when opened in an old app. If I were to create a document in Office XP I would not be able to open it and have it properly displayed in Office 97 for instance. I have opened old documents in a newer Office only to have the app ask me if I want to convert the format to the new version.
FalconThis just proves how much of a threat MS perceives OO.o and other open source projects.
While I agree with this sentiment I don't like the fact the bill's author snuck in the bill at the last minute a clause advocating open data formats so no one woud notice it. And what really gets me about this is Florida is supposed to have a "Sunshine law" where all of government is supposed to open up information, meetings, and records. What he should of done instead was to have hearings on this.
FalconIf vinyl turntables (with USB, natch) used a laser pickup instead of a mechanical stylus, vinyl would be a lot more popular. Then records wouldn't wear out nearly as much. They could be sold used for more money with less damage. And a laser turntable could scan a record at high speed (maybe 333 1/3 RPM, 100x) for portable (lower-fi) playing on iPod, mobile phone, etc.
Want a turntable with a laser stylus? Check out ELP Laser Turntable. Wish I could afford one.
FalconWhat do you think is coming over the USB connection? Analog audio? or digital audio? And what do you think your computer is doing when it plays it over the speakers. Playing the bits or converting them back to audio.
Listening to music on a computer may simply be a matter of convenience. I guess you missed where I said I liked to listen to my music on my reel-to-reel tape deck and that if I get a turntable I may also get a new tape deck. Personally I don't listen to music on my computer, at home I have a stereo with 2 tape decks built in and other than an analogue radio I play when I sleep and the car radio that's all I listen to music on. Well, and a flute I'm trying to learn to play, I used to play the clarinet but that was many years ago.
FalconIf records really want to make a comeback, they'll come up with a nondestructive way to read the disc, like a laser beam.
Forget cds, try this. It is a turntable with a laser needle.
I agree that high quality analog recordings are a good thing to keep around for posterity, but analog recordings certainly aren't better for home reproduction (they'll get a little worse every time you play them)
Do the same thing I used to do, the first tyme I played an LP/EP record I'd record it on my reel-to-reel tape deck then put the record away for safe keeping and play the tape. Yea, sure the tape eventually wears out but you've still got the vinyl you can record again.
FalconRepeated play degrades a record, while it doesn't really degrade a CD.
With the newer needles records can't be scratched, there isn't really a physical needle instead lasers are used, at least in high end turntables. Here's one.
Falconrecord player with USB? doesn't that defeat the purpose of analog sound quality?
No, you can still hookup the turntable to the amplifier. The usb port simply allows you to listen to the music on your computer, or you can digitize the music.
Falconvinyl also has the benefit of wearing out and making you have to re-purchase albums periodically
Some of us were a bit more careful with our vinyl. As part of my stereo eq I had a reel-to-reel tape deck and the first tyme I played a new vinyl album I would record it on tape then I'd put the vinyl away and play the tape. I don't have my eq anymore but if I can find a store that sales new vinyl, preferably locally, I may go ahead and buy a new turntable and tape deck. Though I haven't seen any reel-to-reels in stores, I have found then online, I have seen turntables in stores.
FalconThat's so last year. I'm going to digital Vinyl, I take my Vinyl records, convert them to MP3 then send this out over a modem which I then record as analog audio on the vinyl record. This way I don't encounter the dynamic range limitations of the vinyl.
Why wold you want to degrade music on vinyl like that? You're degrading it when you concert from analogue to digital then again coverting it back to analogue.
Personally I prefer my music analogue to begin with. What I used to do when I got a new album is the first tyme I played it I would record it on my reel-to-reel tape deck. I would then put the vinyl away and play the tape. Unfortunately I lost my stereo eq years ago, however I've been seeing turntables in stores the past several months, some with usb ports. So I've been thinking of getting a new turntable, and maybe a new tape deck, myself. But I'm looking for a store that sales new vinyl before I get one.
Falcongenetic engineering is vital to our survival and evolution as sepcies
I have yet to see any proof or concrete evidence that suggests never mind says that genetic engineering is essential to human survival in the next milia. It's certainly not needed to grow enough food for everyone. Enough food is already grown for everyone however because of politics and other human caused problems many people don't get the food they need. Take Zimbabwe. The country used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa. However once Pres. Mugabe forced white farmers off their farms and gave them to his cronies those farms became fallow, uncultivated, so it no longer produces the food it used to.
Or take Mexico. Many in the US are worried about all those "illegal aliens" or immigrants yet they rarely ask why they are here or trying to get to the US. Many of them do because they are Mexican farmers are being driven off their farms. This is due to NAFTA and the massive subsidies the US government gives to agribusinesses. These US companies are then able to export food to Mexico where they can sale it for less than Mexican farmers can grow the food themselves.
FalconA Tale of Two Scientific Consensuses
Uhm, that must be a web only article, it's dated 6 April 2007 and isn't in my paper edition for May 2007. And I don't recall it being in April's edition.
FalconI'd think bees have killed far more people than mobile phones ever have.
I don't know about this, personally I think people talking on their cellphones while driving is a serious risk. While driving I frequently barely avoid accidents because some asshole was talking on their phone and not paying attention to traffic. I have a cellphone, it's the only phone I have, but I use a handless set and pull over when I receive a call. And I never make a call while driving.
