When I was a young lad, I was re-wiring one of the phone jacks in my house. I didn't have any tools on me, and needed to strip the wires, so I used my teeth. Wouldn't you know it, just as I was stripping the wires, the damn phone rang.
Now, I don't know how painful it would be to get shocked by one of these VAIOs, but if it's anything like direct current to your mouth, I don't recommend trying it. Ouch.
You want original reviews? Go check out some of the articles Jade has written on Ars Technica. Now those are uniqe. This is just a mildly humorous review of a video game.
I was watching the news the other day, where some little girl drowned in a lake. The guy that found her was being interviewed, and he was wearing a slashdot shirt.
My first response when I saw the guy was, "Hey! Cool!", which was just a bit inappropriate for the situation, I was informed.:-)
Sorry, but you're missing one very important factor: price.
Apple has dropped the ball on the low-end market, a segment they briefly owned with the debut of the first-gen iMac.
I can buy a good system from Dell for $699. Or, I can build one myself for even less. What's a low-level PoweMac cost now? Something like $1100, right? I don't want an integrated screen, so don't suggest the xMac to me, either.
Before you flame me for using the same old argument, let me make my point: Perhaps the the word viable in the poster's statement was too strong a word, but the word realistic is not. I can purchase a Windows system for the aforementioned price, and install Linux on it at no aditional cost. And even better, if I can't handle using a Linux system, I'll have the included copy of Windows to fall back on. And I'll have another 500 bucks to purchase some nice peripherals for my new x86 system.
Face it. Apple may be a great machine for its target market, but it is not an everyman machine anymore. It is just too expensive. If Linux can be as good on the desktop as the article suggests, then there really is no reason to consider an Apple machine - it's just cost prohibitive.
While Apple may have 'embraced' Open Source, it is still a closed system, and to this unemployed poster, not worth the $500+ premium.
So, the USB cable doesn't come out any further than that? Still a cool toy, but I guess you gotta take the watch off before plugging it into your puter. I'll probally buy one from thinkgeek once they're back in stock.
Modern car stereos have two power leads going to them. One lead goes directly (ok, maybe through a fuse) to the battery, while the other goes to the ignition switch. Yes, when you shut your car off, the stereo powers off, but this doesn't mean that all power has been cut. The stereo keeps a constant power feed on the car's battery so it will remember the presets, as well as keep the clock up to date.
Yes, I've heard of NVRAM. But NVRAM still needs some kind of power to keep its previous settings. This is why your digital alarm clock has a battery backup, and your computer's motherboard has a CMOS battery.
Why not wire it like your car stereo? When you shut your car off, power still goes to the stereo via a separate feed, so you don't lose your preset stations.
You could have a constant power line going to the network guts of the enclosure, while the power controlled by the on/off switch was wired to the light side of things. Hit the switch and the light turns off, but the network keeps on chugging.
Granted, it would require you to do some rewiring of your existing light infrastructure, but half the fun is getting there!
"an entry into the console market that would be completely unsustainable if Microsoft were not a monopoly (I.E. able to sustain gross losses in many other markets in order to direct/force attention back to their OS and Office suite)."
Um, yeah. Because Sony and Nintendo don't sell their consoles at a loss or anything. Come on dude, look at the Xbox's competition. Whether MS is a monopoly or not is a moot point in this argument - Sony and Nintendo both have other revenue streams to allow them to sell consoles below cost.
Explain to me how you were going to avoid seeing that news? I've already seen it as a headline on two other websites. I'm sure it will be on Entertainment Tonight/Extra/everything else in the next week or so.
The only way you weren't gonna know that is if you unplugged yourself from everything till the next episode hits the theaters.
I downloaded and installed Synapse. Damn thing scanned all my local and network shares for files, giving me no option to manually specify. Since I have lots of drives, this took a good ten minutes.
What's worse, the app stayed on top of all my other apps, smack in the middle of my primary monitor, with no way to move it. So, I had to work on my secondary while it chugged away.
