News sources don't start calling states until enough of the precincts have reported to make a safe call. Precincts don't start reporting until the polls have closed in that state. So if a person is in line, none of the votes for his state have been announced.
Of course, that doesn't apply perfectly, as in 2000 when some areas of the Florida panhandle which are in the Central time zone closed an hour later than the rest of the state, which is in the Eastern time zone. In that case, some of the voters did hear the results for Florida before the entire state had closed. That requires better coordination in any states that are split between two different time zones.
For people who are still voting in an open state when results are being announced in states that have already closed, they have to remember how much of a difference a few hours make. There were times in the middle of the whole process last night where Bush was up by 60 or 70 electoral votes, but in the end, the difference was much less than that, and *could* have gone the other way. People in states that are still open when results are coming in from other states need to know how much the playing field can shift, even after all the polls have closed. If anything, this should make people in states that are still open feel more motivated to vote.
We do need to scrap the exit polls, which are obviously crap.
The statement that Bush won more votes than anyone in history is just showing a statistic. It's not saying that he won by a larger margin than everyone else in history, just that he got more raw votes than anyone. I don't think that's hard to understand, but for some reason, so many anti-Bush people just can't let that statement go without saying why it's "wrong" or "misleading".
Not only is the state-centric electoral process still valid because of the reasons everyone else is mentioning (The framers of the Constitution wanted the states to be able to determine the presidency, etc.), but even "in this day of information technology" we can't get old-fashioned vote-counting right, we can't get electronic voting right, we can't do a lot of things right. Anchors last night were talking about how even after 2000, Florida probably was in worse shape to add up their votes this time around than they were 4 years ago.
Even if Information Technology *could* make the electoral college obsolete (it can't, because IT isn't the reason for needing it to begin with, it's there for political purposes, not technical) we are definitely not to the point where IT could even make it obsolete technically.
That's one nice thing that I've liked from Napster. Once you download a song, you can still download it onto 2 other computers, and I think you can still download it onto the original computer more than once if you do lose it for some reason. I bought an album on iTunes at home, hoped to be able to download it at work to listen to it in both places, but when I got to work, I realized I'd have to go back and copy the files onto a USB flash drive to get them there. Sure Apple lets you listen to your music on 5 different "trusted" computers, but you have to use some physical medium to get it there... After making it so that you can't download it once, why go out of their way to make it hard for people to get their music to the other authorized computers? (rhetorical question, I'm not really asking for an answer)
It's actually usually just the high-end TVs that have discrete IR codes. The "home theater buffs" that have the $500 Pronto remote controls or the $100,000 Crestron Home Automation system will normally have a much higher-end TV than what they'll have at the airport or the laundromat, thus, they have the Discrete On/Off codes.
At the CEDIA Expo in Indianapolis last week, Sony actually had a booth like this where on the outside they had video screens that looked like Windows into the booth. Don't know what they used, though. I didn't even look close enough to see if they were LCDs or not.
Hasn't this comparison already been on handtops.com for a while now?
I've used the Sony Vaio U-50 a bit, and it's really a nice little package. Sexy little touches like LEDs on the buttons that fade off, the general look and feel of the whole unit, and the 802.11g is very nice as well. I'd buy one for my own personal use if I could afford it. They would be awesome for travelling. They say they're not Linux-freindly, which I don't think is that big of a deal anyway for something like this. If it wasn't for the occasional unpredictable reboot, they'd be perfect!
Having already read the post above which says this is an admitted hoax...
The pictures actually look a lot like the PC's made by this company I used to have one of these sitting on my desk at work... a speedy enough PC, but way loud because of the fan. Really, it's not a sexy enough design for Apple. Honestly, look at the colors, it would have to be a hoax.
They announced that they were able to do it. This is a prototype, and could very well be a long way off. The/. crowd should be understanding of what that means. It does not mean that movies will be available at Blockbuster on Holographic discs later this year. With new technologies, prototypes like these are usually pretty buggy, but they prove the concept. TFA states that the 6 investors watched movies in meetings (My kind of meeting!) but I'm sure up to the minute they were done playing, the engineers were sweating bullets, worried that something wouldn't work out right.
