FYI - Nero CD Speed version 4.7.7.16 runs fine in Linux under recent versions of Wine. The newer version (callled Disc Speed, not CD Speed) does not work under Wine.
I've used it with two different Liteon SATA drives: a Liteon 20A3S and a Liteon 20A1L. Both of these drives (and I believe, Plextors) support scanning for jitter. When you run CDSpeed, the test you want is the Disc Quality tab. Click Advanced and then check the DVD Jitter checkbox. This test will give a good an indication of the quality of the disc.
In my experience, Verbatim Datalife Plus (media code: MCC) are really good discs. CMC Magnetics media vary widely, some are okay, others are garbage.
GSM cell phones have this audio interference problem, and I think TDMA phones do.
CDMA phones do not exhibit this behavior (at least the Virgin Mobile prepaid phone I had a few years ago didn't, and it used the Sprint CDMA network).
they really want us using fewer resources because we are BAD for doing so. It is a behavior change they are looking for, not really a change in the percentage of CO2 put into the atmosphere.
Agreed. And this is why I don't like most environmentalists. They are too into ideology. Most are smug and arrogant too. In my opinion, a large number of these people just like to think they are better than everyone else.
Do these codecs work in Kubuntu with Kaffeine and Amarok? I seem to remember that applications these use the xine backend -- is it compatible with Gstreamer codecs?
That is until partners realized just how effective they were at keeping tabs on exactly where we were and what we were doing at all hours.
Do you realize that blackberries, cell phones, and the like can be turned off, left in a drawer, etc.? My personal policy is that within business hours, I will answer calls if I happen to be available at the moment, or if not will respond within 1 hour to email and voice mail. But after hours or on the weekend is my time.
You don't need to take the "we expect you to be available 24-7" shit from employers. Just say no.
The last PC I had that had a slot for external cache was a 486. This was around 1994, and even then COAST modules http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_on_a_stick were a little difficult to find -- It's not like you could just walk in to the local Futureshop and pick one up.
It will be good riddance to video cards if that functionality moves to the CPU as far as I'm concerned. Especially if Intel and AMD continue with their recent trend of developing open drivers for their chips. Unlike other companies in the market, who only release binary blob drivers and deny serious problems with their current generation of laptop graphics chips http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/09/nvidia-g84-g86-bad.
The way Amazon has that worded is a bit odd: customers must located be in the United States (the 48 contiguous states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia). I'm not sure why they would define the United States with that wording. Maybe they are wanting to exclude territories such as Guam or Puerto Rico for some reason? Sorry if I came across as critical of your post dpf44, I was merely baffled by the comment about limiting it to the 48 contiguous states.
I can see no mention of this service on Amazon.co.uk. and the.com site blocks access outside of the 48 contiguous states.
Really? Why would Amazon.com block access to Alaska and Hawaii? I could understand charging more to ship to these states, but would think Amazon would still want to sell there. Of course, you have said that you are in the UK and do not have access to the US Amazon.com site so maybe you just don't know what you are talking about.
I assume if you have "Automatically check for updates to: Firefox" unchecked under options you won't see these nag screens. Is that not true?
If they are going to bug me with nag screens even though I have taken the trouble to go in and explicitly turn off update checking, then Mozilla Foundation is being arrogant by not respecting the user's choice. That's wrong, in my opinion. I upgraded to FF3 initially after it was released, but uninstalled it and went back to FF2 due to the serious problems I was having with it (which i wrote about in a previous slashdot post: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=617327&cid=24229933. Maybe when it gets to 3.0.10 or so I'll try it again, but I don't want them to push it on me.
And reducing CO2 output isn't going to cripple the US econmy. You'd be amazed at how quickly large corporations can adapt and improvise when they have to.
But there is a good chance it will hurt the American consumer. The large corporations you speak of will just pass the cost of reducing CO2 on to their customers.
