"Two Northwest China officials were punished after their plan to reduce air pollution readings by spraying water cannons near monitoring equipment backfired and left a government building encrusted in ice."
Thank you for the only? useful comment in this thread. If the editor is listening, it might have been useful to have had this information in the summary.
Here's some information from the article on the legal loopholes:
The chatbot uses American rebooking rules on a ticket to switch flights and obtain refunds. It uses rules like the “24 hour rule,” weather warnings, and airline compliance with laws against price gouging to find cheaper tickets. Every five seconds, the chatbot checks for a deal up until the time of your departure, when weather and cancellation loopholes appear more often, according to Browder. DoNotPay actually books and holds the seat for you with its own money until your old seat can be canceled, using the bot’s VC funding.
Because it isn’t versed in other countries’ rebooking rules, the chatbot only works on US airlines with flights that depart from inside the US, whether domestic or international. It doesn’t work for flights flying from international into the US. (The chatbot can also check for lower hotel prices from five hotel chains, including Hilton, Intercontinental, Hyatt, Marriott and Best Western, but it doesn’t cover every hotel yet.)
Four years later, the majority of the children who gained initial tolerance were still eating peanuts as part of their normal diet and 70% passed a further challenge test to confirm long-term tolerance.
That sounds much better than "up to four years". Very refreshing to see a headline that understates research results:)
Yeah, keeping it short can be pretty difficult sometimes. It's a useful skill to have. For example when you need to tell someone something without wasting much time, like when you are in a hurry.
One time I wrote a long email to someone. And they only skimmed it and then asked questions that were directly answered in the email.
Ever since, I've been keeping my messages short so no one can claim that their pet piece of information was not included in my email. For example, that one time someone asked a really stupid question, and I thought the shortest possible way to answer would be to call the guy a moron. It was very effective. I have no doubt that the guy understood every word in my email. Despite being a moron.
Calling people morons isn't very good either, however. I once called a guy a moron, and he wasn't too happy about it. I could see it in his facial expression. It's good to be able to read facial expressions. He also came running after me, which I would have understood even if I hadn't read his expression though.
So to summarize: under many circumstances it might be better to keep it short rather than long, because people might misunderstand you otherwise, but there is a fine line between a good concise statement and insulting people.
Thank you for your attention. Please also read my previous comment about the meaning of life.
55% of all workers have a commute that takes longer than one hour according to this article: http://toyokeizai.net/articles... Direct link to info graphic: http://tk.ismcdn.jp/mwimgs/4/0... (maybe you can sort of read it without speaking Japanese) Based on personal experience and the fact that tech workers don't get paid all that much, this is unlikely to be much different for tech workers. 24 minutes is _maybe_ possible for people who work at Rakuten, which recently moved to the Kanagawa-prefecture border of Tokyo. (Note: I just recently moved far away from Tokyo to Shimane because of the long commute times.)
Here's some more relevant information: http://blog.trailofbits.com/20... The person who wrote this article quotes what exactly the FBI is wanting Apple to do, claims that Apple is very well capable of complying with the order, even if it were a 5S or later, and that the FBI should be able to get up to one code test per 80 ms.
Graffiti is a huge problem in Germany. All the graffiti is really embarrassing when I'm in Berlin with people from abroad. Less graffiti probably means more tourists and less service outages because the train you were supposed to take is currently being cleaned, so there you get your tax dollars right back. (Not to mention that getting caught means you have to foot the bill for the removal of your graffiti, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to get you to pay some fraction of whatever the drones and their infrastructure cost, too.) And most important, less graffiti also means fewer people stressed from eye cancer, and possibly fewer people who think it's okay to be a criminal.
Under the suspicion of having created a computer virus, Kyoto Prefectural Police have taken into custody a 13-year-old eighth-grader living in Tokyo, Akiruno City, and notified the children's welfare center, based on the youth's misconduct of virus creation (skipping translation of official name of crime, which is provided here as well).
According to the announcement, a male student created a virus last year, on August 5, that forcibly shuts down computers. His deed has been recognized as a misconduct/misdemeanor.
The male student was at the helm of a membership-based site where hackers exchange information. "I was interested in hacking and wanted to study hacking, and created the site in August last year," he explains.
