Realistically - and this is said with no disrespect at all for the OSS community, to whom all computer users have some gratitude owed - if you make computing decisions based on philosophical constraints, you are not in the target market
Kudos to Rio for making a player you are happy with, but in general these companies are going to go for money and widespread adoption, and that probably means embracing the proprietary codecs. A Video player may not have the power and space to spare of an mp3 device, slimness of code will probably be a priority bearing in mind the bandwidth needed for real-time video display.
An iPod copies a track into RAM in its entirety, then plays it with the hard drive powereed down. This video player will have to stream off a disk and render in real time, that has to be a more intensive task.
Apparently the underlying core of JDS hasn't changed since the original release, its just an interface and client software refresh. This meant it wouldn't install on many modern machines due to an outdated - by Linux standards - kernel 2.4.19
well, you could include Windows actually - Microsoft allow customised builds for embedded projects, it's just that for an essentially stand-alone project the benefits of Windows such as they are, are largely irrelevant.
Any OS that can share files with a Windows desktop would be suitable, Linux obviously springs to mind because of good driver support and interface compatibility, but not so long ago the Be OS was being touted for exactly this purpose. Be Inc went down after the CEO botched a chance to sell his OS to Apple Computer, but many of its software engineers now work for Palm's Operating systems division.
Possibly the latest builds of the Palm OS would be well suited also. A media device only really needs a player, codecs, and network & removable storage drivers after all.
I love these project computers we see, but my reaction is often to think that the owner could never go out with the PC as it would be an instant theft item
Here's a PC modder who knows what its at - fitting something high-tech and cool into a radio which very much is not.
I wonder if I could make a boom-box skin for my iPod.....
Apologies to slashdot moderators, I'm going offtopic here - these are interesting comments, and worth the time to reply.
Disclosure, I'm not a US Citizen, although I suspect you've already realised this. When people speak about the effect the United States has upon the world we're not just discussing military operations.. in fact about the only thing we're not talking about is Joe Public.
I specifically referred to "foreign, industrial and social policy" as I don't see a real distinction. The United States as an economic superpower has significant sway, both in pure market terms and of diplomatic leverage, both of which have as much need to be used carefully as her near-unbeatable military might
There is significant anger at the US' diplomatic policies which support and defend Israel, a state which is in defiance of more UN Resolutions than Iraq ever was, and one which unlike Iraq was founded illegally and in defiance of commonly-accepted rights.
Your reference to events in Arabia at the end of the Gulf War is factually correct but can be seen from other angles as well, one of which I shall take.
The Iraqi army was nowhere near so well matched against the combined forces which liberated Kuwait as they had been against Iran several years earlier, it would not have been an impossible task for Operation Desert Storm to maintain its inertia and sweep through Iraq to the gates of Baghdad.
Few are those who would have complained at seeing Hussein toppled in 1991, just a few short years after his massacres of the Kurds and Turkomens in the North, of Iranian child soldiers and prisoners of war along his borders and in his camps, and his draining of the marshes of the Shi'i areas in an attempt to starve out the Marsh Arabs
However, the point of view of many is that the West did not want Saddam removed. Similarly recent were the humiliating sieges of US embassies in Teheran, Iran, and that country was, to a far greater extent than today, under the grips of a religious council of hardline Shi'i clerics. America saw Ba'athist government in Iraq as a shield to subdue fundamentalist shi'i islam which otherwise might have spread.
Osama bin Laden, then fresh from the Afghan campaigns against the USSR, was naturally opposed to Hussein - Ba'ath represented secular government untiting the people long racial rather than religious lines, to a hardline Moslem whose followers were drawn from throughout the Islamic world this was unwelcome... so bin Laden offered to provide military forces to keep Iraq at bay.
This would, of course, have been a disaster, but it was compounded by the house of Saud's decision to invite American forces into what Moslems see as holy territory.. and which fundamnetalist moslems saw as an outrage. To them, the US was allowing the continued oppression of many Shi'i Arab, Kurd, Turkomen and Iranian peoples by Saddam Hussein, while at the same time provifing military and diplomatic aid to another pariah state (Israel) which was engaged in a bloody 45-year campaign to hold land taken on pre-biblical grounds from Palestinians who viewed it as their home.
This is, of course, all interpretation, and many other interpretations are possible, but I believe that these were the roots of the rise of al-Qaeda as an international terrorist organisation and of course of the events of Sep 11th 2001. It doesn't just come down to military forces and short-term operations.
