"There'll be new operating systems required; the clunkers we have, you know Windows and Linux, are 25 years old -- they're going to need updating to adequately carry video," Metcalfe says. "What they're doing now is lame."
Short analyzis: The guy does not say 'new OS', he sais 'updating'. Because what they (computers) are doing now is lame.
So the question seems not if the OS can handle it, but how it does that. And i must agree, the way current mediaplayers (talking windows mainly from experience) handle video is indeed very clumsy, it is not the 'user experience' i would like to have. It has nothing to do with the OS though, but i do believe that was not what he was trying to say. The average user don't care the OS, he/she wants convenience, as easy as swapping TV channels. Seems like he is saying that handling video streams would be just as normal as displaying images, or text.
Well, i missed that one (about Apple). About the stuff being included in Vista, i did not make that up, it is what a dutch newssite reports:
http://webwereld.nl/articles/38816
Microsoft ontwikkelt samen met MTV een muziekdienst genaamd Urge. De iTunes-tegenhanger komt standaard in de opvolger van Windows XP, Vista, te zitten.
Translated: "Urge will be included in the follow-up of XP, Vista"
A $500.000 fine, a release of XP without media player.. And microsoft just ignores it and continues whatever it likes to do..
Apple will probably not take any legal action because Apple is partly owned by microsoft..
If microsoft offers a new service, ok.. If it comes preinstalled with Vista (just like their other MSN and mediaplayer crapware), they may create a serious problem here in europe.. And a reason more not to install vista.
It is often assumed that all this energy is waisted, but in fact it is not, at least not this 100% as figures want to believe you.
Here in holland i have to heat my house about 7-9 months a year, only in the summer it is hot enough to have the heating disabled.
All my equipment, computers, teli etc etc. do (in the end) convert electricity to heat. Besides that they may also be of other use.
I know of countries where generally all heating is done with electricity. Here we have the luxury of gas heating. So, indeed gas heating may be some more efficient then using electricity, but on the other hand rest heat of power stations is again used to heat green houses etc.
Also, for example, my hot water equipment for kitchen and shower uses electricity because gas-heating is considered to be dangerous because of the carbonmonoxide being generated, and if you calculate further, gas heating has additional loss of energy due to the extra ventilation needed.
So, all my electricity use helps to get my house warm. It is some less efficient than gas heating, but it is not all 'lost' or 'waisted'.
Of course this is not an excuse to spill electricity, and in "hot" countries where an airco is needed it will work the other way around, but in each and every study i see this issue is just forgotten.
If someone is a bit slow at their station, the computer system will say so, and they can be encouraged to go a bit faster after their next break. Also, if a set of boards starts to fail the testing process, they can tell exactly which one of the many production lines in Building 26 was responsible and if needed, track down the exact employee that was responsible for the section of the mainboard that's failing the test.
i'm feeling guilty about us making mass-consumer electronics in low-wages countries.
It may be measured and calculated how many birds got killed by those things.
But at the same time, we forget to calculate the number of animals getting killed by not doing so. Climate changes already lead to the extinsion of several species, the petrochemical industry is far from being environmental friendly. All kinds of indirect effects are not calculated, 'just' to safe a few hundred birds.
And, if animals aren't important enough (...) in holland it is calculated that fine dust, mainly from traffic, reduces the lifes of about 10.000 people with about 10 years. So, there is a serious health aspect by using our current oil-based products for our vehicles and other industry. Hydrogen or electric cars could save us lifes!
The only other solution would be not to use energy, but that for sure would also cost lifes. So, i pity the birds, but in general, windmills are much better for the environment, our health, animals and plants, than not doing so.
In densely-populated holland, we are already facing the serious consequences from pollution for our own health. It is amazing that progress is made so slowly...