IMHO, the system in Firefox 3 is superior. While self-signed sites are blocked by default, it is not easier to explicitly trust a self-signed SSL site. In the past, most people would just click past the nag dialog when it popped up.
I disagree. The system in Firefox 3 is crap. The old system just asked if the user wanted to add the cert. The new system on the other hand, presents a scary warning and tries to talk the user out of adding the cert. It basically sets up roadblocks to the user getting their task done because the Mozilla foundation is arrogant and thinks they know better than the user. I use self-signed certs on my own servers (just stuff for personal use) and it annoys the hell out of me when Firefox presents me with these "nag" dialogs.
The US government has been able to seize (basically steal) your cash and car, etc. for a long time, thanks to the war on drugs, even if you are not charged with a crime. NPR had a story on it about a month ago, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91555835
Now we can just add laptops and expensive electronics to the list, that's all. The US government is truly corrupt and rotten to the core. My advice would be to just vote anti-incumbent this election. Kick the bums out.
Is Firefox 3 still looking like ass on KDE, and when you attempt to make it use KDE themes, the scrollbars disappear?
Heck, it's like that with KDE 3.5, at least in Kubuntu Hardy Heron, so I don't think it's a KDE 4 issue. I just thought it was another example of Ubuntu shortchanging KDE users and delivering sub-par packages. KDE is less stable with Kubuntu 8.04 than it was in the Feisty Fawn release, in my opinion.
Agreed. Cap and trade is the worst idea to be proposed in a long time. It solves nothing but makes everyone feel good about protecting the environment. My guess is if it get implemented in the USA, big business will have lots of loopholes to get around it and the middle class will pay most of the cost. It's too bad both Obama and McCain support this stupid idea. If they want to tax carbon, just have a flat % carbon tax added to everyone's income tax. That way, they get what they need to clean it up, pay to plant trees in Brazil or whatever, and economic activity proceeds as normal. The US economy can absorb this kind of predictable thing, and the US consumer wouldn't need to worry about carbon consumption -- the cost would just be spread over everything. But the alternative, what I predict would result in carbon cabs, would be electricity shortages, massive energy spikes, etc. due to running out of these artificial carbon credits. That would be a disaster.
Common knowledge around here seems to dictate that the only reason Apple is where they are today is because of Steve Jobs, that he singlehandedly turned the company around when he came back to Apple in the late 1990's...
You have just bought in to the marketing. The Steve Jobs as the white knight who saved Apple and the world from mediocre products is just part of the PR. It's the bullshit Apple uses to turn their users from average consumers into rabid fanboys. It's all about selling the Apple image, and Steve Jobs is part of that image.
The only reason I could think of switching to Fedora from Ubuntu is if you had a nVidia 8200 motherboard. The Fedora Core 9 kernel version (2.6.25) supports it, and the one in Ubuntu 8.04 (2.6.24) does not.
KDE support in Fedora may be better as well, I haven't looked at it in a while so I'm not sure. KDE is stagnant as hell in Ubuntu/Kubuntu land for now (no LTS support for KDE in 8.04, etc.), due to all the churn with the very beta-like and some would say ill-planned KDE 4.0 release.
I upgraded to Firefox 3, but had so many problems with it crashing and not rendering some sites correctly that I reverted to Firefox 2. Strangely, I only had problems with FF3 on my work machine running the Windows XP version (this is the one I rolled back to FF2). I haven't had any problems with it on my Linux machine (Kubuntu 8.04).
PyQT is the nicest Python GUI framework, and QTDesigner makes it just as easy to use as Visual Basic. Check out http://www.cs.usfca.edu/~afedosov/qttut/ for a short tutorial.
If you are running Windows and using the manufacturer's drivers for a relatively recent (last few years) video card, then yeah, everything should be peachy. But if you are using open source video card drivers under Linux then good luck. Even with the proprietary Nvidia driver, highdef video playback can max out a fairly new CPU. http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/HD_Playback_Reports will give you an indication about the type of setup you need to get HD video playback to work.
