I needed a new audio player, and last week I went and bought an iRiver H10 Jr. I checked out the iPod Nano but I didn't like it - for the same price, I can radio, voice-recording, OGG playback, and text-file viewing. I know iPod is supposed to be the "cool" thing to buy, but sometimes people just want features, you know?
Microsoft will certainly get money for Vista from new computers; however, those copies of Windows are likely to have lower margins, and whats more, a copy of Vista probably won't cost that much more than a copy of XP today, so they aren't going to make a huge killing out of that. They'd certainly want a lot more people to simply shell out $100 for an OS upgrade to the average (Home-equivalent) Vista version.
If they don't have developers on their side who are willing to make use of cool Vista features, those upgrades may not happen. This may also be a nudge from Microsoft to try and ensure that new software is "best" run on Vista (hopefully with OSS it won't REQUIRE Vista to run) so that people with old versions of the OS upgrade. We've seen this a lot with Apple, they make sure they release a lot of new APIs with a new OS so that developers start using those right away. Leopard's preview didn't go down very well with users, but all the developers are gaga over it - because of Core Animation, Time Machine APIs and the like. All that translates to a lot of upgrade money (which is the ONLY way that Apple actually makes direct cash off its OS), because one year down the line a lot of cool apps will require Leopard to run at their best.
Or, say you plug in a 300GB external FireWire drive, and set it to do incremental backups to that every night.
Isn't this a regular backup operation? What Steve said "only 4% of people do, and hence lose data"? What I dislike is that by default, in the background, without the user's awareness, the OS is going to keep shadow copies of all files. As soon as you have to configure it on an external media or remote server, it qualifies as backup that people has to think about and there are enough programs that do incremental nightly backups already. I don't think thats what Time Machine is about.
At the keynote, they showed entire stacks of iPhoto photos being "undeleted", which means after being "deleted" they were lying around, taking up space. Add videos to that, add huge temporary files that you might copy onto your computer; where does that leave your hard disk space?
I'd like to know: at what point does this Time Machine stop? Or is it intended to keep storing backups of *everything* right up to the time it runs out of drive space? Whats the recovery strategy? Who decides which files are more important to keep than others?
My initial reaction was total delight at knowing that software patents are biting software companies back. But on second thoughts, all this will encourage is many more mindless software patents by the big firms to cover their asses.
The threat is that the website will be taken down? But how in the name of $DEITY am I (as a LJ user) responsible if someone VIEWING my blog uses adblock? And I am the one who signed the TOS, not the user viewing my blog, so in effect this just means I shouldn't mess around with my layout code so that the ads aren't shown.
One of the major problems in software companies is that programmers get promoted to positions of management because they excelled at what they did, but they lack management skills. So you've taken someone out of a position they excel at, and put them into a position they need to learn. I forget the term for this.
1. When was the last time Windows stopped working? 2. When was the last time Windows stopped working?
I don't know about Windows, but I just can't remember the last time Linux stopped working. Google stopped working a few hours ago, when for some reason my ISP's DNS server went down.
Pretty much everything spinning with mass is in a vortex of space-time, if relativity is correct. The point is, has the Internet run out of good stories for this to be posted on Slashdot?
I'm pretty sure such a system would end up eventually showing up ads based on the content of your hard drive, much like GMail scans your email for adwords. I'm OK with e-mail but I'm not sure I want a program to scour my computer's contents for adwords.
I can pretty safely say no rootkit type trash is involved. I just watched it on my Mac and was not prompted for any installs or admin rights. Of course I expect its encrypted like they usually are. I also notice the DVD had a title of "Charlotte" and then found the reason here.
I don't think thats always the case. Notably, Oracle used to (at least upto half a year ago) give aggressive, directed ads against IBM DB2 on the back cover of the Economist.
IMO, this is a good move by Sun to get out of the the thick heads of management the idea that Dell is the only option. As for being insecure, I seriously doubt they are. In this field, if their servers were no good they'd be taken apart in a day; but they have in fact got pretty good reviews.
I don't know about you, but I think marketing a product that has three non-mainstream things in it - Sun (vs. Dell), AMD (vs. Intel) and Solaris (vs. Linux/Windows) needs some aggressive campaigning. And I'm pretty happy that its the first time the Opteron is getting the recognition it deserves on a scale thats not limited to people who understand tech in and out.
Traditionally a study is said to be "statistically significant" if the odds are only 1 in 20 that the result could be pure chance. But in a complicated field where there are many potential hypotheses to sift through - such as whether a particular gene influences a particular disease - it is easy to reach false conclusions using this standard. If you test 20 false hypotheses, one of them is likely to show up as true, on average.
Odds get even worse for studies that are too small, studies that find small effects (for example, a drug that works for only 10% of patients), or studies where the protocol and endpoints are poorly defined, allowing researchers to massage their conclusions after the fact.
So this guy means that every scientific study is simply putting together some numbers from experiments? A good scientific paper - which follows the scientific method, if the author has heard of it - first presents a theory, after which it conducts experiments to estimate whether or not the theory is correct. Also, a good scientific paper will talk about limitations of accuracy - statistical limitations as the author suggests have been extremely well studied and documented.
So while it may be said that statistical studies may not always be as conclusive as they're made out to be, generalising 50% of published scientific literature to be wrong is simply Troll.
