Actually come to think of it I still don't see sci-fi shows with "better" special effects than Star Trek.
I doubt that there are many sci-fi shows/movies (especially space operas) with comparable budgets to the Trek and Star Wars franchises. If Wikipedia is to be believed then c.f. $39M for Serenity with $35M for Star Trek: The Slow Motion Picture in 1979! or $70M for ST:Nemesis. Its harder to find info for TV, but According to the Lurker's guide the budget for B5 was $800k/ep c.f. $1,600k for DS9. $2M/ep seems to be the figure floating around for Firefly (possibly unreliable - again remember inflation).
I wouldn't dispute that Trek is impeccably polished in terms of acting, sets, FX (although B5 made Trek raise its game in the lighting and alien make-up departments) - it is just bland: the plot-reset button is pressed at the end of every episode.
Also, I think its kinda central to Firefly that Serenity is no warship - once you go that way, then its very hard not to have the guy with the biggest plasma cannon win. When they *do* temporarily strap on a cannon, its sole purpose is to deliberately get the bad guys really, really pissed at them.
PS: Notice how many Sci Fi stories, when the fighting starts, resort to swordplay, martial arts or similar?
Firefly: anachronistic guns, swords & chick-fu; Dune: knives; B5: Minbari fighting staves; Andromeda: Suspiciously Similar Fighting staves (albeit with fricking laser beams), Stargate (zap guns that double as... staves when the chop-sockey starts), Star Wars: swords that need batteries; the Lensman books: space axes; Battlestar Galactica: OK, ships with guns, but they're clearly firing bullets and missiles, not fancy energy-beam weapons.
I also was not impressed by the special effects in Babylon 5, they were actually kind of crappy. Much crappeir than those in Star Trek: the Next Generation if you ask me.
Probably because ST:TNG had a much bigger budget, were using tried-and-tested miniature techniques rather than pioneering CGI and rarely attempted anything on the scale of the Big Damnned Space Battles which happened several times a season in B5. Sometimes B5 overreached itself - the views of the central "open air" part of the station never really came off, so everything felt a bit set-bound - but when it came together (e.g. Londo watching the bombing of Narn) it blew TNG away.
Big events in TNG had a tendency to happen off-screen.
Of course, DS9 had some jolly big shootouts, but they were under some pressure to out-B5 B5.
The problem with Apple mice is that, at any time, there is only one design. One size doesn't fit all - you want a mouse that matches your hand size and "handedness". Personally, the MM is to "low profile" for me - I prefer a larger, fatter mouse. I prefer a "bean-shaped" right-hand-ist mouse. The "scrollball" is too small for me - I find it unpleasant to the touch. I want two buttons and a scroll-wheel/third button - but no more.
Thing is - these are all personal choices and other people will differ. Left-handers will differ particularly strongly (Apple have no choice to supply an ambisinister* mouse). People with small hands will disagree. Heck, some people *liked* the hockey puck mice (shudder!).
The way to buy a mouse is to walk into PC World where they have a big rack of the things and choose the one that feels comfortable. Perhaps Apple should produce (or license) a range of "designer" iMice - they could probably sell them to iPod-toting PC users.
(*Ambisinister: equally clumsy with either hand. Courtesy Terry Pratchett, I think)
Windows DOES have a multi-boot loader facility that can boot linux (or, more accurately, chain lilo/grub from a non-boot partition) but setting it up is non-luser friendly. See here for a utility or here for a manual howto. (Caveat - I just googled for those to save writing a long explanation).
Only real advantage of this is if messing with your windows MBR gives you the willies - since lilo/grub offer more facilities & you have go via those anyhow.
All I think this is saying is that if person A sells you a "banana" - and it then turns out that A had no right to sell you such a banana - then you do not have a banana
Nope - what they've sold you in this case is a piece of paper with "1 Banana" written on it.
Or, alternatively, if someone steals a banana and purports to sell it to you, then even if you have physical posession of that banana you don't own that banana. But I didn't use that argument because it plays into the "intellectual property = physical property" fallacy.