The best short-term solution is government regulation of automobiles, through taxation and incentives.
I'm surprised no one has proposed changing the US speed limit back to 55 mph. The original 55 mph speed limit was instituted to save oil during the oil crisis to reduced demand. It's really the only thing government could do in the short term to lower gas prices, but I have yet to hear any politician propose it this time around.
That's the reason why I'm skipping the entire BlueRay generation. My family can live with DVD quality just fine.
The reason I'm skipping BlueRay is that I won't buy ANYTHING with DRM (unless it's easily crackable like DVD). Hollywood can take BlueRay and stuff it. I will reject any technology which limits my free use rights.
I don't know about you, but I plan on using KDE 3.5.9 until the next Kubuntu LTS release. I'm hoping KDE 4.x will be as stable as KDE 3.5.x by then. KDE 3.5.x is really great. The only thing that pisses me off is Canonical's brain-dead decision not to offer long term support for KDE 3.5 in the 8.04 release (I totally understand them not wanting to support 4.0, but why the hell not support 3.5.9? It's very, very stable).
Then I assume you're a fan of higher flat-rate pricing?
Yes, I would rather that they raise flat-rate pricing. This applies to not only airlines, but the garbage company (waste management, etc.) UPS, FedEx, and pretty much anyone else these days. Nothing pisses me off more to be quoted one price and to then get a bill for a much higher price due to these mandatory surcharges. When I get these charges, I feel totally lied to and ripped off. Your cost of doing business is not my concern. I'll care about how much it costs a supplier to run their business when they implement transparent cost-plus pricing. Typically, most things are priced based on the cost the market will bear. Whining that they need demand based pricing + some additional amount to maintain their profit margin is bullshit. High energy prices are here to stay -- adjust your pricing structure accordingly so I can fairly assess the cost-benefit of whatever service you are providing.
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So does the latest Moonlight version work with the Netflix "Watch Instantly" feature? If not then this isn't a very interesting announcement.
FYI - Nero CD Speed version 4.7.7.16 runs fine in Linux under recent versions of Wine. The newer version (callled Disc Speed, not CD Speed) does not work under Wine.
I've used it with two different Liteon SATA drives: a Liteon 20A3S and a Liteon 20A1L. Both of these drives (and I believe, Plextors) support scanning for jitter. When you run CDSpeed, the test you want is the Disc Quality tab. Click Advanced and then check the DVD Jitter checkbox. This test will give a good an indication of the quality of the disc.
In my experience, Verbatim Datalife Plus (media code: MCC) are really good discs. CMC Magnetics media vary widely, some are okay, others are garbage.
GSM cell phones have this audio interference problem, and I think TDMA phones do. CDMA phones do not exhibit this behavior (at least the Virgin Mobile prepaid phone I had a few years ago didn't, and it used the Sprint CDMA network).
they really want us using fewer resources because we are BAD for doing so. It is a behavior change they are looking for, not really a change in the percentage of CO2 put into the atmosphere.
Agreed. And this is why I don't like most environmentalists. They are too into ideology. Most are smug and arrogant too. In my opinion, a large number of these people just like to think they are better than everyone else.
Do these codecs work in Kubuntu with Kaffeine and Amarok? I seem to remember that applications these use the xine backend -- is it compatible with Gstreamer codecs?
That is until partners realized just how effective they were at keeping tabs on exactly where we were and what we were doing at all hours.
Do you realize that blackberries, cell phones, and the like can be turned off, left in a drawer, etc.? My personal policy is that within business hours, I will answer calls if I happen to be available at the moment, or if not will respond within 1 hour to email and voice mail. But after hours or on the weekend is my time.
You don't need to take the "we expect you to be available 24-7" shit from employers. Just say no.
The last PC I had that had a slot for external cache was a 486. This was around 1994, and even then COAST modules http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_on_a_stick were a little difficult to find -- It's not like you could just walk in to the local Futureshop and pick one up.