Kyoto Prectural Police have also arrested a suspect, a 23-year-old contruction worker from East Yamato City in Tokyo (name is in the article, but I don't agree that it should be published at this stage so I won't romanize it. Google Translate probably did it anyway though), who gave technical lessons on that site, under the suspicion that he had stored a virus on his home computer that deletes files on computers without permission.
EFF donor here. I wish the EFF could keep their noses out of stuff not to do with rights in the electronic world. Why should I care what agencies fly US military drones?
Recently read a book that is exactly on the same topic as the book referenced in the article. It's called "The Lights in the Tunnel," and you can get it from the author's site for a price you can set yourself. I read it and thought it was insightful.
According to his ideas, things won't be free. However, people will get a salary without "working" per se. The author recommends maintaining a market economy. There will be some jobs left, but most people will receive a salary directly from the government. The government sets incentives, such as getting a good education, and behaving in an environmentally sound way. If you go after these incentives, your salary is increased. Education keeps crime rates low, and behaving in an environmentally responsible manner is good for everyone.
It's definitely a decent read, and I think things may well play out the way the author thinks.
The sad part it what will really stop nuclear power dead is if this forces the PM to resign due to public pressure. The potential disruption of the political power structure are what the politicians are really going to be worried about.
You are way off the mark. If the earthquake hadn't happened, it's likely that he would have resigned already. Here's a relevant link. Basically, his approval rating's gone up after the earthquake, from 24% (2011-03-03) to 35.6% (2011-03-17). 24% is slightly lower than the approval rating at which it's believed that a cabinet is on the way out.
BTW, Japanese cabinets come and go. As you can see here, very few Prime Ministers stay in office for four years or longer.
Title: Sale of apple products ends across the board -- Apple Inc.'s intentions and Yodobashi Camera
Yodobashi Camera announced that it will stop selling Apple products on their internet site yodobashi.com and their telephone shopping service "moshi moshi Yodobashi". (TL note: moshi moshi is a Japanese word that is used when answering the phone.) Furthermore, sales in (physical, I presume) stores continue.
According to Yodobashi Camera, "it has come to the state of affairs that we have to stop selling all Apple products, including iPods, MacBooks, iMacs, and related accessories", and furthermore this is "a thing resulting from Apple Inc.'s intentions".
The service that you can pick up products ordered on yodobashi.com from one of their physical stores and their "check if product is available in store" feature are going to be continued for a long time.
Furthermore, Yodobashi will not comment on matters not publicized on the internets.
Besides Yodobashi Camera, Bikku Camera, Yamada appliances, and many other major volume sellers alike are stopping the sale of Apple products on the internets. Bikku Camera states that they can't comment on details either, but they display strong posture by saying "because you can also buy over the counter, it's not something that will have that much influence."
Besides major volume sellers, the Apple-specialized Rakuten stores "Akihabara Mac Collection," "kitcut," and others have stopped selling Apple products. (However, at the time of this writing (April 26), kitcut is still selling Apple products on their own site.) Apart from these stores, you can see many other Rakuten stores either state "not in stock" or that they have stopped selling Apple products. It is a matter of life and death for all internet shops that don't have a physical store.
And naturally, while internet stores across the board have stopped selling Apple products, Apple's own online store continues to sell products. Apart from the Apple Store, the foreign company Amazon.com still sells just like before.
Furthermore, Apple hasn't - as of April 26 - released any official statements regarding this matter, [didn't get this part of the last sentence - help is appreciated].
Yes, use flash cards, but not the dead tree type. Use anki. I use it to study Japanese, and I'm sure it's almost as good for Chinese. http://ichi2.net/anki/
EDITED TO ADD (12/31): While it is true that browsers do some SSL certificate verification, when they find an invalid certificate they display a warning dialog box which everyone -- me included -- ignores.
So, what kind of things do _you_ find funny then? To me at least April Fool's day is the best day of the whole year. (Just posting to get an achievement award:D)
Responding to first post for extra visibility. As usual, no time for proof-reading:P
[Federal trojan]: Pirate Party's Home Searched The search for an informant from the Bavarian Ministry of Justice
Bavarian police officers have searched the home of the spokesman of the German Pirate Party, Ralph Hunderlach. They were searching for an informant from the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, who gave the privacy activists and computer experts information about the probably illegally used trojan to listen into skype conversations.