They offer a COMMODITY GOOD sold OVER THE COUNTER/OFF THE SHELF. It is a commodity good and as such you have every legal right to resell it as you please
RTFA - the hypothetical "you" in this case did not buy any "commodity good" (which would be a Windows CD, sealed, open, secondhand or new). You bought a second-hand hologram sticker that someone had peeled off their PC and tried to claim that this entitled you to use a copy of windows obtained from another, undefined & possibly illicit, source. Plus, these stickers are typically coming from corporate customers who probably obtained them through a commercial tendering process to which many consumer laws do not apply
If the COA is not proof of a license, and the media isn't, then what exactly IS evidence of such?
The "license" is the chain of contractual agreements between the user and the copyright holder. The COA is usually pretty good evidence that such a license exists, but the only "proof" is to follow the paper trail.
You're trying to have it both ways here - the "license" between the original buyer can be ignored because you don't like it, but your little hologram sticker is above question.
the ridiculous notion of a commodity good being licensed" notwithstanding
No - treating "software" (in the broadest sense - i.e. programs, books, music, video) the same way as the aforementioned banana became impractical as soon as the cost and effort of copying them and moving them between media became negligible (and became an itegral part of "using" them). What is ridiculous is that the law is still focussed on the act of copying (rather than distribution); that consumer protection law is still predicated on the sale of tangible goods and hasn't adapted to a world where consumers are increasingly buying licenses and service contracts; and that where the law has changed, it has been kludged and big business has been allowed dictate the terms.
I hate to sound like I support M$, but I think the stuff about COAs is just FUD.
IANAL of course.
All I think this is saying is that if person A sells you a "license" - and it then turns out that A had no right to sell you such a license - then you do not have a license, regardless of how many hologram-encrusted bits of paper person A gave you.
Now, say A aquired that paperwork along with a PC from vendor B, and B tried to impose on him a ridiculous Catch-22 clause that purports to say "you can't resell that as a license because you haven't accepted the license, and if you do accept the license you have to agree not to resell it". That stinks - but if A doesn't like it he needs to take that up with B - not sell the disputed item on to you. You can't take it up with B later because you are not party to any agreement with them.
For added complexity say that A was probably buying hundreds of computers under a negotiated commercial contract (i.e. not retail) and your dealings with them are actually indirected through allegedly-shady software dealer C and you have a right mess.
Note that the defence here was a long shot involving EU competition law, and that the Judge left a big caveat about "if the license is legally enforceable". It doesn't sound as if the actual fairness and enforcablility of the original OEM license was ever tested.
10 just isn't a very practical number for dividing into smaller units. 10 is only divisible by four numbers: 1, 2, 5, and 10.
<rant>
Really? But 10/4 = 2.5. 10/8 = 1.25 10/3 = 3.33 (OK, that last one is only, as Intel would say, good enough for non-technical people) and if you prefer to work with integers, just switch (e.g.) from metres to millimetres. People just don't think that way, because they have been brainwashed by the fractions mafia.
The problem is that to really embrace metric you need to embrace place notation and kick fractions out into the long grass of mathematical curiosities. At least stop wasting hours of valuable school time trying (and usually failing) to teach kids to add and multiply the bloody stupid things - and put it to a better use - such as teaching the decimal system properly.
Now, the last time I needed to add fractions... lets see... Oh yes, I was writing a calculator emulator that had to do "proper" addition of fractions... D'oh!
Sorry - I have a chip on my shoulder, as I belong to the generation of UK citizens that was never taught the stupid imperial system in school and am proud of neither knowing or caring how many feet there are in a mile. We'd just gone to decimal currency, and anybody with a brain cell (i.e. not in government) assumed that the foot and the ounce would shortly be following the shilling into history. Of course, they still tried to dress it up to sound like the old units with silly rhymes like "10 millimetres once centimetre, 10 centimetres one decimetre..." instead of teaching us what the bloody prefixes actually meant but it was a start.
</rant>
Next up, why all the hot air about KB and MB versus kibblebytes and mugglebytes (or whatever they're called) when we should be using 2^8, 2^16, 2^32, 2^64 to match computer register sizes...
...if you think this will trigger the downfall of Microsoft, but millions of Windows users will (if they haven't done so already) will just click on the "Download important security update" button and remain blissfully unaware of all this kerfuffle - and if they have any problems they will simply get whoever already re-installs their 'doze system (when its arteries get all furred up after six months of light use) to fix it. The only hope is if MS screws up and turns the lights of at a big corporate customer (...but don't they have a different activation system anyway?)