/. is a forum for nerds who want to know about the bleeding edge of technology. The bleeding edge is almost always years ahead of production (and often demand, too). Look at OLEDs: I saw a 15" widescreen prototype from Sanyo at CES 2003 (Jan), but Active Matrix OLEDs are used at most in 1 consumer product (Kodak camera), which doesn't even ship in the US, and for all I know, may not be shipping anywhere anymore. That doesn't change the fact that it's a cool technology that will change a lot of things. We've just gotta be patient. I think everyone else here knew that.
Using DOS Commands teaches people a certain amount of stuff, but doesn't do much to help kids learn about avoiding the crap of the Internet. It is true that someone who has a working knowledge of DOS (or Linux CLI or whatever other unfriendly interface) is more likely to better respect the machine he/she is using, but that still doesn't help a person to know what is dangerous on the Internet and how to avoid it. I grew up on an Apple II+, moved on to DOS, then Windows 3.0 and up from there, but some of the stuff I was blindly downloading off the Internet 5 years ago would totally hose my computer if I was downloading it today. Most of the reason I learned to be more careful was working computer support at a university, where I saw other people screw up their computers. The best teacher is either going to be watching other people screw up, or screwing up yourself. The next best teacher is probably a book like this, if people will actually sit down and read it, and if the information in it is up to date and accurate.
Seems like they should be punished instead. As if we need to encourage people to sit on their duffs and watch the boob tube anymore than they already do. As it is, there's too many channels with nothing good on, and too many people sucking it all in.
I've got one on my desk right now, and it's a handy piece of equipment. The fact that the Os is actually XP Tablet Edition, which is a supserset of XP, means that there are additions to the OS designed to make the touchscreen interface work well. It's much easier and better to write on the Tablet's screen than it is to write on a PDA screen. The digitizer which requires a special magnetic-tipped stylus seems like a hindrance at first, since you can't just use your finger, but once you use it, you realize how much better it makes your interaction with the Tablet. The cursor will follow the movements of the stylus, even when the stylus isn't quite touching the screen, which means you can make it work a lot like a mouse, doing things you couldn't do with a PPC. You have right-click functionality with a button on the stylus. The requirement for the special stylus also allows you to rest your hand on the screen without accidentally clicking on anything. Basically, it feels like a notebook... a heavy, solid notebook, but it is really not that far off from feeling like a pen and paper. It's great for taking notes, and the potential for specialized apps designed specifically for the form factor is tremendous, although developers seem to be missing the boat.
The one I have was one of the first models, with only an 800MHz P3. It's not fast, but it's not designed to be a high-performance gaming machine, it's designed to give you the most usefulness in certain situations. In short, I'd reccomend one. If you're looking for a PDA, this is not for you. If you're looking for the functionality of a PC that's ultra-portable, this is for you.
I wonder what BTG's IT staff would do if MS stopped offering Windows Update. I'm sure they've been using it for years. Have they just stopped using Windows Update, because it violates their patents? I'd like to see what happens to them when the next big worm goes around the Internet infecting everyone who didn't update.
Also, why has it taken this long to sue? The Apple Rendezvous suit seemed to come up and get resolved pretty quickly.
I guess I don't understand how breaking the DRM cost any royalties at all. From my understanding, it allows people to run Linux on the XBox, but if you buy an XBox, you have already paid for the XBox OS. You're not taking anything away from MS, because you paid their royalties when you bought the XBox. If anything, you've encouraged more hackers to buy an XBox, putting money in MS's pockets. And from what I recall, the "Linux on XBox" contest stopped short of being able to hack the XBox without using additional hardware. The XBox-Linux contest was simple self-promotion, masquerading as fighting for the Linux community.
He may be selling cheap PCs with Lindows/spire on them, but I've never actually heard of anyone buying one. I don't know how he's managed to cut any niche out of Windows market share. Apple has a nice little niche, I'm sure Apple's market share dwarfs Lindows'. If someone asked for my reccomendation, I'd either offer to build a PC from scratch and throw a real distro on it, or point them to a Windows box. I don't have any faith in Linspire.
As far as being able to "steadily beat" Microsoft, I haven't seen it happen. I've seen him take $20 million at once, but he took up this battle on the moral grounds that he was fighting the big Monster MS, and that they couldn't make him switch. Now they paid him to do it and go away. I don't see Mr as a fighter, I see him more like a phony televangelist, claiming to point people in the Good direction, but really trying to build himself up.
