If I'm actually looking to buy something, and I see an ad that is *relevant*, sure I'll click on it. We advertise heavily on AdWords ourselves and get a phenomenal amount of traffic on them, with click-throughs over 25% on certain keyword combinations.
Ironically, while that exact search does actually come up with 0 results, there are 5 'sponsored links' offering 'Secrets behind AdWords', 'Create AdWords Cash' and so on...
Previous extensions, like mp3-pro, not successful
on
MP3...in Surround Sound
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Grandparent is essentially right. MP3 *is* an outdated codec, which is only still here because of it's universality (don't get me wrong - this is a big benefit). While these added features may not actually break the old standard, they do result in bigger files with no discernable benefit for the vast majority of people. If you want to examine the success of previous add-ons to the mp3 standard, take mp3-pro - it's not exactly all over the place. People will take standard mp3 for it's universality, and choose a superior codec (AAC, OGG, MPC, whatever - even WMA) when they aren't concerned about compatibility.
That's not a megapixel... That's only 995328 pixels.
Actually, it's standard for digital camera manufacturers to quote the megapixel rating based on the entire sensor, rather than the output resolution. The sides of the sensor are blacked out, for calibration, and don't appear in the final image.
1600x1200, for example, is the standard 2.0 megapixel resolution (but 1600x1200 is actually only 192k pixels).
Of course it's not completely silent in a literal sense. *Nothing* that does *anything* is. The amount of noise my laptop makes is however less than the ambient noise in the environment in which it is used, which leads to complete silence in practice. 2.5" hard drives do tend to be quieter than 3.5" ones, and don't actually tend to be used too much during, for example, word processing. Laptop fans adjust their low speed according to necessity (you can actually ramp down the processor speed specifically to address this.) I can only hear the fan (it's on the bottom) if I actually pick the notebook up, turn it over, and hold it to my ear - which isn't a typical working position.
This is VoIP equivalent of cordless, not mobile
on
WiFi Phone Announced
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· Score: 3, Insightful
This is not the VoIP equivalent of a cordless phone, not a mobile/cell phone. It's a nice side-benefit that you may be able to use it on networks other than your own.
...for at least some of the applications of such a large hard drive. A PVR is a good example. It's nice to be able to record large quantities of TV without worrying about running out of space, but I wouldn't be bothered backing it up.
I've got a Shuttle PVR with 420gb internal and 250gb external for backup. I backup my mp3s and data I actually care about (mainly digital photos). Even with the mp3s, I'm only backing them up because I have the space - if I did lose them, they could be re-ripped, it would just be an almighty PITA.
Video editing is a mainstream consumer activity now. I know a few couples who have just had or are expecting their first children. What do you think was the first purchase? That's right, digital camcorders with Firewire connections.
No children yet myself, but I do have 670gb on a Shuttle in my living room - this is used primarily as a PVR and mp3 server. Video really does take up a ton of space, and even limiting myself to LAME-APS the mp3s take up a lot of room also. If I had more space, I'd use FLAC. The result? This system is currently completely full (only a couple of gigs free); I'm looking at adding or replacing a hard drive to get some more room.
Long term, I think removable media is on the way out, and we will store all of our music/video on hard disk based libraries, like we do today with software. (This was not always typical - I remember using software on floppies, and having to swap disks to do a Wordperfect spellcheck.) Hard disk prices are already nearing CD/DVD on a per-gigabyte basis, and backup can be easily done onto an external hard drive - much easier than swapping CD or DVDs.
Hum. What do you use your laptop for, exactly? Personally I couldn't stand using a laptop all the time. I find a desktop is better ergonomically...
'I don't know why anyone uses a laptop' appears to be a very common opinion on Slashdot. So, as a laptop user for over seven years, let me fill you in with why I prefer a laptop:
I much prefer the digitally-connected LCD monitor, which is a lot sharper and less tiring than any CRT I've used. I have an external monitor also (LCD, naturally) and find the added desktop space invaluable for serious work. Cleartype on a digital LCD is very nice, too. I know you can do all this on a desktop now, but laptops had digitally-connected LCDs and second monitor ports long before DVI and dual-head graphics cards were a common option. I love the fact that I can carry it around and from room to room easily, and still be internet-connected through WiFi. I love that my stuff and environment is always there whether at work, home, or away on business. I love that it is completely silent - this was in fact why I started with a laptop in the first place; I simply could not stand desktop noise when researching/writing. I like being able to put it away in a drawer when I'm not using it.