The Bavarian federal state government is pressuring the Pirate Party with the search of its spokesman's home. "The Bavarian authorities have worked without any legal foundation on a trojan and are now trying to silence their critics", said Udo Vetter, a lawyer and law-blogger to the Frankfurter Rundschau.
On September 11 at 5:45 [probably AM] police men appeared in the spokesman's home and threatened to remove every piece of furniture if he didn't tell them where he got the information. Hunderlach is at the same time political business man [WTF] of the Regional Association Bavaria of the Pirate Party. "His home was searched to find out the identify of the informant", said Thorsten Wirth, chair of the Pirate Party Hessen [a state in Germany] to Golem.de. It wasn't possible to reveal the search of his home earlier to the public because Hunderlach was busy with his job.
The person who gave the documents to the Pirate Party however was assured of the securedness of every bit of information that could identify him from unwanted access (by the Party). Another Pirate-activist's server that was also confiscated was also secured using strong encryption.
The question is "if there maybe might be an excess of governmental activity here", said the former Minister of the Interior Gerhart Baum (FDP), who is now a civil liberties activist to the Frankfurter Rundschau.
In January 2008 the Pirate Party was given a letter from the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, which included possible evidence of the use of a trojan to listen in on skype conversations and technical details about the employed software. According to the Party, the trojan is suitable for eavesdropping of VoIP conversations and should be able to be installed by police by e-mail or by accessing the system locally. Furthermore, the software can be changed or even deleted without leaving traces and allows access to internal properties of the Skype client and SSL-encrypted websites. "Now that this search has taken place, there's no doubt left about the genuineness of the letter", according to the Pirate Party.
"Some of our people [policemen/politicians] seem to be quite intent on implementing a police state", said Jens Seipenbusch, deputy chairman of the Pirates.
Hmm, I think it's also about time to fix some display bugs. The most important one would be that replies to a given comment visually look like they're replies to the parent. And the lines that should tell you what nesting level you're at seem to disappear sometimes, especially when you collapse something. And collapsing a grand-grand-grand-parent, for example, also hides all children, but it triggers that triggers another kind of display bug: the boxes and hooks don't disappear. I usually use Opera, but I was able to see that Firefox doesn't do away with those problems either.
Unfortunately, that might incur a performance penalty. As seen here. Note that I found this article by searching on Google for microcode performance, and I since I didn't read the whole article (since I recall reading a similar one), I make no claims that this article doesn't steal your wife etc.
In fact, the article addresses this issue, see this page
All of the Radeon HD 4800-series cards we've tested have produced some relatively high GPU temperatures, and this early X2 card is no exception. When we asked AMD about this issue in relation to the 4850 and 4870 cards now shipping, they told us the products are qualified at even higher temperatures (over 100 [degrees] C) and tuned for low noise levels. In other words, these temperatures are more or less by design and not necessarily a problem.
I don't think there's (much of) a computer in there. Just a bunch of specialized decoder hardware, plus a low-powered "computer" for the UI. It doesn't come equipped with network hardware, either. I think it's an appealing product to me, cause it's probably noiseless (I don't like that extra-hum when I'm watching something), and I can switch off an energy-wasting appliance while watching videos. It probably renders videos better than many older computers anyway. My only gripe with it is that its resolution isn't really high enough. I was hoping my next display could do 1920x1200.
Dual-core 2 GHz AMD (3800+). Using nVidia's drivers. Haven't come across anything that wouldn't play, and I searched for the most HQ test files - however: Since my monitor doesn't support resolutions above 1024x768, if you really wanted to play back 1080p video, you'd have to invest some more processing power. CPU usage wasn't very high during playback. I used mplayer from SVN, with -vo xv (the default). -vo gl and gl2 cause the graphics card's cooler to spin up, and CPU usage is higher. -vo x11 is just a little more demanding than -vo xv. The current stable version of mplayer is pretty outdated, and a couple months back, when I still had my olde 1700+, the improved performance of the SVN version was quite noticeable.
Slashdot Mirror
Obligatory comic/animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Do you think there is merit to this story? http://www.globaltimes.cn/cont...
"Two Northwest China officials were punished after their plan to reduce air pollution readings by spraying water cannons near monitoring equipment backfired and left a government building encrusted in ice."