It could even be "silent" "no warranty" "not supported" type of deal,
"Silent" "no warranty" and "not supported"= beta = may not work right or probably will not work right. If they did come out with OGG support and it didn't play it well, I'm sure there would be more complaints on Slashdot than there currently are for not having support. I don't think you really would settle for "sot supported" OGG, but if you wanted to, you could always go for the Linux hack and see what it can do for you.
The PC is merely a succedaneum for satisfying the nympholepsy of nullifidians. The haecceity of the enchiridion of arcane and recdonite elements of the Mac gestalt appeals to the oniomaina of an eximious Gemeinschaft whose legerity and sophrosyne, whose Sprachgefühl and orexis find more than fugacious fullment in its felicific experience.
I get SPAM e-mails with all those words in them. I just thought they were putting random words in the message, I didn't realize that it's Mac users who are peddling Viagra.
The pulsing action stimulates hair upward and away from the skin, making it dramatically easier to shave more thoroughly in one easy power stroke.
Yeah, just like my Norelco electric from a decade ago that was supposed to "lift and cut" to drop the hair below skin level... If it would actually cut the hair, I'd be happier with it, but as it is...
Oh yeah, this topic is supposed to be about ultra-mega-super-duper-hypersonic jets or something, isn't it. Mod -1 offtopic for all of us.
I don't think these people understand the severity of the situation here or that they even care
We Slashdot readers are completely out of touch with how the rest of the world views computers and the Internet. Remember the Internet Help Desk video... the part where the tech support guy says "Do you see a big blue 'E' or a big green 'N'? I see, a big black nothing, OK, turn your computer ON." The other day I was shocked to find out that my own wife didn't know what IE was even though she'd been using it for years. She's now on Firefox, but I had to explain what a browser is. It's amazing to see how regular, non computer-oriented people see the Internet, or the web, or whatever they want to call it. Click on the Internet button, and there's the Internet.
Before the masses will start heeding the Department of Homeland Security or their Slashdotting friends or family members, they have to receive some kind of different education. The Windows view of trying to make everything simple and automatic makes it so the people can use the Internet for years and not even know what a browser is. The technical knowledge of the typcial Slashdot user only intimidates and scares the average user, so that doesn't help them, either. Getting our friends to switch to Linux/Firebird/whatever Open Source programs will not fix the ignorance problem, because we have to dumb things down to the point where everything is automatic and Windowsy to get them to use it. There has to be some other education for people out there. The Windows way won't help the masses, and neither will the Linux way. I don't have any solutions, only problems to state.
I thought PBS was all about education for young and old. My 2 year old daughter loves Sesame Street, and I hate to think of an innocent kids' show and a vulgar cop show on the same channel. There should be limits to what can be censored, but if enforcing people's freedoms means trampling on the freedoms of others, then we have to pick and choose. I don't walk around naked all day, because I know a lot of people don't want to see it (I am a Slashdotter, after all). If Richard Dreyfus wants a TV show where he can drop the F-bomb, he can join the cast of the Sopranos (and I hope he gets whacked). Don't do a show on a network that has largely been associated with children's programming and education if the show doesn't fit in with that.
I have yet to see an Apple ad campaign playing up the fact that Macs remain largely virus-free.
Probably not such a good idea, as I think the hacker/virus writer attitude is mostly about taking on challenges. Where's the point in exploiting a Mac? I guess you could bring down an elementary school computer lab, but there's not much satifaction in that. But if Apple comes out with a big campaign saying "We are secure! We are secure!" I think that would just bring on a tidal wave of people who want to prove that they can break this "secure" system. Macs haven't been a target, and Mac users can enjoy that for now. Don't create a reason for them to be a target, because if that happens, we'll all find out how secure the Mac isn't.
Slashdot Mirror
Outlook 2003 has search Folders, too.
News sources don't start calling states until enough of the precincts have reported to make a safe call. Precincts don't start reporting until the polls have closed in that state. So if a person is in line, none of the votes for his state have been announced.