The European Union requires 22 percent of electricity consumption to come from renewable energy sources -- such as solar, wind and wave -- by 2010.
i did not know that fact, thought it was 8%-10%, but it's a good goal, although i doubt it will be reached.
there is lot of opposition to 'conventional' methods of renewable energy, like wind energy. here in holland (a windy place) people think they're ugly, noisy and potentionally dangerous. and the same environmental groups that dislikes carbondioxide and nuclear energy als dislike the fact birds may fly into those things. for long time, people have suggested off-shore solutions, like off-shore windmill parks.. but they're expensive.
so, i find it aprticulair interesting that a country like portughal pioneers in those steps, instead of 'hi-tec' countries like holland, germany or france.
guess it's just a matter of oil prices to raise more, so alternative power sources automatically gets economical benefits. after all, the techniques are there, short-view economics and lack of vision is keeping those from being implemented.
smoking, and ashes, although not food, are the worst. my keyboards may have survived incidental coffee and other drinks, but my smoking habits costs me about 3 or 4 keyboards/year, especially the area from tab/escape to 4/'r' gets damaged (i smoke 'left handed'), causing keys to lock in the end...
Have you made sure the disks itself are clean? not scartches etc, but typically finger prints.
Fingerprints (everyone leaves them, hands washes or not) are likely to generate errors. always hold optical discs by it's side and optionally center hole.
In my experience, 99% of read errors are from fat fingers. you can easily detect them by 'breathing' on the cd, the moisture will clearly show fingerprints. Wipe with something soft, like a t-shirt.
At this moment, the situation in my country (netherlands) is like this:
Common TV broadcast stations are payed by public money. In past, you paid only if you had television/radio set. Now, it is included in taxes. So, on a yearly base i pay about 70-100 euro for television.
To actually watch television, one must pay cable company about 16 euro/month for 15 lousy TV channels (yes, the channels i actually would like to see are not included, add another 10-15 euro). To safe some money, i decided stopping this cable abbo. I can fetch 1 (sometimes 2) public TV channels out of the air (while I pay for three by taxes!).
To make it worse, Monthly i pay about 20,= for taxes on blank DVD's (yes, 1 euro / DVD) just to get my backups done. No illegal content here.
So, on an annual base, i pay around 350 euro for their copyrights. For television i don't watch. For having data i want to backup.
It is this duality: you pay taxes (on CD/DVD) because they find it likely you are going to put illegal content on your media. But at the same time, you are not allowed to do so.
So, no wonder majority of people have no moral problems downloading some tv show or movie now and then.
the docs read this:
A composting toilet system produces nutrient-rich water for gardening.
the chinese used human faeces in the past, this is known as 'night soil'.
although nutrient-rich, it has a very dangereous counterside: is spreads diseases. human bacils get on crops eaten by humans.. generally this is not a good idea.
i would have prefered some methane reactor that provides in heating and/or electricity.
At the time, in a student living here in holland, we had the problem of neighbour city's youth coming over just before harvest season and grab those stuff out of your back yarden.
At a certain year we decided to just put over 30 of (inferior quality but fast growing) plants in our front yarden. They got in fact over 4m tall;)
So, everybody happy, they got there free stuff more than they could carry on their mopeds, we got good shadow and no more stining nettle, and of course the best 'leaves' for ourselves in the backyarden:)
Nothing is worse than a warm beer when hunting or driving.
Here in europe it is good practice not to drink and drive at the same time. Apparently this is different in the states...
Anyhow, i'm used to gas stations every 15 km, so no time for my coke to get warm:)
It is the same as with dictators.. Any company that grows big and has influence must take very good care not to abuse it. I donnot have to give names, and some companies even believe themselves they have 'best intentions'.
But on-topic: i think verisign should loose there license. They have proven they cannot be trusted as independent tld maintainer.
For example, the intelectual ownership, the 'author' so to say.
In holland this is slightly different. If i am employed for a company, then this company is allowed to claim intellectual ownership about every line of code i write, also for open-source projects. This is because it is hard to distinguish 'personal' knowledge and 'professional' knowledge. In this case, the employer is protected a lot.
So, when employed as programmer, it is necessary to make a good arrangement, at least personal but preferably on paper, that you are allowed to write code in your own time and may publish this under a license chosen by you and that the company will grant you intellectual ownership of your code. However, it may be tough to get this black-on-white.. In practice it is no real problem, but juridical seen it is.
The french have arranged this better: intellectual ownerships is always at the author, as far as i understood.
Wow, i am amazed by the specifications. This 'beast' almost outperfoms my ZX-81!
zx-81: 1Kb memory, tape I/O: 300bps.. only thing that is (little) faster may be effective clockspeed: 1Mhz, but i doubt if the zx-81 can take 1000 square roots in one second;)
Looks like it took microelectronics about 30 years to make a -payable- equivalent of this machine.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for that link! Let me quote:
"There'll be new operating systems required; the clunkers we have, you know Windows and Linux, are 25 years old -- they're going to need updating to adequately carry video," Metcalfe says. "What they're doing now is lame."
