I have foobar installed, but I don't like the UI very much. I know they have improved a lot since I made my judgement to stick with winamp (for example they added global hotkeys) but I find winamp just works for me. Winamp is currently using 4 megs of RAM on my computer, so it actually turns out it's no big deal.
Yeah I personally have 1 gig of RAM in my gaming computer and I find it to be adaquete but I do notice some slowdown sometimes when swapping starts. I run back background programs that use up some RAM (utorrent and winamp) while I play though
Not a big deal, prices of CPUs from both AMD and Intel are going to go way down in the next few months. Besides, for most gaming you don't need a very powerful processor. All you need is a good graphics card and enough RAM (I would say 1.5-2 gigs).
How would people with vapid social lives brighten up a dull workplace? In my experience people who don't have social lives aren't exactly that exciting...
I guess geeks are not so different from teens - instead of worshipping the newest pop star and everything little thing he/she does, we worship websites and every little thing they do.
But why? I hate to say it, but I almost understand the teens better than I do my fellow geeks.
I've been using Microsoft's foldershare to sync several folders I use for schoolwork between my laptop and desktop. I realized a couple of months ago that I could use it to sync my bookmarks by sharing the folder with bookmarks.html - works flawlessly. It doesn't store the file on any servers (because my desktop and laptop are acting as servers) and it encrypts all files going in and out.
I know this may not work for some because it doesn't sync when either computer if offline, because it is a bit heavier than an extension, and because it is Microsoft. But it works great for me.
"In many countries, $100 represents the annual income or multiple monthly incomes for families."
My guess is those countries wouldn't purchase these laptops for children. When I think of these laptops, I think of countries like Brazil or China who are semi-developed but can't afford computers for all their students.
"we seem to get slashdot articles about every MSIE security flaw"
Yeah, but those articles are made to host flames against microsoft in the forums, not to actually educate anyone about them (not many people on Slashdot actually use IE).
"it's your job to keep that stuff away from your kid"
I agree with you in principle, but if you actually believe that is possible you are really naive. I don't know how old you are, but I clearly remember my days of being a teenager - every kid gets away with doing things his parents forbid. Your parents don't want you to play violent video games? Buy it with allowance money and play it when they're not around, or go to a friend's house and play it. It's actually a lot cooler that way.
Of course, it's even harder and stupider for the government to enforce these rules, so that wouldn't work either. I refuse to vote for any politician who tries to censor video games.
I don't think that's true. It's not about how much information they had, it's about how they were analyzing it. The NSA has always had the most raw computing power to monitor foreigners, they just didn't have access to domestic information (eg. 9/11). That is what this is changing. As I understand it, the NSA has more than enough computing power to analyze all the phone calls in the country.
"So let's ponder me getting a number that was used by a terrorist. Should I be labeled guilty by association."
I'm not even sure if this is worth replying to because it seems so obvious, but I'll say it: the government is not stupid. They know you just got the new number...
The NSA is the largest employer of mathemeticians in the country and they get some of the brightest ones. They will not write stupid algorithms that will waste time chasing someone who is obviously not a threat.
"But finding a few terrorists by mass surveillance of the phone calls and email messages of 300 million Americans is mathematically impossible"
I disagree - if the government finds out someone is a "terrorist" (which I think is a loaded term in this day and age, so I use quotes), they could use some pretty sophisticated machine learning algorithms to find what networks he's in if they have access to his phone records. People tend to clump in certain social networks, and phones calls are a decent way of determining this. A "terrorist" is more likely to be friends with and call other "terrorists." Additionally he is infinitely more likely to make contact with enemies of the state than the average person.
On the other hand, as someone who wouldn't mind seeing Bush impeached, I call plenty of people who don't want to see him impeached. There's literally no correlation you can find without listening to my conversations, which I am guessing this program does not do.
From your link: "JNG is a lossy single-image member of the PNG (Portable Network Graphics) format family. It encapsulates a JPEG datastream in PNG-style chunks"
That doesn't sound open to me because it uses jpeg (?)