It will be good riddance to video cards if that functionality moves to the CPU as far as I'm concerned. Especially if Intel and AMD continue with their recent trend of developing open drivers for their chips. Unlike other companies in the market, who only release binary blob drivers and deny serious problems with their current generation of laptop graphics chips http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/09/nvidia-g84-g86-bad.
The way Amazon has that worded is a bit odd: customers must located be in the United States (the 48 contiguous states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia). I'm not sure why they would define the United States with that wording. Maybe they are wanting to exclude territories such as Guam or Puerto Rico for some reason? Sorry if I came across as critical of your post dpf44, I was merely baffled by the comment about limiting it to the 48 contiguous states.
I can see no mention of this service on Amazon.co.uk. and the .com site blocks access outside of the 48 contiguous states.
Really? Why would Amazon.com block access to Alaska and Hawaii? I could understand charging more to ship to these states, but would think Amazon would still want to sell there. Of course, you have said that you are in the UK and do not have access to the US Amazon.com site so maybe you just don't know what you are talking about.
I assume if you have "Automatically check for updates to: Firefox" unchecked under options you won't see these nag screens. Is that not true?
If they are going to bug me with nag screens even though I have taken the trouble to go in and explicitly turn off update checking, then Mozilla Foundation is being arrogant by not respecting the user's choice. That's wrong, in my opinion. I upgraded to FF3 initially after it was released, but uninstalled it and went back to FF2 due to the serious problems I was having with it (which i wrote about in a previous slashdot post: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=617327&cid=24229933. Maybe when it gets to 3.0.10 or so I'll try it again, but I don't want them to push it on me.
And reducing CO2 output isn't going to cripple the US econmy. You'd be amazed at how quickly large corporations can adapt and improvise when they have to.
But there is a good chance it will hurt the American consumer. The large corporations you speak of will just pass the cost of reducing CO2 on to their customers.
Umm, just a guess, but I would bet that AMD will make chipsets for their boards under their ATI brand. No need to proclaim the death of AMD (yet).
IMHO, the system in Firefox 3 is superior. While self-signed sites are blocked by default, it is not easier to explicitly trust a self-signed SSL site. In the past, most people would just click past the nag dialog when it popped up.
I disagree. The system in Firefox 3 is crap. The old system just asked if the user wanted to add the cert. The new system on the other hand, presents a scary warning and tries to talk the user out of adding the cert. It basically sets up roadblocks to the user getting their task done because the Mozilla foundation is arrogant and thinks they know better than the user. I use self-signed certs on my own servers (just stuff for personal use) and it annoys the hell out of me when Firefox presents me with these "nag" dialogs.
The US government has been able to seize (basically steal) your cash and car, etc. for a long time, thanks to the war on drugs, even if you are not charged with a crime. NPR had a story on it about a month ago, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91555835
Now we can just add laptops and expensive electronics to the list, that's all. The US government is truly corrupt and rotten to the core. My advice would be to just vote anti-incumbent this election. Kick the bums out.
Is Firefox 3 still looking like ass on KDE, and when you attempt to make it use KDE themes, the scrollbars disappear?
Heck, it's like that with KDE 3.5, at least in Kubuntu Hardy Heron, so I don't think it's a KDE 4 issue. I just thought it was another example of Ubuntu shortchanging KDE users and delivering sub-par packages. KDE is less stable with Kubuntu 8.04 than it was in the Feisty Fawn release, in my opinion.
Agreed. Cap and trade is the worst idea to be proposed in a long time. It solves nothing but makes everyone feel good about protecting the environment. My guess is if it get implemented in the USA, big business will have lots of loopholes to get around it and the middle class will pay most of the cost. It's too bad both Obama and McCain support this stupid idea. If they want to tax carbon, just have a flat % carbon tax added to everyone's income tax. That way, they get what they need to clean it up, pay to plant trees in Brazil or whatever, and economic activity proceeds as normal. The US economy can absorb this kind of predictable thing, and the US consumer wouldn't need to worry about carbon consumption -- the cost would just be spread over everything. But the alternative, what I predict would result in carbon cabs, would be electricity shortages, massive energy spikes, etc. due to running out of these artificial carbon credits. That would be a disaster.