Short analyzis: The guy does not say 'new OS', he sais 'updating'. Because what they (computers) are doing now is lame.
So the question seems not if the OS can handle it, but how it does that. And i must agree, the way current mediaplayers (talking windows mainly from experience) handle video is indeed very clumsy, it is not the 'user experience' i would like to have.
It has nothing to do with the OS though, but i do believe that was not what he was trying to say. The average user don't care the OS, he/she wants convenience, as easy as swapping TV channels. Seems like he is saying that handling video streams would be just as normal as displaying images, or text.
http://webwereld.nl/articles/38816
Translated: "Urge will be included in the follow-up of XP, Vista"
A $500.000 fine, a release of XP without media player.. And microsoft just ignores it and continues whatever it likes to do..
Apple will probably not take any legal action because Apple is partly owned by microsoft..
If microsoft offers a new service, ok.. If it comes preinstalled with Vista (just like their other MSN and mediaplayer crapware), they may create a serious problem here in europe.. And a reason more not to install vista.
It is often assumed that all this energy is waisted, but in fact it is not, at least not this 100% as figures want to believe you.
Here in holland i have to heat my house about 7-9 months a year, only in the summer it is hot enough to have the heating disabled.
All my equipment, computers, teli etc etc. do (in the end) convert electricity to heat. Besides that they may also be of other use.
I know of countries where generally all heating is done with electricity. Here we have the luxury of gas heating. So, indeed gas heating may be some more efficient then using electricity, but on the other hand rest heat of power stations is again used to heat green houses etc.
Also, for example, my hot water equipment for kitchen and shower uses electricity because gas-heating is considered to be dangerous because of the carbonmonoxide being generated, and if you calculate further, gas heating has additional loss of energy due to the extra ventilation needed.
So, all my electricity use helps to get my house warm. It is some less efficient than gas heating, but it is not all 'lost' or 'waisted'.
Of course this is not an excuse to spill electricity, and in "hot" countries where an airco is needed it will work the other way around, but in each and every study i see this issue is just forgotten.
Exactly. Big chances this is a 'western' group trying to evilize iran. The average iraning hacker would, imho, have other priorities.
If someone is a bit slow at their station, the computer system will say so, and they can be encouraged to go a bit faster after their next break. Also, if a set of boards starts to fail the testing process, they can tell exactly which one of the many production lines in Building 26 was responsible and if needed, track down the exact employee that was responsible for the section of the mainboard that's failing the test.
i'm feeling guilty about us making mass-consumer electronics in low-wages countries.
It may be measured and calculated how many birds got killed by those things.
But at the same time, we forget to calculate the number of animals getting killed by not doing so. Climate changes already lead to the extinsion of several species, the petrochemical industry is far from being environmental friendly. All kinds of indirect effects are not calculated, 'just' to safe a few hundred birds.
And, if animals aren't important enough (...) in holland it is calculated that fine dust, mainly from traffic, reduces the lifes of about 10.000 people with about 10 years. So, there is a serious health aspect by using our current oil-based products for our vehicles and other industry. Hydrogen or electric cars could save us lifes!
The only other solution would be not to use energy, but that for sure would also cost lifes. So, i pity the birds, but in general, windmills are much better for the environment, our health, animals and plants, than not doing so.
In densely-populated holland, we are already facing the serious consequences from pollution for our own health. It is amazing that progress is made so slowly...
The European Union requires 22 percent of electricity consumption to come from renewable energy sources -- such as solar, wind and wave -- by 2010.
i did not know that fact, thought it was 8%-10%, but it's a good goal, although i doubt it will be reached. there is lot of opposition to 'conventional' methods of renewable energy, like wind energy.
here in holland (a windy place) people think they're ugly, noisy and potentionally dangerous. and the same environmental groups that dislikes carbondioxide and nuclear energy als dislike the fact birds may fly into those things. for long time, people have suggested off-shore solutions, like off-shore windmill parks.. but they're expensive.
so, i find it aprticulair interesting that a country like portughal pioneers in those steps, instead of 'hi-tec' countries like holland, germany or france.
guess it's just a matter of oil prices to raise more, so alternative power sources automatically gets economical benefits. after all, the techniques are there, short-view economics and lack of vision is keeping those from being implemented.
smoking, and ashes, although not food, are the worst. my keyboards may have survived incidental coffee and other drinks, but my smoking habits costs me about 3 or 4 keyboards/year, especially the area from tab/escape to 4/'r' gets damaged (i smoke 'left handed'), causing keys to lock in the end...