FalconI wonder if the use of GMO in the US has anything to do with it. Why it would I can not say but with changed dna in plants then it certainly would have changed the pollen as well.
Thouhg I don't know if any are on the market now, for human consumption, some crops are engineered to create thier own pestices, specifically Bt. Corn was engineered years ago to produce Bt, it had an adverse effect: Biotech corn toxic to butterflies, study finds. Who knows if this may be effecting bees as well. It might but I doubt GMO crops are grown everywhere where bees are dying off.
FalconDuh, it's for the children. Don't you know how much bee stings hurt? :)
(And they really hurt me - I'm deathly allergic to the little buggers... But I'm not a children. I'm a fat, lazy, balding old man, so nobody would do anything on my account.)
I was the opposite. Growing up I used to freak out people by catching bees, well really I'd place my hand where bees would crawl on it. I only recall being stung once, when a wasp got trapped in a classroom of mine in high school I tried to get it to go outside when it stung me.
FalconA computer with a bullet in it is just a paperweight; A map with a bullet in it is still a map.[Maj K. Hauk,USArmy]
What is an iPod with a bullet in it?
FalconOh, and for the record, that Puff Daddy song, I'll Be Missing You [wikipedia.org]? That was written by this dude called Sting, in a song called Every Breath You Take in 1983.
This reminds me of Madonna's song "lucky Star". Originally it was a Ragtime song from the early 1900's.
FalconSo that's where our warm weather went. It's unseasonably cold in the States right now. In Chicago we have been 15-20F below the norm. Give it back!
Funny, I'm in the Twin cities, Minneapolis/St Paul, northwest of you and it's warmer now than normal. Several days ago we had temps up to the 80s F one day. Then the next we got around one or two inchs of snow only to see it melted within several hours. I've got a thermometer I keep outside, and I just stepped out to check it and it says 58. Yet the temp have dropped some since today's high. Gosh, I love gardening. And I want to work on my garden, the day it got up to the lower 80's I went out to a few garden shops but after I saw no one had anything more than seeds I recalled the last frost date is in the second week of May here, a month away.
FalconTo me the theory being greeted by a number of bad jokes can mean that people think it's an implausible theory, but it can equally well mean that they don't like the possibility that it might be correct. In this case, given this audience, I suspect that the latter is in operation whether the first is in operation or not.
I'd bet the vast majority of those either making jokes or denigating the suggestion cellphones might be causing problems with bees no nothing about bees or beekeeping. Anything that treatens their technology is to be ridiculed whether it deserves it or not.
FalconThis is pretty cool. Now there are non-human posters on slashdot.
Since you have the advantage of objectivity, seeing as how you distinguish yourself from the human race, and this is slashdot, would this be the appropriate place to welcome our non-human, environmentally-noble overlords?
Demogogery is so much more effective than reason is it?
FalconHenry Ford did build a car that not only used hemp in the construction but also ran on ethanol alcohol made from hemp. Before this Rudolph Deisel designed his deisel engine to run on hemp oil as well as other vegetable oils. In 1898 when he demonstrated his engine at the Paris Expo he had it running on peanut oil. A History of Biodiesel/Biofuels. In the 1930s a study by MIT found an acre of hemp would produce more paper than an acre of forest. Yet despite, actually as it treatened many wealthy and power people because of, the industrial advantages of hemp hemp was made illegal via the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act. Then as president Nixon had a study group to study whether hemp should be made legal again. However he said no matter what they concluded he would never agree to make it legal, which is what the study concluded.
FalconThe biggest shortcoming of the current internet (to me) is that anonymity wasn't designed in from the ground up.
Hopefully, this "next big thing" will be designed so there is no information (like IP address) that can be used to trace an internet persona to an actual person or geographic area.
More like they'll design it so no body can hide. All of your communications, whether political speach or not, will be kept in a file with your name on it. J. Edgar Hoover and COINTEL all over again. The NAZIs and KGB wouild of loved this.
FalconThe current internet is working well, and with proper management it will continue to do so.
That't the problem. The powers that be don't want the internet to work as well as it does. Instead they want to control it.
FalconMy Mac SE/30 (purchased in January 1989, although I had to wait several weeks to get it) worked perfectly for 14 years. By the end it was running NetBSD rather than MacOS, but it still worked fine.
My SE/30 ran System 7. I've also got a Powermac 7300/200 which runs System 8. It lasted me several years, from 2000 'til early last year when it wouldn't bootup. Now I'm planning on getting a Macbook Pro and was thinking about setting it up to dualboot, OSX and Linux, Ubuntu maybe. But Windows will be barred. If I have to run a Windows app, and I haven't found a Windows app for which there is not an equivent app for Macs, I'll tryout Crossover. There was one I wasn't sure I could find a replacement for, XMLSpy, but a few other /.ers pointed me to <oXygen/> XML Editor.
FalconBut lets face facts. Discerning users never used MacOS prior to OSX. It sucked worse then Windows 3.0 in every way.
I used both Macs and PC when Windows 3.x came out. I used 3.x and DOS before that in programming classes I took but for everything else I used Macs, whether it be word processing, drawing, or Quark Express. And I would rather of had used Macs in programming as well.
Falcon