Of course, that doesn't apply perfectly, as in 2000 when some areas of the Florida panhandle which are in the Central time zone closed an hour later than the rest of the state, which is in the Eastern time zone. In that case, some of the voters did hear the results for Florida before the entire state had closed. That requires better coordination in any states that are split between two different time zones.
For people who are still voting in an open state when results are being announced in states that have already closed, they have to remember how much of a difference a few hours make. There were times in the middle of the whole process last night where Bush was up by 60 or 70 electoral votes, but in the end, the difference was much less than that, and *could* have gone the other way. People in states that are still open when results are coming in from other states need to know how much the playing field can shift, even after all the polls have closed. If anything, this should make people in states that are still open feel more motivated to vote.
We do need to scrap the exit polls, which are obviously crap.
The statement that Bush won more votes than anyone in history is just showing a statistic. It's not saying that he won by a larger margin than everyone else in history, just that he got more raw votes than anyone. I don't think that's hard to understand, but for some reason, so many anti-Bush people just can't let that statement go without saying why it's "wrong" or "misleading".
If you want misleading, watch Farenheit 9/11.
Not only is the state-centric electoral process still valid because of the reasons everyone else is mentioning (The framers of the Constitution wanted the states to be able to determine the presidency, etc.), but even "in this day of information technology" we can't get old-fashioned vote-counting right, we can't get electronic voting right, we can't do a lot of things right. Anchors last night were talking about how even after 2000, Florida probably was in worse shape to add up their votes this time around than they were 4 years ago.
Even if Information Technology *could* make the electoral college obsolete (it can't, because IT isn't the reason for needing it to begin with, it's there for political purposes, not technical) we are definitely not to the point where IT could even make it obsolete technically.
That's one nice thing that I've liked from Napster. Once you download a song, you can still download it onto 2 other computers, and I think you can still download it onto the original computer more than once if you do lose it for some reason. I bought an album on iTunes at home, hoped to be able to download it at work to listen to it in both places, but when I got to work, I realized I'd have to go back and copy the files onto a USB flash drive to get them there. Sure Apple lets you listen to your music on 5 different "trusted" computers, but you have to use some physical medium to get it there... After making it so that you can't download it once, why go out of their way to make it hard for people to get their music to the other authorized computers? (rhetorical question, I'm not really asking for an answer)
It's actually usually just the high-end TVs that have discrete IR codes. The "home theater buffs" that have the $500 Pronto remote controls or the $100,000 Crestron Home Automation system will normally have a much higher-end TV than what they'll have at the airport or the laundromat, thus, they have the Discrete On/Off codes.
At the CEDIA Expo in Indianapolis last week, Sony actually had a booth like this where on the outside they had video screens that looked like Windows into the booth. Don't know what they used, though. I didn't even look close enough to see if they were LCDs or not.
The Vaio U-50 comes with just such a keybaord...
Unfortunately, it's got a Japanese layout (mostly the same as U.S. for Letters & Numbers, but punctuation characters are in way dufferent places).
Hasn't this comparison already been on handtops.com for a while now? I've used the Sony Vaio U-50 a bit, and it's really a nice little package. Sexy little touches like LEDs on the buttons that fade off, the general look and feel of the whole unit, and the 802.11g is very nice as well. I'd buy one for my own personal use if I could afford it. They would be awesome for travelling. They say they're not Linux-freindly, which I don't think is that big of a deal anyway for something like this. If it wasn't for the occasional unpredictable reboot, they'd be perfect!
Having already read the post above which says this is an admitted hoax...
The pictures actually look a lot like the PC's made by this company I used to have one of these sitting on my desk at work... a speedy enough PC, but way loud because of the fan. Really, it's not a sexy enough design for Apple. Honestly, look at the colors, it would have to be a hoax.
They announced that they were able to do it. This is a prototype, and could very well be a long way off. The /. crowd should be understanding of what that means. It does not mean that movies will be available at Blockbuster on Holographic discs later this year. With new technologies, prototypes like these are usually pretty buggy, but they prove the concept. TFA states that the 6 investors watched movies in meetings (My kind of meeting!) but I'm sure up to the minute they were done playing, the engineers were sweating bullets, worried that something wouldn't work out right.