1. Read a couple of pop psychology and "how to succeed" books (and maybe buy one of those non-accredited PhDs)
2. Send spam offering your services to college leavers for a "reasonable" fee
3. Set up bogus blogs depicting your clients as mature and charismatic polymaths
4. Hey! There's no "..?" step!
5. Profit!!!
6. Blackmail former clients and Profit!!! again.
Right, who knows a good business method patent lawyer?
The GNU General Public License grants recipients of a product various rights, but (as in this case) they don't give any considerations in return. Also (as in this case) nobody "screens the registrants before granting access".
Ahem:
(Quoth the GPL)You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works.
The GPL is giving you permission to do something that is otherwise illegal (re-distribute a copyrighted work) in return for a consideration (at minimum, undertaking to provide a service - i.e. supplying the source code on request). The "keep out" notice on the website is trying to stop people doing something that would otherwise be legal (read a public website). If the defendants had redistributed the contents of the website, not just read it, things would have gone differenty.
The problem with EULAs is the conceit that, even after obtaining a physical copy of a work from someone autorised to copy and re-distribute it, loading it into your computer somehow requires further permission, and can be used as a pretext for imposing terms and conditions beyond "do not re-distribute". Why loading something into a computer qualifies for this while reading a page of text (heck - you make a copy of the document on your retina!) doesn't is the good question.
If you want to follow the "consideration" route, forget the GPL - what about EULAs free-beer software (*cough*Internet Explorer*cough*) that still expect you to agree to the EULA before *using* the software?
This erroneous concept that Apple is, in some way, a 'smalltime' player, an equal to the likes of, say Atari, Acorn, etc. deviates hugely from the truth.
Why do people insist on comparing Apple and Dell?
Dell sells bog-standard, generic PCs and peripherals to run third party operating systems and software. They have rarely been accused of innovation (except perhaps in marketing).
Apple sells PCs which, until recently, had a totally different architecture. Even post-Intel they are hardly generic (EFI, legacy-free, small-form-factor) for which they also write the Operating System, basic software suite, dev tools, and a couple of pro applications (OK, they've accepted a leg-up from FOSS but that still leaves a lot of work). Plus they do audio players and online services. That kinda spreads them a bit more thinly!
I'd say your figure for comparison should be Dell's market cap + Microsoft's market cap. OK, maybe 16% (ballpark Dell's market share) of Microsoft
Any comparison with Atari and Acorn etc. is because, like Apple, those companies developed entire non-Wintel platforms rather than just making clones (although I don't think Atari did their own OS - ISTR it was GEM running on CP/M68K). Acorn (who were significant in the UK in their day, but not really global) went one better and designed their own processor (little thing called the ARM - you've probably got at least one somewhere, but maybe not in your PC).
powered by POE
(IEEE 802.3 af ) port. Just like IP
telephony! No need for power
supply and wiring.
...unless, of course, you actually want to use it for something, in which case you'll need to find a monitor that runs on POE...
D'oh! POE is a great idea for powering network & telephony gear - especially WAPS in out-of-the-way places - but, for the forseeable future, desks are probably going to need power as well. The firms other products - POE switches and WAPS that fit into wall sockets - make more sense
The other missing piece is a monitor connector that carries power, sound and USB (*cough* Apple Display Connector *cough*) and removes the need for 4-5 wires to the desktop.
Oh, nothing, because it doesn't have any damn music on it.
The solution to this problem was the machine I saw at San Fransisco airport selling single-purpose players preloaded with audio books. I could just about imagine buying one of those if I was facing a 10-hour flight and I'd forgot my iPod/book/suicide pill.
In the UK, Heathrow and Gatwick have far more pronounced airside shopping malls than I've seen in my (limited) sample of US airports - so you could easily buy your iPod, a laptop and some music CDs to rip from a real person (for a given value of 'real'), without risking a vending machine, all tax-free (which almost, but not quite compensates for the silly UK high-street chain prices they charge!)
For the true lack of the Philip K. Dick spirit you probably have to go to Total Recall - surprisingly good film but not really in touch with "We'll Remember It For You Wholesale".
By that, do you mean the way that the resolution We can remember it... actually manages to be less plausible than Total Recall and is played for laughs?