The laptop percentage of the market relative to desktops has been steadily increasing over the last few years, so it appears that many people agree with me. I personally could never use a desktop as my primary machine, although I recognise that people have different priorities and that for many a desktop is a better choice (cost & power being the key issues.) I did recently get a Shuttle home server solely for storage (670gb) and PVR purposes. Apart from the TV connection for watching programmes, it is accessed through terminal services over WiFi - from my laptop.
That completely depends on the site and the ad program. Google AdWords for example are pay per click, but many (most?) banner ads are pay per impression, with CPM (cost/thousand impressions) being a key metric. We have banner ads on our site and they are *all* pay per impression.
Their business model is banner ads...
on
Stop! Website Thief!
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· Score: 2, Interesting
...so if that's pay per impression rather than pay per click, you just did them a very big favour.
In the Apple/Windows thing Apple were claiming rights in Windowing per se, which was ridiculous as it was invented in Xerox PARC.
I'm not suggesting that Apple should have rights on the idea of a scroll wheel (although they might try, and there are patents on far more obvious things). But that's irrelevant. Industrial design law specifically covers the non-functional aesthetic. From the article and previous comments, it appears that this piece of software duplicates the iPod aesthetic pretty faithfully, and Apple have already won a lawsuit against similar efforts to duplicate the aesthetic of the iMac.
it'd be hard to sue for a software ripoff that doesn't even have all of the iPod's features
I'm pretty sure you can sue for infringement on any of the claims in a patent. That said, the only thing Apple obviously mention as being patent-pending (that I can see) is their Auto-Sync technology.
In any case, the design would be covered by industrial design law - it was on this basis that Apple successfully sued Emachines over their iMac lookalike PCs.
That's completely untrue. The iPod hardware is great, certainly (except the battery... grr) but it's the UI that really makes it - the fact that you can get to any one of 10k songs really really quickly and easily, with one hand.
Lovely hardware working perfectly with lovely software is Apple's modus operandi - at a lovely price (for Apple).
...perhaps I should have been more explicit and used 'as much'. I'm well aware that Mandarin is spoken outside China, just not so much as English!
Compared to how much English is spoken outside native English speaking countries, Mandarin is indeed not spoken 'so much' outside China. While there are more non-native speakers with *some* level of competence in English than native speakers, almost all speakers of Mandarin are native speakers. In the countries you mention, the language is spoken by ethnic Chinese, while English is spoken extensively by non-native speakers.
The British Council estimates that there are one billion people learning English, against a Chinese Ministry of Education estimate of 25 million learning Chinese. (Although I have no doubt that this will only increase in the future.)
Imagine this - how much space does a 600-dpi bitmap the size of a CD take up? Well under 1mb. And that's disregarding the fact that the encoding on a CD means that the number of pits is far in excess of 700m x 8.
Seriously, though, it makes a lot of sense to store and manage all our digital media on one general purpose device (ergo, a computer). The usability isn't there today for all media; Tivo is currently a better option than any PC-based PVR. This will however change in time; it already has for music (computer+mp3 player vs cd/minidisc and a pile of media) and both Apple and MS are putting a lot of effort into usability in this area.
Compare how many computer CDRW drives have been sold against standalone components - it's not that the standalone option wasn't there, just that people went with the cheaper and more versatile option.
...but that doesn't mean that they can spell, construct a grammatical sentence, or logically and coherently advance an argument. My experience was teaching undergraduate level in Ireland. I wasn't teaching English, but found that most of my efforts in correcting papers had to be directed towards fixing these elements.
I'm not still teaching myself, but I've heard a lot to suggest that the upsurge of the internet has exacerbated problems which were only starting to appear in my day. My girlfriend teaches final year school as well as third level, and besides the plagarism issue, many of her students just can't get it into their heads why a random page on the internet should not be given as much weight as an expert in the field. She has gone over it with them, but they are lazy - they want to use the internet exclusively for research as it's easy, whereas going to the library is too much effort.
Part of the problem is that here (in my experience- in the humanities), any half-serious research methodology classes only appear at the postgraduate level. It might be touched on slightly earlier in certain subjects such as history, if you chose a manuscripts option. I agree as to the importance: at a minimum it should be the *first* thing taught in university, and preferably should be introduced even further back in the school system. Research methodology is the humanities is like 'planning' in programming, and it's insane that it just isn't emphasised early enough.
I don't think I phrased that terribly well - to clarify, I meant that I *would* trust Wikipedia more than the average Google result. I often run searches with 'site:wikipedia.org' appended.