/. is a forum for nerds who want to know about the bleeding edge of technology. The bleeding edge is almost always years ahead of production (and often demand, too). Look at OLEDs: I saw a 15" widescreen prototype from Sanyo at CES 2003 (Jan), but Active Matrix OLEDs are used at most in 1 consumer product (Kodak camera), which doesn't even ship in the US, and for all I know, may not be shipping anywhere anymore. That doesn't change the fact that it's a cool technology that will change a lot of things. We've just gotta be patient. I think everyone else here knew that.
Using DOS Commands teaches people a certain amount of stuff, but doesn't do much to help kids learn about avoiding the crap of the Internet. It is true that someone who has a working knowledge of DOS (or Linux CLI or whatever other unfriendly interface) is more likely to better respect the machine he/she is using, but that still doesn't help a person to know what is dangerous on the Internet and how to avoid it. I grew up on an Apple II+, moved on to DOS, then Windows 3.0 and up from there, but some of the stuff I was blindly downloading off the Internet 5 years ago would totally hose my computer if I was downloading it today. Most of the reason I learned to be more careful was working computer support at a university, where I saw other people screw up their computers. The best teacher is either going to be watching other people screw up, or screwing up yourself. The next best teacher is probably a book like this, if people will actually sit down and read it, and if the information in it is up to date and accurate.
So these are the monkeys working on WinXP SP2?
Seems like they should be punished instead. As if we need to encourage people to sit on their duffs and watch the boob tube anymore than they already do. As it is, there's too many channels with nothing good on, and too many people sucking it all in.
I've got one on my desk right now, and it's a handy piece of equipment. The fact that the Os is actually XP Tablet Edition, which is a supserset of XP, means that there are additions to the OS designed to make the touchscreen interface work well. It's much easier and better to write on the Tablet's screen than it is to write on a PDA screen. The digitizer which requires a special magnetic-tipped stylus seems like a hindrance at first, since you can't just use your finger, but once you use it, you realize how much better it makes your interaction with the Tablet. The cursor will follow the movements of the stylus, even when the stylus isn't quite touching the screen, which means you can make it work a lot like a mouse, doing things you couldn't do with a PPC. You have right-click functionality with a button on the stylus. The requirement for the special stylus also allows you to rest your hand on the screen without accidentally clicking on anything. Basically, it feels like a notebook... a heavy, solid notebook, but it is really not that far off from feeling like a pen and paper. It's great for taking notes, and the potential for specialized apps designed specifically for the form factor is tremendous, although developers seem to be missing the boat.
The one I have was one of the first models, with only an 800MHz P3. It's not fast, but it's not designed to be a high-performance gaming machine, it's designed to give you the most usefulness in certain situations. In short, I'd reccomend one. If you're looking for a PDA, this is not for you. If you're looking for the functionality of a PC that's ultra-portable, this is for you.
I wonder what BTG's IT staff would do if MS stopped offering Windows Update. I'm sure they've been using it for years. Have they just stopped using Windows Update, because it violates their patents? I'd like to see what happens to them when the next big worm goes around the Internet infecting everyone who didn't update.
Also, why has it taken this long to sue? The Apple Rendezvous suit seemed to come up and get resolved pretty quickly.
From the FA:
Those applications would put it in competition with key products of other software makers.
Competition... from Microsoft! That's a new one from the anti-competition king!
I guess I don't understand how breaking the DRM cost any royalties at all. From my understanding, it allows people to run Linux on the XBox, but if you buy an XBox, you have already paid for the XBox OS. You're not taking anything away from MS, because you paid their royalties when you bought the XBox. If anything, you've encouraged more hackers to buy an XBox, putting money in MS's pockets. And from what I recall, the "Linux on XBox" contest stopped short of being able to hack the XBox without using additional hardware. The XBox-Linux contest was simple self-promotion, masquerading as fighting for the Linux community.
He may be selling cheap PCs with Lindows/spire on them, but I've never actually heard of anyone buying one. I don't know how he's managed to cut any niche out of Windows market share. Apple has a nice little niche, I'm sure Apple's market share dwarfs Lindows'. If someone asked for my reccomendation, I'd either offer to build a PC from scratch and throw a real distro on it, or point them to a Windows box. I don't have any faith in Linspire.