Thank you for the only? useful comment in this thread. If the editor is listening, it might have been useful to have had this information in the summary.
Here's some information from the article on the legal loopholes:
The chatbot uses American rebooking rules on a ticket to switch flights and obtain refunds. It uses rules like the “24 hour rule,” weather warnings, and airline compliance with laws against price gouging to find cheaper tickets. Every five seconds, the chatbot checks for a deal up until the time of your departure, when weather and cancellation loopholes appear more often, according to Browder. DoNotPay actually books and holds the seat for you with its own money until your old seat can be canceled, using the bot’s VC funding.
Because it isn’t versed in other countries’ rebooking rules, the chatbot only works on US airlines with flights that depart from inside the US, whether domestic or international. It doesn’t work for flights flying from international into the US. (The chatbot can also check for lower hotel prices from five hotel chains, including Hilton, Intercontinental, Hyatt, Marriott and Best Western, but it doesn’t cover every hotel yet.)
Four years later, the majority of the children who gained initial tolerance were still eating peanuts as part of their normal diet and 70% passed a further challenge test to confirm long-term tolerance.
That sounds much better than "up to four years". Very refreshing to see a headline that understates research results :)
Coincidentally, "jama" means somethign like hindrance/obstacle/nuisance in Japanese. :)
Yeah, keeping it short can be pretty difficult sometimes. It's a useful skill to have. For example when you need to tell someone something without wasting much time, like when you are in a hurry.
One time I wrote a long email to someone. And they only skimmed it and then asked questions that were directly answered in the email.
Ever since, I've been keeping my messages short so no one can claim that their pet piece of information was not included in my email. For example, that one time someone asked a really stupid question, and I thought the shortest possible way to answer would be to call the guy a moron. It was very effective. I have no doubt that the guy understood every word in my email. Despite being a moron.
Calling people morons isn't very good either, however. I once called a guy a moron, and he wasn't too happy about it. I could see it in his facial expression. It's good to be able to read facial expressions. He also came running after me, which I would have understood even if I hadn't read his expression though.
So to summarize: under many circumstances it might be better to keep it short rather than long, because people might misunderstand you otherwise, but there is a fine line between a good concise statement and insulting people.
Thank you for your attention. Please also read my previous comment about the meaning of life.
55% of all workers have a commute that takes longer than one hour according to this article: http://toyokeizai.net/articles...
Direct link to info graphic: http://tk.ismcdn.jp/mwimgs/4/0... (maybe you can sort of read it without speaking Japanese)
Based on personal experience and the fact that tech workers don't get paid all that much, this is unlikely to be much different for tech workers. 24 minutes is _maybe_ possible for people who work at Rakuten, which recently moved to the Kanagawa-prefecture border of Tokyo.
(Note: I just recently moved far away from Tokyo to Shimane because of the long commute times.)
Here's some more relevant information: http://blog.trailofbits.com/20...
The person who wrote this article quotes what exactly the FBI is wanting Apple to do, claims that Apple is very well capable of complying with the order, even if it were a 5S or later, and that the FBI should be able to get up to one code test per 80 ms.
Defacing a website: 2 years in prison
Defacing a building: kids will be kids
Graffiti is a huge problem in Germany. All the graffiti is really embarrassing when I'm in Berlin with people from abroad.
Less graffiti probably means more tourists and less service outages because the train you were supposed to take is currently being cleaned, so there you get your tax dollars right back. (Not to mention that getting caught means you have to foot the bill for the removal of your graffiti, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to get you to pay some fraction of whatever the drones and their infrastructure cost, too.)
And most important, less graffiti also means fewer people stressed from eye cancer, and possibly fewer people who think it's okay to be a criminal.
Provided to you with much <3.
Under the suspicion of having created a computer virus, Kyoto Prefectural Police have taken into custody a 13-year-old eighth-grader living in Tokyo, Akiruno City, and notified the children's welfare center, based on the youth's misconduct of virus creation (skipping translation of official name of crime, which is provided here as well).
According to the announcement, a male student created a virus last year, on August 5, that forcibly shuts down computers. His deed has been recognized as a misconduct/misdemeanor.
The male student was at the helm of a membership-based site where hackers exchange information. "I was interested in hacking and wanted to study hacking, and created the site in August last year," he explains.
