Anyone else worried that the touch screen is going to get worn out over time? This isn't like a PDA's touch screen that's primarily being used by a stylus; rather it's going to be constantly touched by fingers. Although now that I think about it, this seems almost like a multimedia oriented PDA with a HDD.
I happen to have installed iTunes 6.0 in Linux using Wine 0.9.7 (compiled from source) over the weekend (6.0.2 failed). This is in Fedora Core 4; iTunes didn't play well with the official Fedora wine rpm. The install took a few hours on a relatively fast machine (P-M 2.0), but iTunes does run. It was able to detect the music being shared via Rendezvous from a box running iTunes 4.8 in another room, and it played all the MP3 shared music fine (I didn't try AAC ones). I could browse the iTunes store, but I couldn't listen to previews (probably DRM issue). I used the instructions found here: http://frankscorner.org/index.php?p=itunes6
Azureus 4.5
BitPump 4
BitTorrent Client 4
uTorrent 4.5
My first experience with BitTorrent was pretty poor; I was using Cohen's original client and didn't realize I needed to bound my upload speed or else I would saturate my connection (for those unaware, you need some upload bandwith when downloading to send acknowledgment packets that show you recieved part of the download). Even then, I found BT cumbersome until I found Azureus which I still use today. Other popular clients that were not reviewed are ABC (Another BitTorrent Client) and BitTornado.
I partially disagree with your comment, "Part of the rise in used sales has to be due to the rising price of new games," if you look at the price of games over the years they have been amazingly consistant (less than inflation even). Heck many of the Super Nintendo (Super Famicom) games with the FX chip (StarFox, etc.) cost around $70 each. Now to be fair, the physical costs of video games back then (the cartridge era) was signifcantly more than it is now (the opitical media era), so the margins are better now, but it amazes me that game prices have been so consistant.
I believe the rise of the second hand market has to do with the avilability of used games tremendously increasing. Thinking back to the early 90's, I can only remember two or threee brick & morter (Babbages & Mikes Game Exchange) stores which sold used video games within 20 miles of me (this is in the East San Francisco Bay Area, not the middle of nowhere). The only other place to get used games was through the mail with Funcoland. These days there's probably 40-50 places (Game Stop, Game Crazy, Babbages, Blockbuster, EB, etc.), not to mention with Amazon & eBay, you can get virtually any game you ever wanted used.
I agree that there's a huge difference between a $25 used game or a $50 new one, and if the difference was closer (you gave $30 new in your example), I may actually go with the new.
With that said, one argument I believe is missing in this discussion is that used games help increase the value of new games. A strong secondhand market helps the original value because buyers know that even though they're paying $50 initially, they can (at least for the first couple months), sell it for roughly 40% of its initial value (making the initial price feel like less.
I can see why ISP's would want this (less zombies, etc.), but I don't believe they'd all be able to sit down and agree on standards. Likewise, if my current provider makes say running Windows XP SP2 a requirement, there's no doubt I can go elsewhere and find some other provider that would let me run Linux. Now when we reach the point where there's only a handful of ISP's (esp. if they're regional), we will have a problem.
Although I agree with your post, it should be noted that Dell still provides OEM Windows XP install discs with their Small Business lines of machines (Latitudes, Optiplexes, Precisions). I'm not sure about consumer models bought from the Small Business section, but I know for sure on the lines mentioned above. These CD's are free of charge (or rather you don't pay less by asking them not send them), and they only include Windows (none of the preinstalled junk) -- I've used them myself. Also, up until this past summer, the consumer lines in the Home section were offered with OEM Windows install CD's as well. Unfortunately around June, Dell switched to restore partitions.
These days there's no need to boot off a thumb drive to run Linux off it. Many distros come with QEmu and all you do is run a batch or script file to launch the emulator and a full Linux session in either Windows or Linux. Note: the machine would have to be x86. For an example check out http://damnsmalllinux.org/
What motivates theatres to have a "No NC-17" blanket policy? I can understand having a a policy of not having certain NC-17 movies based on management's decision after viewing a particular movie, but it seems naive to just ban all NC-17 movies blindly. I've never looked up who owns the big chains of theatres, but is it a religously charged, mid-west family like the Waltons (Walmart)?