As for Blade Runner, one point lost in the film was that the VK test used to expose androids was essentially religious - Wilburism (?? I thought it was Mercerism?) venerated animals, and most of the questions were about eating meat or cruelty to animals... Hmm...
That site linked to is titled "Nuclear Energy institute"
At least it quotes figures and cites sources... one of which seems to be a Canadian study into hydropower, which is slightly confidence-inspiring.
The diifficult pill to swallow is that nuclear comes out "above" most of the green options - but then solar, biomass, wind etc. probably covers a lot of relatively inefficient small-scale projects. I also wonder if they've included pump-storage schemes (basically giant batteries which have to be charged up) under Hydro?
At the end of the day, though, the energy density of uranium probably wins the CO2 argument. The risk/benefit thing (small probability of overnight catastrophe versus gradual-but-inevitable environmental damage) is more slippery.
So does anybody have a figure for how much energy is used, how much CO2 is produced and how much other waste is produced in order to generate a kW/h of nuclear power?
Objective answers - rather than pro-nukular or anti-nuclear spin - preferred (some hope!)
You don't see the police arresting people who use these, unless they use them to commit (or attempt to commit) a crime, so why would they suddenly arrest anyone who writes a pearl script?
Members of some ethnic groups might beg to differ on this, but I almost trust the police, courts and juries to make a sensible distinction between the crowbar in my trunk that I've just bought from the hardware store and the crowbar that I'm holding while lurking in a back alley next to the jewelry store.
However, anybody who has ever done any sort of IT support knows that the mere mention of computers causes many people's common sense lobes to instantly shut down. How do you explain yourself to someone who can't distinguish between "I was using ethereal to confirm that my mail client was using the correct authentication protocol" and "I was using my sonic screwdriver to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow"?
The currency of expert witnesses in UK courts isn't particularly high at the moment, either...
I built a little Freeview PVR year or two ago system using an Epia motherboard, Gentoo Linux, MythTV and a Hauppage Nova-T card. MythTV is a fantastic achievement but sadly is not in the "It Just Works" category.
I dont see why a product like the NZ box - with carefully selected compatible hardware and all the driver headaches solved for you - shouldn't work though.
Main deal breakers are (a)Slow and fragile channel changing in LiveTV (at least on my system) (b) No DVB Radio (c) No DVB Teletext and (d) No luser-friendly DVD recording.
A friend has a Topfield and swears by it and claims that it passes the Significant Other test for usability. There are various third-party add-ins to improve the EPG functionality. You can also use a re-flashed Linksys NSLUG as an ethernet interface, Radio Times scraper and "season pass" system - but that is getting hacky again.
There are plenty of PCI and USB DVB-T cards for windoze systems - This one seems to be one of the more featureful (and AFAIK works under linux).
Why (in the absence of a non/.ed TFA) do people assume its using Zap2it? I think that is US only anyway.
Note they said it supports DVB-T (Thats digital terrestrial TV outside the US). Don't know about NZ but in the UK there is a free 7-day EPG broadcast with the DVB-T signal which MythTV happily grabs.
Plus MythTV supports xmltv which can scrape listings from a variety of websites worldwide.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt that there are many sci-fi shows/movies (especially space operas) with comparable budgets to the Trek and Star Wars franchises. If Wikipedia is to be believed then c.f. $39M for Serenity with $35M for Star Trek: The Slow Motion Picture in 1979! or $70M for ST:Nemesis. Its harder to find info for TV, but According to the Lurker's guide the budget for B5 was $800k/ep c.f. $1,600k for DS9. $2M/ep seems to be the figure floating around for Firefly (possibly unreliable - again remember inflation).
I wouldn't dispute that Trek is impeccably polished in terms of acting, sets, FX (although B5 made Trek raise its game in the lighting and alien make-up departments) - it is just bland: the plot-reset button is pressed at the end of every episode.
Also, I think its kinda central to Firefly that Serenity is no warship - once you go that way, then its very hard not to have the guy with the biggest plasma cannon win. When they *do* temporarily strap on a cannon, its sole purpose is to deliberately get the bad guys really, really pissed at them.
PS: Notice how many Sci Fi stories, when the fighting starts, resort to swordplay, martial arts or similar?