Kyoto Prectural Police have also arrested a suspect, a 23-year-old contruction worker from East Yamato City in Tokyo (name is in the article, but I don't agree that it should be published at this stage so I won't romanize it. Google Translate probably did it anyway though), who gave technical lessons on that site, under the suspicion that he had stored a virus on his home computer that deletes files on computers without permission.
(July 5, 2012, Yomiuri-Shimbun)
EFF donor here. I wish the EFF could keep their noses out of stuff not to do with rights in the electronic world. Why should I care what agencies fly US military drones?
Recently read a book that is exactly on the same topic as the book referenced in the article. It's called "The Lights in the Tunnel," and you can get it from the author's site for a price you can set yourself. I read it and thought it was insightful.
According to his ideas, things won't be free. However, people will get a salary without "working" per se. The author recommends maintaining a market economy. There will be some jobs left, but most people will receive a salary directly from the government. The government sets incentives, such as getting a good education, and behaving in an environmentally sound way. If you go after these incentives, your salary is increased. Education keeps crime rates low, and behaving in an environmentally responsible manner is good for everyone.
It's definitely a decent read, and I think things may well play out the way the author thinks.
Unless your vision issue is the opposite of the one you have in mind, in which case it would make it easier to read?
The sad part it what will really stop nuclear power dead is if this forces the PM to resign due to public pressure. The potential disruption of the political power structure are what the politicians are really going to be worried about.
You are way off the mark. If the earthquake hadn't happened, it's likely that he would have resigned already. Here's a relevant link. Basically, his approval rating's gone up after the earthquake, from 24% (2011-03-03) to 35.6% (2011-03-17). 24% is slightly lower than the approval rating at which it's believed that a cabinet is on the way out.
BTW, Japanese cabinets come and go. As you can see here, very few Prime Ministers stay in office for four years or longer.
Title: Sale of apple products ends across the board -- Apple Inc.'s intentions and Yodobashi Camera
Yodobashi Camera announced that it will stop selling Apple products on their internet site yodobashi.com and their telephone shopping service "moshi moshi Yodobashi". (TL note: moshi moshi is a Japanese word that is used when answering the phone.) Furthermore, sales in (physical, I presume) stores continue.
According to Yodobashi Camera, "it has come to the state of affairs that we have to stop selling all Apple products, including iPods, MacBooks, iMacs, and related accessories", and furthermore this is "a thing resulting from Apple Inc.'s intentions".
The service that you can pick up products ordered on yodobashi.com from one of their physical stores and their "check if product is available in store" feature are going to be continued for a long time.
Furthermore, Yodobashi will not comment on matters not publicized on the internets.
Besides Yodobashi Camera, Bikku Camera, Yamada appliances, and many other major volume sellers alike are stopping the sale of Apple products on the internets. Bikku Camera states that they can't comment on details either, but they display strong posture by saying "because you can also buy over the counter, it's not something that will have that much influence."
Besides major volume sellers, the Apple-specialized Rakuten stores "Akihabara Mac Collection," "kitcut," and others have stopped selling Apple products. (However, at the time of this writing (April 26), kitcut is still selling Apple products on their own site.) Apart from these stores, you can see many other Rakuten stores either state "not in stock" or that they have stopped selling Apple products. It is a matter of life and death for all internet shops that don't have a physical store.
And naturally, while internet stores across the board have stopped selling Apple products, Apple's own online store continues to sell products. Apart from the Apple Store, the foreign company Amazon.com still sells just like before.
Furthermore, Apple hasn't - as of April 26 - released any official statements regarding this matter, [didn't get this part of the last sentence - help is appreciated].
Yes, use flash cards, but not the dead tree type. Use anki. I use it to study Japanese, and I'm sure it's almost as good for Chinese.
http://ichi2.net/anki/
Even Bruce Schneier ignores these warnings:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/12/forging_ssl_cer.html
EDITED TO ADD (12/31): While it is true that browsers do some SSL certificate verification, when they find an invalid certificate they display a warning dialog box which everyone -- me included -- ignores.