A few days ago there was a story about how iTunes is expected to change its 99 cent flat pricing in the next year; in that article the following claim is made, "EMI said today that digital sales, made up 4.9% of the company's sales in the last six months, up from 2.1% a year ago." (http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/16/apple-emi-itunes -cx_pak_1116autofacescan08.html). How can iTunes be so high in one chart, yet only account for less than 5% of EMI's total sales in the same period. From what I understand, EMI should be getting the majority of the sale on iTunes, so I'd expect it to be a bit higher.
I know this isn't Ask Slashdot, but does anyone have recommendations for good books on the subject of embedded systems? I was actually at Barnes & Nobles today and found two books: "Embedded C" & "Programming Embedded Systems in C and C++". I will be finishing UCSD in December with a BS in EE, and I have an opportunity to join a UC funded research team in a position which will require a lot of work with embedded devices (of which I have very limited experience), and I could use any advice on getting into the subject. It's expected that I will be learning on the job, but any suggestions would be appreciated.
Another one worth looking at is the R series by Toshiba; it's roughly 6lbs but sports a 14.1" screen. You can see one in person at Best Buy (but iif you buy one I highly suggest going elsewhere). Also for either machine, if you qualify for academic prices definitely go through a local college. My school orders a number of preconfigured models in bulk and passes some savings to the customer (it's cheaper to buy from my campus bookstore than from the IBM higher education page directly).
On a side note, is there any good tablet linux distros yet?
Honestly, I never figured out why a video iPod would be such a big deal. By Dell Axim X5 (which I bought refurbished 3 years) plays Xvid, Divx, and a myriad of other video formats just fine. It's trivial to convert video for it in both Windows (I use Windows Media Encoder) & Linux (I use dvd::rip); and all the videos you find on the torrents work with it without recompression (I use BetaPlayer). Furthermore, the cost of media is dirt cheap these days; I picked up a 512MB SD card from buy.com for less than $20 after rebates -- that's enough for a well compressed video or in my case 4-5 episodes of Family Guy. I admit a PDA isn't the greatest MP3 player due to form factor (I actually own a 3G 15GB iPod), but for videos it just seems much more convenient.
For anyone interested in testing out Enlightenment 17 in Fedora, you can find a repository here: http://sps.nus.edu.sg/~didierbe/news_e17.html
I've used it with FC2 & 3, haven't tried FC4 yet, but so far it's been fairly stable. I do still prefer E16, but it's worth a shot.
The popular Dell 20" wide screen (2005FPW) is already a victom of this. The monitor's native resolution is 1680x1050 and so it should be able to render 720p without a problem. However, you can't get HDTV content from either digital cable or directv receivers via DVI. Currently, going analog via Component In will get you HD, but unfortunately the monitor only offers DVI, VGA, S-Vid, & Composite. I use a Component to VGA transcoder, but the solution is neither cheap nor elegant.
If Transmeta does close shop, I hope they consider opening up their "Code Morphing Software". It's an interesting approach to X86 processing on non-X86 processors, for more info check here: http://www.transmeta.com/crusoe/codemorphing.html
I too am glad they're back, and I truely hope they can keep this up. I wonder if this will affect Kevin Rose who is still working for G4TV on Attack of the Show (the renamed Screen Savers which completely blows).
They are not saying an online store is a bad thing, rather they suggest avoiding products that lock you into ONE online store. iTunes certainly doesn't have every track I want, heck, there's numerous bands I want that they simply don't carry; the same can be said with Naptster, Rhapsody, etc. For example, I'm a Dave Matthews fan but own an iPod. Unfortunately DMB only sells albums on Napster, not iTunes (perhaps this isn't the case any more, but for a while it was), so I'm out of luck unless I want to go out and buy the CD. The method you suggest of buying from another store, burning, ripping, and re-encoding will work, but you'll be taking a big quality hit. Personally I buy 99% of my music on CD's from local independent stores, but for some people a wide online selection may be important.