I'm quite aware my views won't be to most readers tastes - please reply and challenge me on facts rather than just moderating down. I meta-moderate daily and always mark seemingly political moderations as "unfair"
(prolly gonna get troll-modded for this but it's what I think
Technology won't save troops from deteriorating political situations, it just adds another tool to carry and another IT support problem - and with any projectile-launcher, another way by which to cause civilian injuries and the concomitent reprisals.
Safety can only be gained by acting (in terms of foreign, domestic and social policy) in a manner which does not inspire bloodthirsty desire for vengeance in people of other cultures. Use an ethical solution to roadside bombs, not a technical one.
If it was anyone else but Justin Frankel, I'd agree with you. What can I say - he makes things happen.
Re:Thinking of Switching to a OSX for a laptop
on
Fix a Troubled Mac
·
· Score: 1
Can only go by my own experience.... but it seems to be the case. The best example is installing OSX on a supported system, no need for drivers, no jiggery-pokery, it just installs then runs.
I would like to protest that although this is technically a 64-bit virus, it does not run on the more common and widely accepted Powermac G5, instead choosing to support only a badly cludged extended win32 API.
Does anyone know of a 64-bit version of Bochs or VirtualPC which ould let me run this new and interesting piece of code in emulation?
If IBM offered a Linux distribution that included all drivers to run on all common Thinkpad laptops, I'd buy it, and pick up a Thinkpad off eBay
My laptop is an old iBook, I use it and OS X 10.3 as I like my OS to install and just work. That's what I want in x86 linux. Not support, not "designed for Linux" stickers. I want an IBM-branded disk which will install linux, install modem and network drivers, install CDRW support and a properly configured X-server.
And while I'm wishing, I'd like a new Volkswagen
A link on the front page of/. can send as much traffic to a site in an hour as it might otherwise receive in a month. Why should admins shell out for the kind of bulletproof hosting Microsoft and the BBC have just in case a/. editor decides their site is worthy of a mention?
On a subject of as much interest as 64-bit computing, if this topic had been linked instead back upon itself, Slashdot might have slashdotted itself.
"Since Jan. 1, we've seen probably a 30% to 40% increase" in spam traffic" Commtouch CEO say"
This accurately mirrors what I've noted, I run the mail sweeper for a medium-sized enterprise and analyse spam to improve the quality of our filtering.
I note a lot of the spam has similar formats (apart from the 419 scammers, but they're easy to filter out), leading me to suggest that spamming is dominated by a relatively small clique of big-time mailers
This does at least make it easier to write rules to stop it. We don't use Bayesian filtering, a human-monitored system can be more efficient if done right.
Vegetable oil can be used industrially then processed into fuel - probably millions of gallons a year are used for cooking. In parts of Japan all vegetable oil is stored after use, collected by a weekly tanker and reprocessed into bio-diesel.. sometimes mixed with regular diesel to improve the taste but used nonetheless.
This probably leads to a net energy gain.. especially when you consider that it rids society of the problem of disposing of used cooking oil, which can be a problem in itself.
It's only petrol (Gasoline) vehicles for which this presents a serious risk. I could drop a lit match into the fuel tank of my diesel car and it would just go out.
If the oil supply is as low as some sources claim (C 30 years) get used to the idea of catalysed diesel engines and vegetable oil fuel. Safe and Green!
So we go from click-through EULAs to click-through windows
What they seem to be suggesting would make windows that shouldnt be in the foreground move to the background by sinking through any more active windows behind them, but which would be stopped by clicking the window before it reached a lower transparency than the window behind it
It'd be a bitch to get used to but immensely useful once you understood it.. think mail.app coming up nearer the top level as an email arrives while a safari window of porn sinks to the hidden background if the user dashes away from the screen for some reason:-|
If one were particularly unethical, one might use the remote exploits in unpatched, infected Windows machines to install FTP servers and make a distributed download network for mirroring opensource software
It'd be illegal but it has a certain karmic appeal.
Slashdot Mirror
Another clot! Since when does /. allow javascript postings? Like I said - not true. (read it before replying next time eh?)
which clot modded this informative? it's GNAA crap... as usual
And not true.
I have to change my underwear now.. and have a smoke...