That said, I think I would trust it less than a published encyclopaedia; one of the issues I have with Wikipedia is the lack of author attribution. You've only got handles, and even then it's not easy to tell who wrote what. Britannica by contrast has attributed articles from many people eminent in their relative fields. The fact that it's such a fluid work also makes it difficult to cite (although you can reference specific revisions from the history page.)
That's the nature of the beast, I know, it's a collaborative work. And it does work, for the most part, for what it is - a general encylopaedia. Traditionally, however, we tend to like to pin specific writings down to specific people. Each new piece of writing does not appear in a vacuum, but is from a known person. Even a site like Slashdot encourages from a registered account, and people take into account posting history, etc.
...e.g. for reference works, the 'discovery' part of research. Free text search and the ability to jump easily to references using hyperlinks is simply invaluable. It was only towards the end of my time as an undergrad that I got to use stuff like JStor and it was incredibly good; free-text search through peer-reviewed journals going back over a century! I found stuff that I *never* would have relying on paper indexes.
In the light of this I'm not surprised that the print sales are down. I'm perhaps more surprised that the electronic ones aren't doing better - results from the venerable Wikipedia (generally) excepted, I'd trust an encyclopedia before Google for general basic research. It's not so much a problem for me, but young people don't have as finely tuned BS detectors as older folks; they believe anything they read on the net. It's near impossible to get them to limit themselves to peer-reviewed sources in their papers, and they really do come back with some absolute crap from some random website.
Parents would do well to consider this when weighing Google against a good CD/DVD-ROM or a subscription to britannica.com; it's a lot cheaper than the print version used to be, and it's guaranteed quality information. Google is an invaluable tool, but it doesn't replace traditional sources of information. (At least until Google Print comes out of beta - then we really will be somewhere.)
...second language. Chinese (Mandarin) is unquestionably the most common natively spoken language, and probably still ahead of English if you demand fluency in the lanaguage. English however is spoken extensively to some degree of competence outside of native English speaking countries, and is by far the most common second language. Mandarin is not spoken so much outside China.
It is very common in my experience to hear non-native English speakers conversing in English when in another non-English speaking country. (I might note that the grandparent espousing English as a world language seemed to be a native Spanish speaker himself.)
'Most people in the world speak English' is an exaggeration, but the figure is estimated at 1 in 4. English certainly has the best claim to the status of an 'international language,' is spoken or has official status in more countries than any other language, and is used in international organisations and communication more than any other language.
I'd also guess that it's the most popular second language among the non-native speaking soldiers in Iraq, which is what the grandparent was talking about (not so many Chinese there).
...the last link in the chain, they take already manufactured components and simply assemble them into a finished PC. These components are coming from diverse sources - your CPU from one factory, hard disk from another, etc. Even with the hard disk example, the chips used in that likely come from a different factory again and are 'assembled' by the hard disk manufacturer.
So the raw materials are being consumed not in one factory, but in literally hundreds of different factories around the globe. If you look inside your PC, you'll see a lot of different companies' names on those chips, from a lot of different countries.
Slashdot Mirror
If I'm actually looking to buy something, and I see an ad that is *relevant*, sure I'll click on it. We advertise heavily on AdWords ourselves and get a phenomenal amount of traffic on them, with click-throughs over 25% on certain keyword combinations.
Ironically, while that exact search does actually come up with 0 results, there are 5 'sponsored links' offering 'Secrets behind AdWords', 'Create AdWords Cash' and so on...
Grandparent is essentially right. MP3 *is* an outdated codec, which is only still here because of it's universality (don't get me wrong - this is a big benefit). While these added features may not actually break the old standard, they do result in bigger files with no discernable benefit for the vast majority of people. If you want to examine the success of previous add-ons to the mp3 standard, take mp3-pro - it's not exactly all over the place. People will take standard mp3 for it's universality, and choose a superior codec (AAC, OGG, MPC, whatever - even WMA) when they aren't concerned about compatibility.
When CDRWs went above 4x, the formulation had to be changed, and faster CDRWs (e.g. 8x+) will not write on slower drives.
Actually, it's standard for digital camera manufacturers to quote the megapixel rating based on the entire sensor, rather than the output resolution. The sides of the sensor are blacked out, for calibration, and don't appear in the final image.
1600x1200, for example, is the standard 2.0 megapixel resolution (but 1600x1200 is actually only 192k pixels).
Of course it's not completely silent in a literal sense. *Nothing* that does *anything* is. The amount of noise my laptop makes is however less than the ambient noise in the environment in which it is used, which leads to complete silence in practice. 2.5" hard drives do tend to be quieter than 3.5" ones, and don't actually tend to be used too much during, for example, word processing. Laptop fans adjust their low speed according to necessity (you can actually ramp down the processor speed specifically to address this.) I can only hear the fan (it's on the bottom) if I actually pick the notebook up, turn it over, and hold it to my ear - which isn't a typical working position.