Firefly: anachronistic guns, swords & chick-fu; Dune: knives; B5: Minbari fighting staves; Andromeda: Suspiciously Similar Fighting staves (albeit with fricking laser beams), Stargate (zap guns that double as... staves when the chop-sockey starts), Star Wars: swords that need batteries; the Lensman books: space axes; Battlestar Galactica: OK, ships with guns, but they're clearly firing bullets and missiles, not fancy energy-beam weapons.
Probably because ST:TNG had a much bigger budget, were using tried-and-tested miniature techniques rather than pioneering CGI and rarely attempted anything on the scale of the Big Damnned Space Battles which happened several times a season in B5. Sometimes B5 overreached itself - the views of the central "open air" part of the station never really came off, so everything felt a bit set-bound - but when it came together (e.g. Londo watching the bombing of Narn) it blew TNG away.
Big events in TNG had a tendency to happen off-screen.
Of course, DS9 had some jolly big shootouts, but they were under some pressure to out-B5 B5.
Thing is - these are all personal choices and other people will differ. Left-handers will differ particularly strongly (Apple have no choice to supply an ambisinister* mouse). People with small hands will disagree. Heck, some people *liked* the hockey puck mice (shudder!).
The way to buy a mouse is to walk into PC World where they have a big rack of the things and choose the one that feels comfortable. Perhaps Apple should produce (or license) a range of "designer" iMice - they could probably sell them to iPod-toting PC users.
(*Ambisinister: equally clumsy with either hand. Courtesy Terry Pratchett, I think)
Only real advantage of this is if messing with your windows MBR gives you the willies - since lilo/grub offer more facilities & you have go via those anyhow.
Nope - what they've sold you in this case is a piece of paper with "1 Banana" written on it.
Or, alternatively, if someone steals a banana and purports to sell it to you, then even if you have physical posession of that banana you don't own that banana. But I didn't use that argument because it plays into the "intellectual property = physical property" fallacy.
They offer a COMMODITY GOOD sold OVER THE COUNTER/OFF THE SHELF. It is a commodity good and as such you have every legal right to resell it as you please
RTFA - the hypothetical "you" in this case did not buy any "commodity good" (which would be a Windows CD, sealed, open, secondhand or new). You bought a second-hand hologram sticker that someone had peeled off their PC and tried to claim that this entitled you to use a copy of windows obtained from another, undefined & possibly illicit, source. Plus, these stickers are typically coming from corporate customers who probably obtained them through a commercial tendering process to which many consumer laws do not apply
If the COA is not proof of a license, and the media isn't, then what exactly IS evidence of such?
The "license" is the chain of contractual agreements between the user and the copyright holder. The COA is usually pretty good evidence that such a license exists, but the only "proof" is to follow the paper trail.
You're trying to have it both ways here - the "license" between the original buyer can be ignored because you don't like it, but your little hologram sticker is above question.
the ridiculous notion of a commodity good being licensed" notwithstanding
No - treating "software" (in the broadest sense - i.e. programs, books, music, video) the same way as the aforementioned banana became impractical as soon as the cost and effort of copying them and moving them between media became negligible (and became an itegral part of "using" them). What is ridiculous is that the law is still focussed on the act of copying (rather than distribution); that consumer protection law is still predicated on the sale of tangible goods and hasn't adapted to a world where consumers are increasingly buying licenses and service contracts; and that where the law has changed, it has been kludged and big business has been allowed dictate the terms.
IANAL of course.
All I think this is saying is that if person A sells you a "license" - and it then turns out that A had no right to sell you such a license - then you do not have a license, regardless of how many hologram-encrusted bits of paper person A gave you.
Now, say A aquired that paperwork along with a PC from vendor B, and B tried to impose on him a ridiculous Catch-22 clause that purports to say "you can't resell that as a license because you haven't accepted the license, and if you do accept the license you have to agree not to resell it". That stinks - but if A doesn't like it he needs to take that up with B - not sell the disputed item on to you. You can't take it up with B later because you are not party to any agreement with them.
For added complexity say that A was probably buying hundreds of computers under a negotiated commercial contract (i.e. not retail) and your dealings with them are actually indirected through allegedly-shady software dealer C and you have a right mess.
Note that the defence here was a long shot involving EU competition law, and that the Judge left a big caveat about "if the license is legally enforceable". It doesn't sound as if the actual fairness and enforcablility of the original OEM license was ever tested.
Pity that there's not much bad software out there to justify it, then. Oh, wait...