"However, that's largely moot - PNG is lossless and often compresses better than JPEG, but JPEG is still the format of choice for, say, digital camera makers and websites"
PNG was not made to replace JPG, so I wouldn't call anything moot. PNG is not made for photographs, which make up a decent percentage of pictures out there. I actually don't know of any competing formats to jpeg other than this new microsoft one - how come no one has built an open format like PNG for photos?
A. attempt to detect life on a planet that is too far away for us to determine if we are correct any time in our lives B. using a method that has an unknown accuracy C. despite the fact that we don't even have an idea of the *order of magnitude* of the chances of life out there
"So it's really not a "moving target". It's usually only what's inside that you don't have to worry about that's changing. It's only moving in the sense that a horse is moving - yes, it may be moving but it doesn't affect the rider at all - he doesn't need to re-learn anything."
Perhaps he meant the user interface is a moving target, not the nitty-gritty interface. To hit mainstream in this day and age, you have to go beyond the command line with a graphical interface. By seperating the two, you are giving the option for the GUI to be a moving target. Hell, even the entire OS has this problem - the desktop environment is not standardized at all in Linux. So while the kernel itself may be solid and non-changing, the interface to it can change drastically from computer to computer and year to year. I understand this is considered a strength to most Linux users, but it is important to realize that this can lead to problems and is considered a weakness by others (including myself).
"most of the programs weren't made to be easy to use, they were just made to get the job done"
Agreed, but I consider this a bad thing. This was actually a pretty big theme in some of my CS classes (the software engineering and UI ones).
Most people would agree that an easier-to-use tool is better than a hard-to-use one. This is for several reasons: it saves time, it is less error prone, and more accessible to the n00bs. We have been arguing about that last one, but the first two are just as important. Given a standardized interface and method of doing things helps a lot. Linux has, by its philosophy, rejected these things.
That seems pretty short-sighted. I already download all my TV from the internet - I see no reason why this couldn't be organized through the TV networks instead of bittorrent servers in the future.
"They're just annoyed that so many people expect them to change their program and OS to be more like something they consider to be inferior, and to make these changes without payment, especially when the person wanting these changes could make them him/herself using the author's code."
That's not what I mean when I say elitist. I know what you mean about people being ungrateful to programmers - it sucks. I don't mind when people program something the way they want it. I mind when *some* Linux users/developers speak for Linux itself and all its developers and users. Things like "Linux was not put together for your convenience" insult the people who put hours of their time into making it convenient just as much as someone saying "this program isn't what I want, it sucks" insults the people who made it.
I played around with mindstorms all the time - it was one of the things that got me interested in AI/Robotics in the first place. Your counterargument made no sense and was just insulting to me ("Turn off your computer, unplug your Internet connection, and walk away" WTF does that mean?!?). My point was that legos are usually a toy, so when you compare Linux to legos you are comparing it to a toy. Yes, Linux is a great learning tool for computer programmers, but you know that's not what I meant when I said computers are usually used as a "tool." To clarify, I meant: e-mail, web browsing, office stuff, programming, etc.
"Why do you assume that we (Linux users) want Linux to be used by everybody?"
This is the point I keep trying to make! Linux users who don't want other people to use their OS are, by my definition, elitist. These attitudes hurt the OS. The more users of Linux there are, the more developers there will be. The better it will get. It is by no means perfect. There as been all this talk about Linux taking out Windows over the past five years. Yeah right - Ubuntu is the best they have been able to do at a mainstream distro, and IMO it sucks.
0 (yes, zero) of my CS professors use Linux as their main OS. Out of the four jobs I applied to for this summer, only one involved *nix. Out of my several CS grad friends, none use Linux if there is a free Windows machine in the lab (unless they *have* to use Linux for something).
Slashdot Mirror
It targets MMRPG players - people with too much money. Its main feature is it costs more than a 15 dollar MSFT mouse.
I have foobar installed, but I don't like the UI very much. I know they have improved a lot since I made my judgement to stick with winamp (for example they added global hotkeys) but I find winamp just works for me. Winamp is currently using 4 megs of RAM on my computer, so it actually turns out it's no big deal.