This is not the VoIP equivalent of a cordless phone, not a mobile/cell phone. It's a nice side-benefit that you may be able to use it on networks other than your own.
I've got a Shuttle PVR with 420gb internal and 250gb external for backup. I backup my mp3s and data I actually care about (mainly digital photos). Even with the mp3s, I'm only backing them up because I have the space - if I did lose them, they could be re-ripped, it would just be an almighty PITA.
No children yet myself, but I do have 670gb on a Shuttle in my living room - this is used primarily as a PVR and mp3 server. Video really does take up a ton of space, and even limiting myself to LAME-APS the mp3s take up a lot of room also. If I had more space, I'd use FLAC. The result? This system is currently completely full (only a couple of gigs free); I'm looking at adding or replacing a hard drive to get some more room.
Long term, I think removable media is on the way out, and we will store all of our music/video on hard disk based libraries, like we do today with software. (This was not always typical - I remember using software on floppies, and having to swap disks to do a Wordperfect spellcheck.) Hard disk prices are already nearing CD/DVD on a per-gigabyte basis, and backup can be easily done onto an external hard drive - much easier than swapping CD or DVDs.
'I don't know why anyone uses a laptop' appears to be a very common opinion on Slashdot. So, as a laptop user for over seven years, let me fill you in with why I prefer a laptop:
I much prefer the digitally-connected LCD monitor, which is a lot sharper and less tiring than any CRT I've used. I have an external monitor also (LCD, naturally) and find the added desktop space invaluable for serious work. Cleartype on a digital LCD is very nice, too. I know you can do all this on a desktop now, but laptops had digitally-connected LCDs and second monitor ports long before DVI and dual-head graphics cards were a common option. I love the fact that I can carry it around and from room to room easily, and still be internet-connected through WiFi. I love that my stuff and environment is always there whether at work, home, or away on business. I love that it is completely silent - this was in fact why I started with a laptop in the first place; I simply could not stand desktop noise when researching/writing. I like being able to put it away in a drawer when I'm not using it.
The laptop percentage of the market relative to desktops has been steadily increasing over the last few years, so it appears that many people agree with me. I personally could never use a desktop as my primary machine, although I recognise that people have different priorities and that for many a desktop is a better choice (cost & power being the key issues.) I did recently get a Shuttle home server solely for storage (670gb) and PVR purposes. Apart from the TV connection for watching programmes, it is accessed through terminal services over WiFi - from my laptop.
That completely depends on the site and the ad program. Google AdWords for example are pay per click, but many (most?) banner ads are pay per impression, with CPM (cost/thousand impressions) being a key metric. We have banner ads on our site and they are *all* pay per impression.
...so if that's pay per impression rather than pay per click, you just did them a very big favour.
I'm not suggesting that Apple should have rights on the idea of a scroll wheel (although they might try, and there are patents on far more obvious things). But that's irrelevant. Industrial design law specifically covers the non-functional aesthetic. From the article and previous comments, it appears that this piece of software duplicates the iPod aesthetic pretty faithfully, and Apple have already won a lawsuit against similar efforts to duplicate the aesthetic of the iMac.
I'm pretty sure you can sue for infringement on any of the claims in a patent. That said, the only thing Apple obviously mention as being patent-pending (that I can see) is their Auto-Sync technology.
In any case, the design would be covered by industrial design law - it was on this basis that Apple successfully sued Emachines over their iMac lookalike PCs.
That's completely untrue. The iPod hardware is great, certainly (except the battery... grr) but it's the UI that really makes it - the fact that you can get to any one of 10k songs really really quickly and easily, with one hand.
Lovely hardware working perfectly with lovely software is Apple's modus operandi - at a lovely price (for Apple).
Now I can get an iPod mini on the cheap:
$250 PDA
$400 4gb Hitachi CF microdrive
$20 for this software
and the Apple lawsuit?
Priceless.
...perhaps I should have been more explicit and used 'as much'. I'm well aware that Mandarin is spoken outside China, just not so much as English!
Compared to how much English is spoken outside native English speaking countries, Mandarin is indeed not spoken 'so much' outside China. While there are more non-native speakers with *some* level of competence in English than native speakers, almost all speakers of Mandarin are native speakers. In the countries you mention, the language is spoken by ethnic Chinese, while English is spoken extensively by non-native speakers.