<rant>
Really? But 10/4 = 2.5. 10/8 = 1.25 10/3 = 3.33 (OK, that last one is only, as Intel would say, good enough for non-technical people) and if you prefer to work with integers, just switch (e.g.) from metres to millimetres. People just don't think that way, because they have been brainwashed by the fractions mafia.
The problem is that to really embrace metric you need to embrace place notation and kick fractions out into the long grass of mathematical curiosities. At least stop wasting hours of valuable school time trying (and usually failing) to teach kids to add and multiply the bloody stupid things - and put it to a better use - such as teaching the decimal system properly.
Now, the last time I needed to add fractions... lets see... Oh yes, I was writing a calculator emulator that had to do "proper" addition of fractions... D'oh!
Sorry - I have a chip on my shoulder, as I belong to the generation of UK citizens that was never taught the stupid imperial system in school and am proud of neither knowing or caring how many feet there are in a mile. We'd just gone to decimal currency, and anybody with a brain cell (i.e. not in government) assumed that the foot and the ounce would shortly be following the shilling into history. Of course, they still tried to dress it up to sound like the old units with silly rhymes like "10 millimetres once centimetre, 10 centimetres one decimetre..." instead of teaching us what the bloody prefixes actually meant but it was a start.
</rant>
Next up, why all the hot air about KB and MB versus kibblebytes and mugglebytes (or whatever they're called) when we should be using 2^8, 2^16, 2^32, 2^64 to match computer register sizes...
...if you think this will trigger the downfall of Microsoft, but millions of Windows users will (if they haven't done so already) will just click on the "Download important security update" button and remain blissfully unaware of all this kerfuffle - and if they have any problems they will simply get whoever already re-installs their 'doze system (when its arteries get all furred up after six months of light use) to fix it. The only hope is if MS screws up and turns the lights of at a big corporate customer (...but don't they have a different activation system anyway?)
2. Send spam offering your services to college leavers for a "reasonable" fee
3. Set up bogus blogs depicting your clients as mature and charismatic polymaths
4. Hey! There's no "..?" step!
5. Profit!!!
6. Blackmail former clients and Profit!!! again.
Right, who knows a good business method patent lawyer?
Ahem:
(Quoth the GPL)You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works.
The GPL is giving you permission to do something that is otherwise illegal (re-distribute a copyrighted work) in return for a consideration (at minimum, undertaking to provide a service - i.e. supplying the source code on request). The "keep out" notice on the website is trying to stop people doing something that would otherwise be legal (read a public website). If the defendants had redistributed the contents of the website, not just read it, things would have gone differenty.
The problem with EULAs is the conceit that, even after obtaining a physical copy of a work from someone autorised to copy and re-distribute it, loading it into your computer somehow requires further permission, and can be used as a pretext for imposing terms and conditions beyond "do not re-distribute". Why loading something into a computer qualifies for this while reading a page of text (heck - you make a copy of the document on your retina!) doesn't is the good question.
If you want to follow the "consideration" route, forget the GPL - what about EULAs free-beer software (*cough*Internet Explorer*cough*) that still expect you to agree to the EULA before *using* the software?
Why do people insist on comparing Apple and Dell?
Dell sells bog-standard, generic PCs and peripherals to run third party operating systems and software. They have rarely been accused of innovation (except perhaps in marketing).
Apple sells PCs which, until recently, had a totally different architecture. Even post-Intel they are hardly generic (EFI, legacy-free, small-form-factor) for which they also write the Operating System, basic software suite, dev tools, and a couple of pro applications (OK, they've accepted a leg-up from FOSS but that still leaves a lot of work). Plus they do audio players and online services. That kinda spreads them a bit more thinly!
I'd say your figure for comparison should be Dell's market cap + Microsoft's market cap. OK, maybe 16% (ballpark Dell's market share) of Microsoft
Any comparison with Atari and Acorn etc. is because, like Apple, those companies developed entire non-Wintel platforms rather than just making clones (although I don't think Atari did their own OS - ISTR it was GEM running on CP/M68K). Acorn (who were significant in the UK in their day, but not really global) went one better and designed their own processor (little thing called the ARM - you've probably got at least one somewhere, but maybe not in your PC).
...unless, of course, you actually want to use it for something, in which case you'll need to find a monitor that runs on POE...