Common knowledge around here seems to dictate that the only reason Apple is where they are today is because of Steve Jobs, that he singlehandedly turned the company around when he came back to Apple in the late 1990's...
You have just bought in to the marketing. The Steve Jobs as the white knight who saved Apple and the world from mediocre products is just part of the PR. It's the bullshit Apple uses to turn their users from average consumers into rabid fanboys. It's all about selling the Apple image, and Steve Jobs is part of that image.
The only reason I could think of switching to Fedora from Ubuntu is if you had a nVidia 8200 motherboard. The Fedora Core 9 kernel version (2.6.25) supports it, and the one in Ubuntu 8.04 (2.6.24) does not.
KDE support in Fedora may be better as well, I haven't looked at it in a while so I'm not sure. KDE is stagnant as hell in Ubuntu/Kubuntu land for now (no LTS support for KDE in 8.04, etc.), due to all the churn with the very beta-like and some would say ill-planned KDE 4.0 release.
I upgraded to Firefox 3, but had so many problems with it crashing and not rendering some sites correctly that I reverted to Firefox 2. Strangely, I only had problems with FF3 on my work machine running the Windows XP version (this is the one I rolled back to FF2). I haven't had any problems with it on my Linux machine (Kubuntu 8.04).
PyQT is the nicest Python GUI framework, and QTDesigner makes it just as easy to use as Visual Basic. Check out http://www.cs.usfca.edu/~afedosov/qttut/ for a short tutorial.
If you are running Windows and using the manufacturer's drivers for a relatively recent (last few years) video card, then yeah, everything should be peachy. But if you are using open source video card drivers under Linux then good luck. Even with the proprietary Nvidia driver, highdef video playback can max out a fairly new CPU. http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/HD_Playback_Reports will give you an indication about the type of setup you need to get HD video playback to work.
The best short-term solution is government regulation of automobiles, through taxation and incentives.
I'm surprised no one has proposed changing the US speed limit back to 55 mph. The original 55 mph speed limit was instituted to save oil during the oil crisis to reduced demand. It's really the only thing government could do in the short term to lower gas prices, but I have yet to hear any politician propose it this time around.
That's the reason why I'm skipping the entire BlueRay generation. My family can live with DVD quality just fine.
The reason I'm skipping BlueRay is that I won't buy ANYTHING with DRM (unless it's easily crackable like DVD). Hollywood can take BlueRay and stuff it. I will reject any technology which limits my free use rights.
I don't know about you, but I plan on using KDE 3.5.9 until the next Kubuntu LTS release. I'm hoping KDE 4.x will be as stable as KDE 3.5.x by then. KDE 3.5.x is really great. The only thing that pisses me off is Canonical's brain-dead decision not to offer long term support for KDE 3.5 in the 8.04 release (I totally understand them not wanting to support 4.0, but why the hell not support 3.5.9? It's very, very stable).
Then I assume you're a fan of higher flat-rate pricing?
Yes, I would rather that they raise flat-rate pricing. This applies to not only airlines, but the garbage company (waste management, etc.) UPS, FedEx, and pretty much anyone else these days. Nothing pisses me off more to be quoted one price and to then get a bill for a much higher price due to these mandatory surcharges. When I get these charges, I feel totally lied to and ripped off. Your cost of doing business is not my concern. I'll care about how much it costs a supplier to run their business when they implement transparent cost-plus pricing. Typically, most things are priced based on the cost the market will bear. Whining that they need demand based pricing + some additional amount to maintain their profit margin is bullshit. High energy prices are here to stay -- adjust your pricing structure accordingly so I can fairly assess the cost-benefit of whatever service you are providing.