It was destroyed so other countries would never find out we could break their ciphers. It still needed to be secret after WW2
Realistically - and this is said with no disrespect at all for the OSS community, to whom all computer users have some gratitude owed - if you make computing decisions based on philosophical constraints, you are not in the target market
Kudos to Rio for making a player you are happy with, but in general these companies are going to go for money and widespread adoption, and that probably means embracing the proprietary codecs. A Video player may not have the power and space to spare of an mp3 device, slimness of code will probably be a priority bearing in mind the bandwidth needed for real-time video display.
An iPod copies a track into RAM in its entirety, then plays it with the hard drive powereed down. This video player will have to stream off a disk and render in real time, that has to be a more intensive task.
I recall a review on Linux.com a few weeks ago, of this software.
Apparently the underlying core of JDS hasn't changed since the original release, its just an interface and client software refresh. This meant it wouldn't install on many modern machines due to an outdated - by Linux standards - kernel 2.4.19
Add Wi-fi and a convoy of cars - for example on a motorway - can share media. Hit-and-run filesharing, love to see the RIAA stop that
Some software tweaking gives the option of a car stereo that hunts down Mp3 tracks as you travel...
well, you could include Windows actually - Microsoft allow customised builds for embedded projects, it's just that for an essentially stand-alone project the benefits of Windows such as they are, are largely irrelevant.
Any OS that can share files with a Windows desktop would be suitable, Linux obviously springs to mind because of good driver support and interface compatibility, but not so long ago the Be OS was being touted for exactly this purpose.
Be Inc went down after the CEO botched a chance to sell his OS to Apple Computer, but many of its software engineers now work for Palm's Operating systems division.
Possibly the latest builds of the Palm OS would be well suited also. A media device only really needs a player, codecs, and network & removable storage drivers after all.
I love these project computers we see, but my reaction is often to think that the owner could never go out with the PC as it would be an instant theft item
Here's a PC modder who knows what its at - fitting something high-tech and cool into a radio which very much is not.
I wonder if I could make a boom-box skin for my iPod.....
Apologies to slashdot moderators, I'm going offtopic here - these are interesting comments, and worth the time to reply.
Disclosure, I'm not a US Citizen, although I suspect you've already realised this. When people speak about the effect the United States has upon the world we're not just discussing military operations.. in fact about the only thing we're not talking about is Joe Public.
I specifically referred to "foreign, industrial and social policy" as I don't see a real distinction. The United States as an economic superpower has significant sway, both in pure market terms and of diplomatic leverage, both of which have as much need to be used carefully as her near-unbeatable military might
There is significant anger at the US' diplomatic policies which support and defend Israel, a state which is in defiance of more UN Resolutions than Iraq ever was, and one which unlike Iraq was founded illegally and in defiance of commonly-accepted rights.
Your reference to events in Arabia at the end of the Gulf War is factually correct but can be seen from other angles as well, one of which I shall take.
The Iraqi army was nowhere near so well matched against the combined forces which liberated Kuwait as they had been against Iran several years earlier, it would not have been an impossible task for Operation Desert Storm to maintain its inertia and sweep through Iraq to the gates of Baghdad.
Few are those who would have complained at seeing Hussein toppled in 1991, just a few short years after his massacres of the Kurds and Turkomens in the North, of Iranian child soldiers and prisoners of war along his borders and in his camps, and his draining of the marshes of the Shi'i areas in an attempt to starve out the Marsh Arabs
However, the point of view of many is that the West did not want Saddam removed. Similarly recent were the humiliating sieges of US embassies in Teheran, Iran, and that country was, to a far greater extent than today, under the grips of a religious council of hardline Shi'i clerics. America saw Ba'athist government in Iraq as a shield to subdue fundamentalist shi'i islam which otherwise might have spread.
Osama bin Laden, then fresh from the Afghan campaigns against the USSR, was naturally opposed to Hussein - Ba'ath represented secular government untiting the people long racial rather than religious lines, to a hardline Moslem whose followers were drawn from throughout the Islamic world this was unwelcome... so bin Laden offered to provide military forces to keep Iraq at bay.
This would, of course, have been a disaster, but it was compounded by the house of Saud's decision to invite American forces into what Moslems see as holy territory.. and which fundamnetalist moslems saw as an outrage. To them, the US was allowing the continued oppression of many Shi'i Arab, Kurd, Turkomen and Iranian peoples by Saddam Hussein, while at the same time provifing military and diplomatic aid to another pariah state (Israel) which was engaged in a bloody 45-year campaign to hold land taken on pre-biblical grounds from Palestinians who viewed it as their home.