Yeah I personally have 1 gig of RAM in my gaming computer and I find it to be adaquete but I do notice some slowdown sometimes when swapping starts. I run back background programs that use up some RAM (utorrent and winamp) while I play though
Not a big deal, prices of CPUs from both AMD and Intel are going to go way down in the next few months. Besides, for most gaming you don't need a very powerful processor. All you need is a good graphics card and enough RAM (I would say 1.5-2 gigs).
But an ISP can block packets now, even though the internet is "neutral." I see no reason why they would change that.
"Now they want control which sites you visit"
I keep hearing this. Can someone please explain it to me, or is it really just FUD like I suspect it is?
How would people with vapid social lives brighten up a dull workplace? In my experience people who don't have social lives aren't exactly that exciting...
I guess geeks are not so different from teens - instead of worshipping the newest pop star and everything little thing he/she does, we worship websites and every little thing they do.
But why? I hate to say it, but I almost understand the teens better than I do my fellow geeks.
I've been using Microsoft's foldershare to sync several folders I use for schoolwork between my laptop and desktop. I realized a couple of months ago that I could use it to sync my bookmarks by sharing the folder with bookmarks.html - works flawlessly. It doesn't store the file on any servers (because my desktop and laptop are acting as servers) and it encrypts all files going in and out.
I know this may not work for some because it doesn't sync when either computer if offline, because it is a bit heavier than an extension, and because it is Microsoft. But it works great for me.
"In many countries, $100 represents the annual income or multiple monthly incomes for families."
My guess is those countries wouldn't purchase these laptops for children. When I think of these laptops, I think of countries like Brazil or China who are semi-developed but can't afford computers for all their students.
"we seem to get slashdot articles about every MSIE security flaw"
Yeah, but those articles are made to host flames against microsoft in the forums, not to actually educate anyone about them (not many people on Slashdot actually use IE).
"it's your job to keep that stuff away from your kid"
I agree with you in principle, but if you actually believe that is possible you are really naive. I don't know how old you are, but I clearly remember my days of being a teenager - every kid gets away with doing things his parents forbid. Your parents don't want you to play violent video games? Buy it with allowance money and play it when they're not around, or go to a friend's house and play it. It's actually a lot cooler that way.
Of course, it's even harder and stupider for the government to enforce these rules, so that wouldn't work either. I refuse to vote for any politician who tries to censor video games.
"But no mechanism to do anything about it."
They'll pass any important information they get to someone else, as you said.
"As far as I'm concerned they shouldn't have access to domestic info"
Yes, what they are doing is illegal; most people on here don't question that.
I don't think that's true. It's not about how much information they had, it's about how they were analyzing it. The NSA has always had the most raw computing power to monitor foreigners, they just didn't have access to domestic information (eg. 9/11). That is what this is changing. As I understand it, the NSA has more than enough computing power to analyze all the phone calls in the country.
"So let's ponder me getting a number that was used by a terrorist. Should I be labeled guilty by association."
I'm not even sure if this is worth replying to because it seems so obvious, but I'll say it: the government is not stupid. They know you just got the new number...
The NSA is the largest employer of mathemeticians in the country and they get some of the brightest ones. They will not write stupid algorithms that will waste time chasing someone who is obviously not a threat.
"But finding a few terrorists by mass surveillance of the phone calls and email messages of 300 million Americans is mathematically impossible"
I disagree - if the government finds out someone is a "terrorist" (which I think is a loaded term in this day and age, so I use quotes), they could use some pretty sophisticated machine learning algorithms to find what networks he's in if they have access to his phone records. People tend to clump in certain social networks, and phones calls are a decent way of determining this. A "terrorist" is more likely to be friends with and call other "terrorists." Additionally he is infinitely more likely to make contact with enemies of the state than the average person.
On the other hand, as someone who wouldn't mind seeing Bush impeached, I call plenty of people who don't want to see him impeached. There's literally no correlation you can find without listening to my conversations, which I am guessing this program does not do.