The British Council estimates that there are one billion people learning English, against a Chinese Ministry of Education estimate of 25 million learning Chinese. (Although I have no doubt that this will only increase in the future.)
Imagine this - how much space does a 600-dpi bitmap the size of a CD take up? Well under 1mb. And that's disregarding the fact that the encoding on a CD means that the number of pits is far in excess of 700m x 8.
Sincerely, Bill G
Seriously, though, it makes a lot of sense to store and manage all our digital media on one general purpose device (ergo, a computer). The usability isn't there today for all media; Tivo is currently a better option than any PC-based PVR. This will however change in time; it already has for music (computer+mp3 player vs cd/minidisc and a pile of media) and both Apple and MS are putting a lot of effort into usability in this area.
Compare how many computer CDRW drives have been sold against standalone components - it's not that the standalone option wasn't there, just that people went with the cheaper and more versatile option.
...but that doesn't mean that they can spell, construct a grammatical sentence, or logically and coherently advance an argument. My experience was teaching undergraduate level in Ireland. I wasn't teaching English, but found that most of my efforts in correcting papers had to be directed towards fixing these elements.
I'm not still teaching myself, but I've heard a lot to suggest that the upsurge of the internet has exacerbated problems which were only starting to appear in my day. My girlfriend teaches final year school as well as third level, and besides the plagarism issue, many of her students just can't get it into their heads why a random page on the internet should not be given as much weight as an expert in the field. She has gone over it with them, but they are lazy - they want to use the internet exclusively for research as it's easy, whereas going to the library is too much effort.
Part of the problem is that here (in my experience- in the humanities), any half-serious research methodology classes only appear at the postgraduate level. It might be touched on slightly earlier in certain subjects such as history, if you chose a manuscripts option. I agree as to the importance: at a minimum it should be the *first* thing taught in university, and preferably should be introduced even further back in the school system. Research methodology is the humanities is like 'planning' in programming, and it's insane that it just isn't emphasised early enough.
I don't think I phrased that terribly well - to clarify, I meant that I *would* trust Wikipedia more than the average Google result. I often run searches with 'site:wikipedia.org' appended. That said, I think I would trust it less than a published encyclopaedia; one of the issues I have with Wikipedia is the lack of author attribution. You've only got handles, and even then it's not easy to tell who wrote what. Britannica by contrast has attributed articles from many people eminent in their relative fields. The fact that it's such a fluid work also makes it difficult to cite (although you can reference specific revisions from the history page.) That's the nature of the beast, I know, it's a collaborative work. And it does work, for the most part, for what it is - a general encylopaedia. Traditionally, however, we tend to like to pin specific writings down to specific people. Each new piece of writing does not appear in a vacuum, but is from a known person. Even a site like Slashdot encourages from a registered account, and people take into account posting history, etc.
In the light of this I'm not surprised that the print sales are down. I'm perhaps more surprised that the electronic ones aren't doing better - results from the venerable Wikipedia (generally) excepted, I'd trust an encyclopedia before Google for general basic research. It's not so much a problem for me, but young people don't have as finely tuned BS detectors as older folks; they believe anything they read on the net. It's near impossible to get them to limit themselves to peer-reviewed sources in their papers, and they really do come back with some absolute crap from some random website.
Parents would do well to consider this when weighing Google against a good CD/DVD-ROM or a subscription to britannica.com; it's a lot cheaper than the print version used to be, and it's guaranteed quality information. Google is an invaluable tool, but it doesn't replace traditional sources of information. (At least until Google Print comes out of beta - then we really will be somewhere.)
...second language. Chinese (Mandarin) is unquestionably the most common natively spoken language, and probably still ahead of English if you demand fluency in the lanaguage. English however is spoken extensively to some degree of competence outside of native English speaking countries, and is by far the most common second language. Mandarin is not spoken so much outside China.
It is very common in my experience to hear non-native English speakers conversing in English when in another non-English speaking country. (I might note that the grandparent espousing English as a world language seemed to be a native Spanish speaker himself.)
'Most people in the world speak English' is an exaggeration, but the figure is estimated at 1 in 4. English certainly has the best claim to the status of an 'international language,' is spoken or has official status in more countries than any other language, and is used in international organisations and communication more than any other language.
I'd also guess that it's the most popular second language among the non-native speaking soldiers in Iraq, which is what the grandparent was talking about (not so many Chinese there).
Judge rules for developer who refused to sell home to attorney
So the raw materials are being consumed not in one factory, but in literally hundreds of different factories around the globe. If you look inside your PC, you'll see a lot of different companies' names on those chips, from a lot of different countries.