Ok, fine. Told it where the MP3s were, and it imported all the song info. I believe I was allowed to move this window, although I can't totally remember.
Fired it up. Black on dark blue background. Um, tough to read to say the least. Switched to the 'playlist' screen and tried dragging n dropping an m3u playlist into the screen, a la winamp. No dice, wouldn't load.
Ok, can't find any place to manually add files without exploring the little music database it built. Open the database tree and, holy crap, what a piece of shit. I wanted to listen to Linkin Park's Meteora CD, so I scroll waay down to linkin park, and expand the tree. Ugh. Flat file listings, by song name. Crap. Can't find Meteora.
Now, I know that this is kind of a different MP3 player, and I had every intention of RTFMing before really using it, but come on. It should at least be intuitive enough for me to be able to load some songs without having to read the instructions.
I closed Synamps and fired Winamp 3 up. Maybe I'll go back and try it out again, but I'm not as interested as I was when I started.
One of my big complaints about the PS2 is its slow load time compared to the GC and (to a lesser extent) the Xbox.
Anybody know if this updated box will improve the speed at which games load? I seem to remember the PS1 had a couple different iterations with different speed CD-Rom drives, hopefully this will be along the same lines?
"Remember Bungie, once pretty much the only significant Mac-only gaming company?"
Um, not really. I remember that Bungie was one of the few companies to release quality Mac games at the same time as their PC versions, but I wouldn't call the company Mac-Only.
A friend of mine, known as Jfragment on Xbox Live, started the GamerTag Database. It's a site where you can comment on the etiquette of other XbL players, and rate them accordingly.
The site has gotten a surprising amount of attention, considering that it's all done in Jay's spare time It's been featured in Penny Arcade, Forbes, and MSNBC.
So, if some 13-year-old from Prague has been talking trash, you can log in and kinda 'mod him down':-)
I did a consulting gig recently where I had to network a small conference room. The meeting was to train a group of people how to use Groove to collaborate with each other. I thought it odd at the time that all the people there were government personnel, but now it makes some sense, I guess.
Mit Romney's adversary in the gubernatorial race (Shannon O'Brien) used Staroffice on all their hardware to cut costs. I know this because I supplied all the computers.
Nothing really newsworthy, I guess, it's just late and I'm bored.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the ad-blocker just block the actual ad content? There would still be a big white square (in IE, anyways) smack in the middle of my story telling me that the page couldn't be found, right?
The subscription would remove the ad from the story altogether, thus making the formatting much more aesthetically pleasing. At least, that's how I understood it.
Seriously... the weakest point of any network is its users. Give your users enough rope, and they will hang themselves. However, when they hang themselves, it's up to the Sys admins to come to the rescue.
This is why lockdowns exist. They keep Joe User from randomly changing settings he doesn't understand, and accessing files he's not supposed to access.
As a sys admin, I DO NOT WANT random people being able to print to my printers just because they have a wireless card. The article mentions that they "don't even need to be on the network". So, lemme get this straight - any shmoe with a Rendezvous-enabled Mac can print to my printer, without getting permission? Even, say, somebody sitting outside the building?
This may be nice in a home environment, but I don't see how this is anything but a threat to business security. I have never read about rendezvous anywhere besides this article, so perhaps there's some administrative stuff I don't know about. For now, though, I think I'll stick with having a secure network. You want to print to the office printer? Call me first. How hard is that?
Firewire currently tops out at 800Mb/second, and is a relatively new techology. Cat5e can handle 1 GB/sec, and has been around in its current incarnation for quite a few years.
Also, the max length of a FireWire cable is 4.5 meters , while Ethernet can do 100 meters before needing a repeater.
Not sure how much bandwidth a gee-tar takes up, but I'd bet that cable length was the deciding factor in this design.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was a young lad, I was re-wiring one of the phone jacks in my house. I didn't have any tools on me, and needed to strip the wires, so I used my teeth. Wouldn't you know it, just as I was stripping the wires, the damn phone rang.
Now, I don't know how painful it would be to get shocked by one of these VAIOs, but if it's anything like direct current to your mouth, I don't recommend trying it. Ouch.