As far as being able to "steadily beat" Microsoft, I haven't seen it happen. I've seen him take $20 million at once, but he took up this battle on the moral grounds that he was fighting the big Monster MS, and that they couldn't make him switch. Now they paid him to do it and go away. I don't see Mr as a fighter, I see him more like a phony televangelist, claiming to point people in the Good direction, but really trying to build himself up.
It could even be "silent" "no warranty" "not supported" type of deal,
"Silent" "no warranty" and "not supported"= beta = may not work right or probably will not work right. If they did come out with OGG support and it didn't play it well, I'm sure there would be more complaints on Slashdot than there currently are for not having support. I don't think you really would settle for "sot supported" OGG, but if you wanted to, you could always go for the Linux hack and see what it can do for you.
The PC is merely a succedaneum for satisfying the nympholepsy of nullifidians. The haecceity of the enchiridion of arcane and recdonite elements of the Mac gestalt appeals to the oniomaina of an eximious Gemeinschaft whose legerity and sophrosyne, whose Sprachgefühl and orexis find more than fugacious fullment in its felicific experience.
I get SPAM e-mails with all those words in them. I just thought they were putting random words in the message, I didn't realize that it's Mac users who are peddling Viagra.
The pulsing action stimulates hair upward and away from the skin, making it dramatically easier to shave more thoroughly in one easy power stroke.
Yeah, just like my Norelco electric from a decade ago that was supposed to "lift and cut" to drop the hair below skin level... If it would actually cut the hair, I'd be happier with it, but as it is...
Oh yeah, this topic is supposed to be about ultra-mega-super-duper-hypersonic jets or something, isn't it. Mod -1 offtopic for all of us.
I don't think these people understand the severity of the situation here or that they even care
We Slashdot readers are completely out of touch with how the rest of the world views computers and the Internet. Remember the Internet Help Desk video... the part where the tech support guy says "Do you see a big blue 'E' or a big green 'N'? I see, a big black nothing, OK, turn your computer ON." The other day I was shocked to find out that my own wife didn't know what IE was even though she'd been using it for years. She's now on Firefox, but I had to explain what a browser is. It's amazing to see how regular, non computer-oriented people see the Internet, or the web, or whatever they want to call it. Click on the Internet button, and there's the Internet.
Before the masses will start heeding the Department of Homeland Security or their Slashdotting friends or family members, they have to receive some kind of different education. The Windows view of trying to make everything simple and automatic makes it so the people can use the Internet for years and not even know what a browser is. The technical knowledge of the typcial Slashdot user only intimidates and scares the average user, so that doesn't help them, either. Getting our friends to switch to Linux/Firebird/whatever Open Source programs will not fix the ignorance problem, because we have to dumb things down to the point where everything is automatic and Windowsy to get them to use it. There has to be some other education for people out there. The Windows way won't help the masses, and neither will the Linux way. I don't have any solutions, only problems to state.
I thought PBS was all about education for young and old. My 2 year old daughter loves Sesame Street, and I hate to think of an innocent kids' show and a vulgar cop show on the same channel. There should be limits to what can be censored, but if enforcing people's freedoms means trampling on the freedoms of others, then we have to pick and choose. I don't walk around naked all day, because I know a lot of people don't want to see it (I am a Slashdotter, after all). If Richard Dreyfus wants a TV show where he can drop the F-bomb, he can join the cast of the Sopranos (and I hope he gets whacked). Don't do a show on a network that has largely been associated with children's programming and education if the show doesn't fit in with that.
Now MS is "beefing" up "Longhorn"
Now your PC can get Mad Cow disease!
I have yet to see an Apple ad campaign playing up the fact that Macs remain largely virus-free.
Probably not such a good idea, as I think the hacker/virus writer attitude is mostly about taking on challenges. Where's the point in exploiting a Mac? I guess you could bring down an elementary school computer lab, but there's not much satifaction in that. But if Apple comes out with a big campaign saying "We are secure! We are secure!" I think that would just bring on a tidal wave of people who want to prove that they can break this "secure" system. Macs haven't been a target, and Mac users can enjoy that for now. Don't create a reason for them to be a target, because if that happens, we'll all find out how secure the Mac isn't.