So, what kind of things do _you_ find funny then? To me at least April Fool's day is the best day of the whole year. :D)
(Just posting to get an achievement award
Responding to first post for extra visibility. As usual, no time for proof-reading :P
[Federal trojan]: Pirate Party's Home Searched
The search for an informant from the Bavarian Ministry of Justice
Bavarian police officers have searched the home of the spokesman of the German Pirate Party, Ralph Hunderlach. They were searching for an informant from the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, who gave the privacy activists and computer experts information about the probably illegally used trojan to listen into skype conversations.
The Bavarian federal state government is pressuring the Pirate Party with the search of its spokesman's home. "The Bavarian authorities have worked without any legal foundation on a trojan and are now trying to silence their critics", said Udo Vetter, a lawyer and law-blogger to the Frankfurter Rundschau.
On September 11 at 5:45 [probably AM] police men appeared in the spokesman's home and threatened to remove every piece of furniture if he didn't tell them where he got the information. Hunderlach is at the same time political business man [WTF] of the Regional Association Bavaria of the Pirate Party. "His home was searched to find out the identify of the informant", said Thorsten Wirth, chair of the Pirate Party Hessen [a state in Germany] to Golem.de. It wasn't possible to reveal the search of his home earlier to the public because Hunderlach was busy with his job.
The person who gave the documents to the Pirate Party however was assured of the securedness of every bit of information that could identify him from unwanted access (by the Party). Another Pirate-activist's server that was also confiscated was also secured using strong encryption.
The question is "if there maybe might be an excess of governmental activity here", said the former Minister of the Interior Gerhart Baum (FDP), who is now a civil liberties activist to the Frankfurter Rundschau.
In January 2008 the Pirate Party was given a letter from the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, which included possible evidence of the use of a trojan to listen in on skype conversations and technical details about the employed software. According to the Party, the trojan is suitable for eavesdropping of VoIP conversations and should be able to be installed by police by e-mail or by accessing the system locally. Furthermore, the software can be changed or even deleted without leaving traces and allows access to internal properties of the Skype client and SSL-encrypted websites. "Now that this search has taken place, there's no doubt left about the genuineness of the letter", according to the Pirate Party.
"Some of our people [policemen/politicians] seem to be quite intent on implementing a police state", said Jens Seipenbusch, deputy chairman of the Pirates.
Hmm, I think it's also about time to fix some display bugs. The most important one would be that replies to a given comment visually look like they're replies to the parent. And the lines that should tell you what nesting level you're at seem to disappear sometimes, especially when you collapse something. And collapsing a grand-grand-grand-parent, for example, also hides all children, but it triggers that triggers another kind of display bug: the boxes and hooks don't disappear.
I usually use Opera, but I was able to see that Firefox doesn't do away with those problems either.
Unfortunately, that might incur a performance penalty. As seen here.
Note that I found this article by searching on Google for microcode performance, and I since I didn't read the whole article (since I recall reading a similar one), I make no claims that this article doesn't steal your wife etc.
In fact, the article addresses this issue, see this page
All of the Radeon HD 4800-series cards we've tested have produced some relatively high GPU temperatures, and this early X2 card is no exception. When we asked AMD about this issue in relation to the 4850 and 4870 cards now shipping, they told us the products are qualified at even higher temperatures (over 100 [degrees] C) and tuned for low noise levels. In other words, these temperatures are more or less by design and not necessarily a problem.
I don't think there's (much of) a computer in there. Just a bunch of specialized decoder hardware, plus a low-powered "computer" for the UI. It doesn't come equipped with network hardware, either. I think it's an appealing product to me, cause it's probably noiseless (I don't like that extra-hum when I'm watching something), and I can switch off an energy-wasting appliance while watching videos. It probably renders videos better than many older computers anyway.
My only gripe with it is that its resolution isn't really high enough. I was hoping my next display could do 1920x1200.
Dual-core 2 GHz AMD (3800+). Using nVidia's drivers. Haven't come across anything that wouldn't play, and I searched for the most HQ test files - however: Since my monitor doesn't support resolutions above 1024x768, if you really wanted to play back 1080p video, you'd have to invest some more processing power. CPU usage wasn't very high during playback. I used mplayer from SVN, with -vo xv (the default). -vo gl and gl2 cause the graphics card's cooler to spin up, and CPU usage is higher. -vo x11 is just a little more demanding than -vo xv. The current stable version of mplayer is pretty outdated, and a couple months back, when I still had my olde 1700+, the improved performance of the SVN version was quite noticeable.