I spoke to one of the lead developers of JDS at LinuxWorld in SF over the summer and he had mentioned that the roadmap put JDS & Project Looking Glass meeting around the next iteration of Sun Java Desktop (JDS4). I don't know if that's still the plan, but you download the latest source of Project Looking Glass here: https://lg3d.dev.java.net/
I wish Dell shipped Nero with Windows XP, instead they give you some Sonic RecordNow! crap (I just picked up a Latitude D610). Actually I wish Dell offered laptops without an OS. The only reason I still have a Windows partition is for programs like OrCAD PSPICE, but Nero would have been a plus.
I completely agree, in fact today at lunch I had a conversation with a (very intelligent) friend who asked me if there are any alternatives to Windows. She had heard of Apple, but knew it wasn't an option because it used different hardware (although she didn't know why that's an issue). I told her I ran Linux which led to the question of what exactly an operating system is (and why will Linux work but not Apple). I attempted to explain to the best of my ability (I am a fourth year engineer, she is a fourth year managerial science) but it's very difficult to say anything beyond, "It interfaces the software & the hardware," without becoming very technical. When people don't even know other options exist, then the options virtually do not exist.
If Napster sticks with WMV, one possibility is for MS to offer a product to allow you to stream the media from your PC to XBox and view it on your TV. The necessary hardware is already present (I watch MPEG4 video on my modded XBox all the time), so MS just needs to develope software that can maintain the DRM protection while allowing us to view the media. It would also be good marketing since I doubt MS would give the DRM decorder to Sony or Nintendo.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone else worried that the touch screen is going to get worn out over time? This isn't like a PDA's touch screen that's primarily being used by a stylus; rather it's going to be constantly touched by fingers. Although now that I think about it, this seems almost like a multimedia oriented PDA with a HDD.
I happen to have installed iTunes 6.0 in Linux using Wine 0.9.7 (compiled from source) over the weekend (6.0.2 failed). This is in Fedora Core 4; iTunes didn't play well with the official Fedora wine rpm. The install took a few hours on a relatively fast machine (P-M 2.0), but iTunes does run. It was able to detect the music being shared via Rendezvous from a box running iTunes 4.8 in another room, and it played all the MP3 shared music fine (I didn't try AAC ones). I could browse the iTunes store, but I couldn't listen to previews (probably DRM issue). I used the instructions found here: http://frankscorner.org/index.php?p=itunes6
Azureus 4.5 BitPump 4 BitTorrent Client 4 uTorrent 4.5 My first experience with BitTorrent was pretty poor; I was using Cohen's original client and didn't realize I needed to bound my upload speed or else I would saturate my connection (for those unaware, you need some upload bandwith when downloading to send acknowledgment packets that show you recieved part of the download). Even then, I found BT cumbersome until I found Azureus which I still use today. Other popular clients that were not reviewed are ABC (Another BitTorrent Client) and BitTornado.
I partially disagree with your comment, "Part of the rise in used sales has to be due to the rising price of new games," if you look at the price of games over the years they have been amazingly consistant (less than inflation even). Heck many of the Super Nintendo (Super Famicom) games with the FX chip (StarFox, etc.) cost around $70 each. Now to be fair, the physical costs of video games back then (the cartridge era) was signifcantly more than it is now (the opitical media era), so the margins are better now, but it amazes me that game prices have been so consistant. I believe the rise of the second hand market has to do with the avilability of used games tremendously increasing. Thinking back to the early 90's, I can only remember two or threee brick & morter (Babbages & Mikes Game Exchange) stores which sold used video games within 20 miles of me (this is in the East San Francisco Bay Area, not the middle of nowhere). The only other place to get used games was through the mail with Funcoland. These days there's probably 40-50 places (Game Stop, Game Crazy, Babbages, Blockbuster, EB, etc.), not to mention with Amazon & eBay, you can get virtually any game you ever wanted used. I agree that there's a huge difference between a $25 used game or a $50 new one, and if the difference was closer (you gave $30 new in your example), I may actually go with the new. With that said, one argument I believe is missing in this discussion is that used games help increase the value of new games. A strong secondhand market helps the original value because buyers know that even though they're paying $50 initially, they can (at least for the first couple months), sell it for roughly 40% of its initial value (making the initial price feel like less.