This is, of course, all interpretation, and many other interpretations are possible, but I believe that these were the roots of the rise of al-Qaeda as an international terrorist organisation and of course of the events of Sep 11th 2001. It doesn't just come down to military forces and short-term operations.
I'm quite aware my views won't be to most readers tastes - please reply and challenge me on facts rather than just moderating down. I meta-moderate daily and always mark seemingly political moderations as "unfair"
(prolly gonna get troll-modded for this but it's what I think
Technology won't save troops from deteriorating political situations, it just adds another tool to carry and another IT support problem - and with any projectile-launcher, another way by which to cause civilian injuries and the concomitent reprisals.
Safety can only be gained by acting (in terms of foreign, domestic and social policy) in a manner which does not inspire bloodthirsty desire for vengeance in people of other cultures. Use an ethical solution to roadside bombs, not a technical one.
If it was anyone else but Justin Frankel, I'd agree with you. What can I say - he makes things happen.
Can only go by my own experience.... but it seems to be the case. The best example is installing OSX on a supported system, no need for drivers, no jiggery-pokery, it just installs then runs.
I guess the court didn't read the slashdot solution to dealing with spammers?
I would like to protest that although this is technically a 64-bit virus, it does not run on the more common and widely accepted Powermac G5, instead choosing to support only a badly cludged extended win32 API.
Does anyone know of a 64-bit version of Bochs or VirtualPC which ould let me run this new and interesting piece of code in emulation?
If IBM offered a Linux distribution that included all drivers to run on all common Thinkpad laptops, I'd buy it, and pick up a Thinkpad off eBay
My laptop is an old iBook, I use it and OS X 10.3 as I like my OS to install and just work. That's what I want in x86 linux. Not support, not "designed for Linux" stickers.
I want an IBM-branded disk which will install linux, install modem and network drivers, install CDRW support and a properly configured X-server.
And while I'm wishing, I'd like a new Volkswagen
Aw, come on
/. can send as much traffic to a site in an hour as it might otherwise receive in a month. Why should admins shell out for the kind of bulletproof hosting Microsoft and the BBC have just in case a /. editor decides their site is worthy of a mention?
A link on the front page of
On a subject of as much interest as 64-bit computing, if this topic had been linked instead back upon itself, Slashdot might have slashdotted itself.
"Since Jan. 1, we've seen probably a 30% to 40% increase" in spam traffic" Commtouch CEO say"
This accurately mirrors what I've noted, I run the mail sweeper for a medium-sized enterprise and analyse spam to improve the quality of our filtering.
I note a lot of the spam has similar formats (apart from the 419 scammers, but they're easy to filter out), leading me to suggest that spamming is dominated by a relatively small clique of big-time mailers
This does at least make it easier to write rules to stop it. We don't use Bayesian filtering, a human-monitored system can be more efficient if done right.
Probably true of itself, however:
Vegetable oil can be used industrially then processed into fuel - probably millions of gallons a year are used for cooking. In parts of Japan all vegetable oil is stored after use, collected by a weekly tanker and reprocessed into bio-diesel.. sometimes mixed with regular diesel to improve the taste but used nonetheless.
This probably leads to a net energy gain.. especially when you consider that it rids society of the problem of disposing of used cooking oil, which can be a problem in itself.
It's only petrol (Gasoline) vehicles for which this presents a serious risk. I could drop a lit match into the fuel tank of my diesel car and it would just go out.
If the oil supply is as low as some sources claim (C 30 years) get used to the idea of catalysed diesel engines and vegetable oil fuel. Safe and Green!
...how to make my Grendel Cluster!
My first thought on seeing that image was
"I am Lokutas of Borg: Resistance is futile!"
Yes, and apparently it will burn CDs too - burn them in the flames of hell you unholy pirate !!!
So we go from click-through EULAs to click-through windows
:-|
What they seem to be suggesting would make windows that shouldnt be in the foreground move to the background by sinking through any more active windows behind them, but which would be stopped by clicking the window before it reached a lower transparency than the window behind it
It'd be a bitch to get used to but immensely useful once you understood it.. think mail.app coming up nearer the top level as an email arrives while a safari window of porn sinks to the hidden background if the user dashes away from the screen for some reason
If one were particularly unethical, one might use the remote exploits in unpatched, infected Windows machines to install FTP servers and make a distributed download network for mirroring opensource software
It'd be illegal but it has a certain karmic appeal.