From your link:
"JNG is a lossy single-image member of the PNG (Portable Network Graphics) format family. It encapsulates a JPEG datastream in PNG-style chunks"
That doesn't sound open to me because it uses jpeg (?)
"However, that's largely moot - PNG is lossless and often compresses better than JPEG, but JPEG is still the format of choice for, say, digital camera makers and websites"
PNG was not made to replace JPG, so I wouldn't call anything moot. PNG is not made for photographs, which make up a decent percentage of pictures out there. I actually don't know of any competing formats to jpeg other than this new microsoft one - how come no one has built an open format like PNG for photos?
We want to:
A. attempt to detect life on a planet that is too far away for us to determine if we are correct any time in our lives
B. using a method that has an unknown accuracy
C. despite the fact that we don't even have an idea of the *order of magnitude* of the chances of life out there
What's the point?
Doesn't VLC offer region free DVD playing?
"So it's really not a "moving target". It's usually only what's inside that you don't have to worry about that's changing. It's only moving in the sense that a horse is moving - yes, it may be moving but it doesn't affect the rider at all - he doesn't need to re-learn anything."
Perhaps he meant the user interface is a moving target, not the nitty-gritty interface. To hit mainstream in this day and age, you have to go beyond the command line with a graphical interface. By seperating the two, you are giving the option for the GUI to be a moving target. Hell, even the entire OS has this problem - the desktop environment is not standardized at all in Linux. So while the kernel itself may be solid and non-changing, the interface to it can change drastically from computer to computer and year to year. I understand this is considered a strength to most Linux users, but it is important to realize that this can lead to problems and is considered a weakness by others (including myself).
"most of the programs weren't made to be easy to use, they were just made to get the job done"
Agreed, but I consider this a bad thing. This was actually a pretty big theme in some of my CS classes (the software engineering and UI ones).
Most people would agree that an easier-to-use tool is better than a hard-to-use one. This is for several reasons: it saves time, it is less error prone, and more accessible to the n00bs. We have been arguing about that last one, but the first two are just as important. Given a standardized interface and method of doing things helps a lot. Linux has, by its philosophy, rejected these things.
That seems pretty short-sighted. I already download all my TV from the internet - I see no reason why this couldn't be organized through the TV networks instead of bittorrent servers in the future.
"They're just annoyed that so many people expect them to change their program and OS to be more like something they consider to be inferior, and to make these changes without payment, especially when the person wanting these changes could make them him/herself using the author's code."
That's not what I mean when I say elitist. I know what you mean about people being ungrateful to programmers - it sucks. I don't mind when people program something the way they want it. I mind when *some* Linux users/developers speak for Linux itself and all its developers and users. Things like "Linux was not put together for your convenience" insult the people who put hours of their time into making it convenient just as much as someone saying "this program isn't what I want, it sucks" insults the people who made it.
I played around with mindstorms all the time - it was one of the things that got me interested in AI/Robotics in the first place. Your counterargument made no sense and was just insulting to me ("Turn off your computer, unplug your Internet connection, and walk away" WTF does that mean?!?). My point was that legos are usually a toy, so when you compare Linux to legos you are comparing it to a toy. Yes, Linux is a great learning tool for computer programmers, but you know that's not what I meant when I said computers are usually used as a "tool." To clarify, I meant: e-mail, web browsing, office stuff, programming, etc.
"Why do you assume that we (Linux users) want Linux to be used by everybody?"
This is the point I keep trying to make! Linux users who don't want other people to use their OS are, by my definition, elitist. These attitudes hurt the OS. The more users of Linux there are, the more developers there will be. The better it will get. It is by no means perfect. There as been all this talk about Linux taking out Windows over the past five years. Yeah right - Ubuntu is the best they have been able to do at a mainstream distro, and IMO it sucks.
0 (yes, zero) of my CS professors use Linux as their main OS. Out of the four jobs I applied to for this summer, only one involved *nix. Out of my several CS grad friends, none use Linux if there is a free Windows machine in the lab (unless they *have* to use Linux for something).