I can see why ISP's would want this (less zombies, etc.), but I don't believe they'd all be able to sit down and agree on standards. Likewise, if my current provider makes say running Windows XP SP2 a requirement, there's no doubt I can go elsewhere and find some other provider that would let me run Linux. Now when we reach the point where there's only a handful of ISP's (esp. if they're regional), we will have a problem.
Although I agree with your post, it should be noted that Dell still provides OEM Windows XP install discs with their Small Business lines of machines (Latitudes, Optiplexes, Precisions). I'm not sure about consumer models bought from the Small Business section, but I know for sure on the lines mentioned above. These CD's are free of charge (or rather you don't pay less by asking them not send them), and they only include Windows (none of the preinstalled junk) -- I've used them myself. Also, up until this past summer, the consumer lines in the Home section were offered with OEM Windows install CD's as well. Unfortunately around June, Dell switched to restore partitions.
These days there's no need to boot off a thumb drive to run Linux off it. Many distros come with QEmu and all you do is run a batch or script file to launch the emulator and a full Linux session in either Windows or Linux. Note: the machine would have to be x86. For an example check out http://damnsmalllinux.org/
What motivates theatres to have a "No NC-17" blanket policy? I can understand having a a policy of not having certain NC-17 movies based on management's decision after viewing a particular movie, but it seems naive to just ban all NC-17 movies blindly. I've never looked up who owns the big chains of theatres, but is it a religously charged, mid-west family like the Waltons (Walmart)?
# uname -r && ls -l `which kde-config` 2.6.14-gentoo-r3 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 24101 Nov 27 10:28 /usr/kde/3.4/bin/kde-config
A few days ago there was a story about how iTunes is expected to change its 99 cent flat pricing in the next year; in that article the following claim is made, "EMI said today that digital sales, made up 4.9% of the company's sales in the last six months, up from 2.1% a year ago." (http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/16/apple-emi-itunes -cx_pak_1116autofacescan08.html). How can iTunes be so high in one chart, yet only account for less than 5% of EMI's total sales in the same period. From what I understand, EMI should be getting the majority of the sale on iTunes, so I'd expect it to be a bit higher.
I know this isn't Ask Slashdot, but does anyone have recommendations for good books on the subject of embedded systems? I was actually at Barnes & Nobles today and found two books: "Embedded C" & "Programming Embedded Systems in C and C++". I will be finishing UCSD in December with a BS in EE, and I have an opportunity to join a UC funded research team in a position which will require a lot of work with embedded devices (of which I have very limited experience), and I could use any advice on getting into the subject. It's expected that I will be learning on the job, but any suggestions would be appreciated.
Another one worth looking at is the R series by Toshiba; it's roughly 6lbs but sports a 14.1" screen. You can see one in person at Best Buy (but iif you buy one I highly suggest going elsewhere). Also for either machine, if you qualify for academic prices definitely go through a local college. My school orders a number of preconfigured models in bulk and passes some savings to the customer (it's cheaper to buy from my campus bookstore than from the IBM higher education page directly). On a side note, is there any good tablet linux distros yet?
Left handed people account for only roughly 10-12% of the world population (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lefthanded#Statistic s_of_left-handedness), and I doubt right handed users who prefer the a left mouse make up 38-40%.