I agree completely. What I can't understand is why these facilities have to come at the expense of printed books. You can have all of the computers, lounges, etc. without throwing out the books which remain one of the best methods for intense focused study. How long can you study on your wirelessly enabled computer without checking to see if there's been an update at/.?
Slashdot Mirror
I needed a new audio player, and last week I went and bought an iRiver H10 Jr. I checked out the iPod Nano but I didn't like it - for the same price, I can radio, voice-recording, OGG playback, and text-file viewing. I know iPod is supposed to be the "cool" thing to buy, but sometimes people just want features, you know?
Microsoft will certainly get money for Vista from new computers; however, those copies of Windows are likely to have lower margins, and whats more, a copy of Vista probably won't cost that much more than a copy of XP today, so they aren't going to make a huge killing out of that. They'd certainly want a lot more people to simply shell out $100 for an OS upgrade to the average (Home-equivalent) Vista version. If they don't have developers on their side who are willing to make use of cool Vista features, those upgrades may not happen. This may also be a nudge from Microsoft to try and ensure that new software is "best" run on Vista (hopefully with OSS it won't REQUIRE Vista to run) so that people with old versions of the OS upgrade. We've seen this a lot with Apple, they make sure they release a lot of new APIs with a new OS so that developers start using those right away. Leopard's preview didn't go down very well with users, but all the developers are gaga over it - because of Core Animation, Time Machine APIs and the like. All that translates to a lot of upgrade money (which is the ONLY way that Apple actually makes direct cash off its OS), because one year down the line a lot of cool apps will require Leopard to run at their best.
At the keynote, they showed entire stacks of iPhoto photos being "undeleted", which means after being "deleted" they were lying around, taking up space. Add videos to that, add huge temporary files that you might copy onto your computer; where does that leave your hard disk space? I'd like to know: at what point does this Time Machine stop? Or is it intended to keep storing backups of *everything* right up to the time it runs out of drive space? Whats the recovery strategy? Who decides which files are more important to keep than others?
...and it's come in quick time._ Censorship
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Bloggers_Against
http://groups.google.com/group/BloggersCollective
Physics is the science of nature, and I don't think human nature is included.
Seriously, show me a nerd for whom this is news?
My initial reaction was total delight at knowing that software patents are biting software companies back. But on second thoughts, all this will encourage is many more mindless software patents by the big firms to cover their asses.
The threat is that the website will be taken down? But how in the name of $DEITY am I (as a LJ user) responsible if someone VIEWING my blog uses adblock? And I am the one who signed the TOS, not the user viewing my blog, so in effect this just means I shouldn't mess around with my layout code so that the ads aren't shown.
rsync -avz ~/ user@remote:homebackup
in crontab?
One of the major problems in software companies is that programmers get promoted to positions of management because they excelled at what they did, but they lack management skills. So you've taken someone out of a position they excel at, and put them into a position they need to learn. I forget the term for this.
:)
Rising to one's level of incompetence
Shared memory? Yuck! If you could only get a 128mb or a 256mb I'd get one. However, I bet it would be more than $1,000, but I'd still be interested.
It's called the iMac.
I think I'd buy it. What I need from an audio player is good platform/codec support. This thing runs OGG and FLAC, and works on Linux.
1. When was the last time Windows stopped working?
2. When was the last time Windows stopped working?
I don't know about Windows, but I just can't remember the last time Linux stopped working. Google stopped working a few hours ago, when for some reason my ISP's DNS server went down.
Pretty much everything spinning with mass is in a vortex of space-time, if relativity is correct. The point is, has the Internet run out of good stories for this to be posted on Slashdot?
I'm pretty sure such a system would end up eventually showing up ads based on the content of your hard drive, much like GMail scans your email for adwords. I'm OK with e-mail but I'm not sure I want a program to scour my computer's contents for adwords.
I can pretty safely say no rootkit type trash is involved. I just watched it on my Mac and was not prompted for any installs or admin rights. Of course I expect its encrypted like they usually are. I also notice the DVD had a title of "Charlotte" and then found the reason here.
Well today Michael Dell's position seems to be that Apple should sell OS X to Dell so they can put it on their computers.
...this in a country with free speech. Tut, tut.
Not to mention, you'll be pretty warm for a while too...
I don't think thats always the case. Notably, Oracle used to (at least upto half a year ago) give aggressive, directed ads against IBM DB2 on the back cover of the Economist.
IMO, this is a good move by Sun to get out of the the thick heads of management the idea that Dell is the only option. As for being insecure, I seriously doubt they are. In this field, if their servers were no good they'd be taken apart in a day; but they have in fact got pretty good reviews.
I don't know about you, but I think marketing a product that has three non-mainstream things in it - Sun (vs. Dell), AMD (vs. Intel) and Solaris (vs. Linux/Windows) needs some aggressive campaigning. And I'm pretty happy that its the first time the Opteron is getting the recognition it deserves on a scale thats not limited to people who understand tech in and out.
... all my extensions work on it. I had no problems with Deer Park Alpha, except that nothing except Adblock worked.
So while it may be said that statistical studies may not always be as conclusive as they're made out to be, generalising 50% of published scientific literature to be wrong is simply Troll.
I agree completely. What I can't understand is why these facilities have to come at the expense of printed books. You can have all of the computers, lounges, etc. without throwing out the books which remain one of the best methods for intense focused study. How long can you study on your wirelessly enabled computer without checking to see if there's been an update at /.?
If they're planning to compete with Skype, they'd better have Linux and Mac versions ready.