Have you made sure the disks itself are clean? not scartches etc, but typically finger prints.
Fingerprints (everyone leaves them, hands washes or not) are likely to generate errors. always hold optical discs by it's side and optionally center hole.
In my experience, 99% of read errors are from fat fingers. you can easily detect them by 'breathing' on the cd, the moisture will clearly show fingerprints. Wipe with something soft, like a t-shirt.
try geexbox:
http://www.geexbox.org/en/index.html
i've no experience with it yet, but heard good things about it so it is on my todo list.
At this moment, the situation in my country (netherlands) is like this:
Common TV broadcast stations are payed by public money. In past, you paid only if you had television/radio set. Now, it is included in taxes. So, on a yearly base i pay about 70-100 euro for television.
To actually watch television, one must pay cable company about 16 euro/month for 15 lousy TV channels (yes, the channels i actually would like to see are not included, add another 10-15 euro). To safe some money, i decided stopping this cable abbo. I can fetch 1 (sometimes 2) public TV channels out of the air (while I pay for three by taxes!).
To make it worse, Monthly i pay about 20,= for taxes on blank DVD's (yes, 1 euro / DVD) just to get my backups done. No illegal content here.
So, on an annual base, i pay around 350 euro for their copyrights. For television i don't watch. For having data i want to backup.
It is this duality: you pay taxes (on CD/DVD) because they find it likely you are going to put illegal content on your media. But at the same time, you are not allowed to do so.
So, no wonder majority of people have no moral problems downloading some tv show or movie now and then.
A composting toilet system produces nutrient-rich water for gardening.
the chinese used human faeces in the past, this is known as 'night soil'.
although nutrient-rich, it has a very dangereous counterside: is spreads diseases. human bacils get on crops eaten by humans.. generally this is not a good idea.i would have prefered some methane reactor that provides in heating and/or electricity.
At the time, in a student living here in holland, we had the problem of neighbour city's youth coming over just before harvest season and grab those stuff out of your back yarden. ;)
:)
At a certain year we decided to just put over 30 of (inferior quality but fast growing) plants in our front yarden. They got in fact over 4m tall
So, everybody happy, they got there free stuff more than they could carry on their mopeds, we got good shadow and no more stining nettle, and of course the best 'leaves' for ourselves in the backyarden
Nothing is worse than a warm beer when hunting or driving.
:)
Here in europe it is good practice not to drink and drive at the same time. Apparently this is different in the states... Anyhow, i'm used to gas stations every 15 km, so no time for my coke to get warm
It is the same as with dictators.. Any company that grows big and has influence must take very good care not to abuse it. I donnot have to give names, and some companies even believe themselves they have 'best intentions'.
But on-topic: i think verisign should loose there license. They have proven they cannot be trusted as independent tld maintainer.
French laws are not the same as 'european' laws.
/me should find a job in the france ;)
For example, the intelectual ownership, the 'author' so to say.
In holland this is slightly different. If i am employed for a company, then this company is allowed to claim intellectual ownership about every line of code i write, also for open-source projects. This is because it is hard to distinguish 'personal' knowledge and 'professional' knowledge. In this case, the employer is protected a lot.
So, when employed as programmer, it is necessary to make a good arrangement, at least personal but preferably on paper, that you are allowed to write code in your own time and may publish this under a license chosen by you and that the company will grant you intellectual ownership of your code. However, it may be tough to get this black-on-white.. In practice it is no real problem, but juridical seen it is.
The french have arranged this better: intellectual ownerships is always at the author, as far as i understood.
maybe
Wow, i am amazed by the specifications. This 'beast' almost outperfoms my ZX-81! zx-81: 1Kb memory, tape I/O: 300bps.. only thing that is (little) faster may be effective clockspeed: 1Mhz, but i doubt if the zx-81 can take 1000 square roots in one second ;)
Looks like it took microelectronics about 30 years to make a -payable- equivalent of this machine.