Honestly, I never figured out why a video iPod would be such a big deal. By Dell Axim X5 (which I bought refurbished 3 years) plays Xvid, Divx, and a myriad of other video formats just fine. It's trivial to convert video for it in both Windows (I use Windows Media Encoder) & Linux (I use dvd::rip); and all the videos you find on the torrents work with it without recompression (I use BetaPlayer). Furthermore, the cost of media is dirt cheap these days; I picked up a 512MB SD card from buy.com for less than $20 after rebates -- that's enough for a well compressed video or in my case 4-5 episodes of Family Guy. I admit a PDA isn't the greatest MP3 player due to form factor (I actually own a 3G 15GB iPod), but for videos it just seems much more convenient.
For anyone interested in testing out Enlightenment 17 in Fedora, you can find a repository here: http://sps.nus.edu.sg/~didierbe/news_e17.html I've used it with FC2 & 3, haven't tried FC4 yet, but so far it's been fairly stable. I do still prefer E16, but it's worth a shot.
The popular Dell 20" wide screen (2005FPW) is already a victom of this. The monitor's native resolution is 1680x1050 and so it should be able to render 720p without a problem. However, you can't get HDTV content from either digital cable or directv receivers via DVI. Currently, going analog via Component In will get you HD, but unfortunately the monitor only offers DVI, VGA, S-Vid, & Composite. I use a Component to VGA transcoder, but the solution is neither cheap nor elegant.
The Rincon Center in the financial district (corner of Speare and Mission) offers free wifi during the week.
Well the microbes might not, but my Ice-Nine will!
If Transmeta does close shop, I hope they consider opening up their "Code Morphing Software". It's an interesting approach to X86 processing on non-X86 processors, for more info check here: http://www.transmeta.com/crusoe/codemorphing.html
I too am glad they're back, and I truely hope they can keep this up. I wonder if this will affect Kevin Rose who is still working for G4TV on Attack of the Show (the renamed Screen Savers which completely blows).
They are not saying an online store is a bad thing, rather they suggest avoiding products that lock you into ONE online store. iTunes certainly doesn't have every track I want, heck, there's numerous bands I want that they simply don't carry; the same can be said with Naptster, Rhapsody, etc. For example, I'm a Dave Matthews fan but own an iPod. Unfortunately DMB only sells albums on Napster, not iTunes (perhaps this isn't the case any more, but for a while it was), so I'm out of luck unless I want to go out and buy the CD. The method you suggest of buying from another store, burning, ripping, and re-encoding will work, but you'll be taking a big quality hit. Personally I buy 99% of my music on CD's from local independent stores, but for some people a wide online selection may be important.
I spoke to one of the lead developers of JDS at LinuxWorld in SF over the summer and he had mentioned that the roadmap put JDS & Project Looking Glass meeting around the next iteration of Sun Java Desktop (JDS4). I don't know if that's still the plan, but you download the latest source of Project Looking Glass here: https://lg3d.dev.java.net/
I wish Dell shipped Nero with Windows XP, instead they give you some Sonic RecordNow! crap (I just picked up a Latitude D610). Actually I wish Dell offered laptops without an OS. The only reason I still have a Windows partition is for programs like OrCAD PSPICE, but Nero would have been a plus.
I completely agree, in fact today at lunch I had a conversation with a (very intelligent) friend who asked me if there are any alternatives to Windows. She had heard of Apple, but knew it wasn't an option because it used different hardware (although she didn't know why that's an issue). I told her I ran Linux which led to the question of what exactly an operating system is (and why will Linux work but not Apple). I attempted to explain to the best of my ability (I am a fourth year engineer, she is a fourth year managerial science) but it's very difficult to say anything beyond, "It interfaces the software & the hardware," without becoming very technical. When people don't even know other options exist, then the options virtually do not exist.
If Napster sticks with WMV, one possibility is for MS to offer a product to allow you to stream the media from your PC to XBox and view it on your TV. The necessary hardware is already present (I watch MPEG4 video on my modded XBox all the time), so MS just needs to develope software that can maintain the DRM protection while allowing us to view the media. It would also be good marketing since I doubt MS would give the DRM decorder to Sony or Nintendo.