I hear tin-foil hats work pretty well :-)
You want original reviews? Go check out some of the articles Jade has written on Ars Technica. Now those are uniqe. This is just a mildly humorous review of a video game.
Yeah, this is off-topic. Mod as necessary...
:-)
I was watching the news the other day, where some little girl drowned in a lake. The guy that found her was being interviewed, and he was wearing a slashdot shirt.
My first response when I saw the guy was, "Hey! Cool!", which was just a bit inappropriate for the situation, I was informed.
Sorry, but you're missing one very important factor: price.
Apple has dropped the ball on the low-end market, a segment they briefly owned with the debut of the first-gen iMac.
I can buy a good system from Dell for $699. Or, I can build one myself for even less. What's a low-level PoweMac cost now? Something like $1100, right? I don't want an integrated screen, so don't suggest the xMac to me, either.
Before you flame me for using the same old argument, let me make my point: Perhaps the the word viable in the poster's statement was too strong a word, but the word realistic is not. I can purchase a Windows system for the aforementioned price, and install Linux on it at no aditional cost. And even better, if I can't handle using a Linux system, I'll have the included copy of Windows to fall back on. And I'll have another 500 bucks to purchase some nice
peripherals for my new x86 system.
Face it. Apple may be a great machine for its target market, but it is not an everyman machine anymore. It is just too expensive. If Linux can be as good on the desktop as the article suggests, then there really is no reason to consider an Apple machine - it's just cost prohibitive.
While Apple may have 'embraced' Open Source, it is still a closed system, and to this unemployed poster, not worth the $500+ premium.
You may not need to.
Check out his site - he's already received over $10,000 in donations since the settlement.
So, the USB cable doesn't come out any further than that? Still a cool toy, but I guess you gotta take the watch off before plugging it into your puter. I'll probally buy one from thinkgeek once they're back in stock.
Sorry, but you're mistaken.
Modern car stereos have two power leads going to them. One lead goes directly (ok, maybe through a fuse) to the battery, while the other goes to the ignition switch. Yes, when you shut your car off, the stereo powers off, but this doesn't mean that all power has been cut. The stereo keeps a constant power feed on the car's battery so it will remember the presets, as well as keep the clock up to date.
Yes, I've heard of NVRAM. But NVRAM still needs some kind of power to keep its previous settings. This is why your digital alarm clock has a battery backup, and your computer's motherboard has a CMOS battery.
Why not wire it like your car stereo? When you shut your car off, power still goes to the stereo via a separate feed, so you don't lose your preset stations.
You could have a constant power line going to the network guts of the enclosure, while the power controlled by the on/off switch was wired to the light side of things. Hit the switch and the light turns off, but the network keeps on chugging.
Granted, it would require you to do some rewiring of your existing light infrastructure, but half the fun is getting there!
"an entry into the console market that would be completely unsustainable if Microsoft were not a monopoly (I.E. able to sustain gross losses in many other markets in order to direct/force attention back to their OS and Office suite)."
Um, yeah. Because Sony and Nintendo don't sell their consoles at a loss or anything. Come on dude, look at the Xbox's competition. Whether MS is a monopoly or not is a moot point in this argument - Sony and Nintendo both have other revenue streams to allow them to sell consoles below cost.Explain to me how you were going to avoid seeing that news? I've already seen it as a headline on two other websites. I'm sure it will be on Entertainment Tonight/Extra/everything else in the next week or so. The only way you weren't gonna know that is if you unplugged yourself from everything till the next episode hits the theaters.
I downloaded and installed Synapse. Damn thing scanned all my local and network shares for files, giving me no option to manually specify. Since I have lots of drives, this took a good ten minutes.
What's worse, the app stayed on top of all my other apps, smack in the middle of my primary monitor, with no way to move it. So, I had to work on my secondary while it chugged away.
Ok, fine. Told it where the MP3s were, and it imported all the song info. I believe I was allowed to move this window, although I can't totally remember.