D'oh! POE is a great idea for powering network & telephony gear - especially WAPS in out-of-the-way places - but, for the forseeable future, desks are probably going to need power as well. The firms other products - POE switches and WAPS that fit into wall sockets - make more sense
The other missing piece is a monitor connector that carries power, sound and USB (*cough* Apple Display Connector *cough*) and removes the need for 4-5 wires to the desktop.
The solution to this problem was the machine I saw at San Fransisco airport selling single-purpose players preloaded with audio books. I could just about imagine buying one of those if I was facing a 10-hour flight and I'd forgot my iPod/book/suicide pill.
In the UK, Heathrow and Gatwick have far more pronounced airside shopping malls than I've seen in my (limited) sample of US airports - so you could easily buy your iPod, a laptop and some music CDs to rip from a real person (for a given value of 'real'), without risking a vending machine, all tax-free (which almost, but not quite compensates for the silly UK high-street chain prices they charge!)
By that, do you mean the way that the resolution We can remember it... actually manages to be less plausible than Total Recall and is played for laughs?
As for Blade Runner, one point lost in the film was that the VK test used to expose androids was essentially religious - Wilburism (?? I thought it was Mercerism?) venerated animals, and most of the questions were about eating meat or cruelty to animals... Hmm...
At least it quotes figures and cites sources... one of which seems to be a Canadian study into hydropower, which is slightly confidence-inspiring.
The diifficult pill to swallow is that nuclear comes out "above" most of the green options - but then solar, biomass, wind etc. probably covers a lot of relatively inefficient small-scale projects. I also wonder if they've included pump-storage schemes (basically giant batteries which have to be charged up) under Hydro?
At the end of the day, though, the energy density of uranium probably wins the CO2 argument. The risk/benefit thing (small probability of overnight catastrophe versus gradual-but-inevitable environmental damage) is more slippery.
Whoops! Well nitpicked. It was a typo, honest...
If I divided every time I've made that mistake by a dollar...
Objective answers - rather than pro-nukular or anti-nuclear spin - preferred (some hope!)
Members of some ethnic groups might beg to differ on this, but I almost trust the police, courts and juries to make a sensible distinction between the crowbar in my trunk that I've just bought from the hardware store and the crowbar that I'm holding while lurking in a back alley next to the jewelry store.
However, anybody who has ever done any sort of IT support knows that the mere mention of computers causes many people's common sense lobes to instantly shut down. How do you explain yourself to someone who can't distinguish between "I was using ethereal to confirm that my mail client was using the correct authentication protocol" and "I was using my sonic screwdriver to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow"?
The currency of expert witnesses in UK courts isn't particularly high at the moment, either...
Absolutely.
Patented in 1900, too. Nyah.
If you want something that dries hard there's always clay (patented in 10500BC).
I built a little Freeview PVR year or two ago system using an Epia motherboard, Gentoo Linux, MythTV and a Hauppage Nova-T card. MythTV is a fantastic achievement but sadly is not in the "It Just Works" category. I dont see why a product like the NZ box - with carefully selected compatible hardware and all the driver headaches solved for you - shouldn't work though.
Main deal breakers are (a)Slow and fragile channel changing in LiveTV (at least on my system) (b) No DVB Radio (c) No DVB Teletext and (d) No luser-friendly DVD recording.
A friend has a Topfield and swears by it and claims that it passes the Significant Other test for usability. There are various third-party add-ins to improve the EPG functionality. You can also use a re-flashed Linksys NSLUG as an ethernet interface, Radio Times scraper and "season pass" system - but that is getting hacky again.
There are plenty of PCI and USB DVB-T cards for windoze systems - This one seems to be one of the more featureful (and AFAIK works under linux).
Quoth the MythTV documentation:
TMS is one of the primary providers for program listing data in the United States and Canada.
The box in question is currently only sold in New Zealand.
So I think its safe to say that the box probably doesn't use Zap2It!
Why (in the absence of a non /.ed TFA) do people assume its using Zap2it? I think that is US only anyway.
Note they said it supports DVB-T (Thats digital terrestrial TV outside the US). Don't know about NZ but in the UK there is a free 7-day EPG broadcast with the DVB-T signal which MythTV happily grabs.
Plus MythTV supports xmltv which can scrape listings from a variety of websites worldwide.