Fired it up. Black on dark blue background. Um, tough to read to say the least. Switched to the 'playlist' screen and tried dragging n dropping an m3u playlist into the screen, a la winamp. No dice, wouldn't load.
Ok, can't find any place to manually add files without exploring the little music database it built. Open the database tree and, holy crap, what a piece of shit. I wanted to listen to Linkin Park's Meteora CD, so I scroll waay down to linkin park, and expand the tree. Ugh. Flat file listings, by song name. Crap. Can't find Meteora.
Now, I know that this is kind of a different MP3 player, and I had every intention of RTFMing before really using it, but come on. It should at least be intuitive enough for me to be able to load some songs without having to read the instructions.
I closed Synamps and fired Winamp 3 up. Maybe I'll go back and try it out again, but I'm not as interested as I was when I started.
One of my big complaints about the PS2 is its slow load time compared to the GC and (to a lesser extent) the Xbox.
Anybody know if this updated box will improve the speed at which games load? I seem to remember the PS1 had a couple different iterations with different speed CD-Rom drives, hopefully this will be along the same lines?
"Remember Bungie, once pretty much the only significant Mac-only gaming company?"
Um, not really. I remember that Bungie was one of the few companies to release quality Mac games at the same time as their PC versions, but I wouldn't call the company Mac-Only.Initial traffic got very high, transferring over a gibibit a second.
They using the Fat Albert network protocols over there?
Um, isn't that how your browser cache (aka temporary internet files) already works? Or am I totally missing something?
A friend of mine, known as Jfragment on Xbox Live, started the GamerTag Database. It's a site where you can comment on the etiquette of other XbL players, and rate them accordingly.
:-)
The site has gotten a surprising amount of attention, considering that it's all done in Jay's spare time It's been featured in Penny Arcade, Forbes, and MSNBC.
So, if some 13-year-old from Prague has been talking trash, you can log in and kinda 'mod him down'
I did a consulting gig recently where I had to network a small conference room. The meeting was to train a group of people how to use Groove to collaborate with each other. I thought it odd at the time that all the people there were government personnel, but now it makes some sense, I guess.
Mit Romney's adversary in the gubernatorial race (Shannon O'Brien) used Staroffice on all their hardware to cut costs. I know this because I supplied all the computers.
Nothing really newsworthy, I guess, it's just late and I'm bored.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the ad-blocker just block the actual ad content? There would still be a big white square (in IE, anyways) smack in the middle of my story telling me that the page couldn't be found, right?
The subscription would remove the ad from the story altogether, thus making the formatting much more aesthetically pleasing. At least, that's how I understood it.
Seriously... the weakest point of any network is its users. Give your users enough rope, and they will hang themselves. However, when they hang themselves, it's up to the Sys admins to come to the rescue.
This is why lockdowns exist. They keep Joe User from randomly changing settings he doesn't understand, and accessing files he's not supposed to access.
As a sys admin, I DO NOT WANT random people being able to print to my printers just because they have a wireless card. The article mentions that they "don't even need to be on the network". So, lemme get this straight - any shmoe with a Rendezvous-enabled Mac can print to my printer, without getting permission? Even, say, somebody sitting outside the building?
This may be nice in a home environment, but I don't see how this is anything but a threat to business security. I have never read about rendezvous anywhere besides this article, so perhaps there's some administrative stuff I don't know about. For now, though, I think I'll stick with having a secure network. You want to print to the office printer? Call me first. How hard is that?
...In the NT admin forum. Article is here.
No, really, check it out. Make sure you wait 10 seconds before leaving :-)
Firewire currently tops out at 800Mb/second, and is a relatively new techology. Cat5e can handle 1 GB/sec, and has been around in its current incarnation for quite a few years.
Also, the max length of a FireWire cable is 4.5 meters , while Ethernet can do 100 meters before needing a repeater.
Not sure how much bandwidth a gee-tar takes up, but I'd bet that cable length was the deciding factor in this design.
I always thought it was spelled Skoorb, whitch is Brooks (as in Mel) backwards...