I'm just saying there's a small jump from a legally-configured AppleTV (i.e., with a purchased Leopard license) and a Mac mini. To that I'd agree... I was even going to purchase a couple of minis to use as mythtv frontends... but with the aTV I am considering going that route. Just waiting for a confirmed success in doing it first.
it's $171 more for a much more capable Mac mini/quote
The Mac mini is more capable... but lacks a few things that the aTV has. Most notably is HDMI and component video output. Add that to the cost of the mini in your example.
There is no way anyone will by the aTV to use for desktop use, but for connecting to their TV as the frontend for mythtv server it's perfect!
Give us the patch already... I mean hell... they are telling us when it will be released... which means they have written it an tested it to some degree already.
They are probably using this few days to figure out how they can spin the whole issue to make them look good!
I don't know why I even care... this bug doesn't effect me in the least.
I hope it is, as that might finally make these coalitions focus on developing the better technology for delivering the content instead of protecting it.
It's not worth the risk to release a format that is encumbered with complex copy protection schemes. They WILL get broken, and they WILL cause problems for consumers.
From what I understand of AAC audio, an essentially lossless CD rip of most CD's can be done in far less than the 320kbps used by mp3.
In fact, some have said that 128kbps is almost as good as 320kbps.
Couple that, with the fact that that you can sample AAC up to 96khz rather than just 48khz, you can encode up to 48 separate channels, and that EMI encodes their tracks from the digital masters rather than a lossy CD.
I suspect that the quality of these tracks may actually rival that of CD's... perhaps be superior in some regards.
I especially like the multi-track encoding idea. Labels could release the music so that the lead vocal, background vocals, and music were all on separate tracks... instant karaoke and instant remix ability. I don't suspect we can expect anything like this very soon, but the AAC format allows for it.
Can anyone confirm, is 256kbps enough for an AAC file to be indistinguishable from a CD in a true double blind listening test?
This system has to use a 1990's version of the software package. These hundreds or thousands of machine generated forms and letters were composed using this level of software that contain known software bugs and will not format correctly if they execute using a later copy of the package. Your not using MS Word are you?
We could use a Martyr in our crusade against ridiculous copyright laws.
Seriously, this aggression toward a relatively innocent school teacher who only wanted to give his students the best education he couldn't afford... it doesn't cause fear of piracy in the publics eye it causes ANGER.
Eventually these ridiculous lawsuits and penalties will drive the public to fix a damaged copyright system, or even drive them to embrace products that are not burdened by such copyrights. I just hope it happens soon!
I hate to say it, but you've made a common mistake MS Word users make. A word processor is not designed for creating high quality print materials, it's not designed for doing page layout, hell it's not really intended for doing anything beyond what a typewriter could do. I would imagine this is why the OOo developers are ignoring this at the moment, it is indeed a feature and not a bug.
Sure basic features have been implemented to allow some basic functionality in the desktop publishing area... but if your creating documents that are going to be sent to a professional printer you need a true desktop publishing application. Try Scribus, it's free and open source, and works quite well once you get the hang of using a desktop publishing application instead of a word processor.
As far as commercial apps are concerned, if you are developing single page content, Pagemaker or even Illustrator are pretty good. If your formatting books or manuals I like Framemaker.
Funny how you say Cytrix is thriving despite Microsoft's continuous theft (for lack of a better word) of their best ideas. Cytrix isn't still around because Microsoft is honoring anything, they are around because Microsoft knows that as soon as they make Cytrix obsolete they will face some difficult patent infringement and possibly antitrust law suits.
Novell is a good example where a one time partner was nearly bankrupt by Microsoft. MS dropped support for the DEC Alpha after a lot of brotherly hype if I remember correctly. An interesting list can be found here: http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/catalog/yrcat alog.shtml that details companies that MS has bought or invested in. If you read through it, you will find that many of them no longer exist, their IP has been ditched, and I imagine most of their employees were out on their asses. NOTE: this list only includes those that MS "invested" in or bought outright, which I would call a "partnership".
I don't care what anyone says, partnering with Microsoft should only be taken with a HUGE dose of caution and the second best lawyers (MS has the best) reviewing the contracts. I will not say that all of their "partnerships" have been bad, however the vast majority have. Of course, a number of their partnerships were exactly what the other company wanted... a get rich quick buy out, and since MS loves to toss cash around I know that the number of these is probably skewing the statistics a bit.
not suggesting that it's a bad thing... it was the original poster's position that such a system
... is certainly an innovative solution to some of the problems encountered in tackling the digital divide, but what longterm effects might this model have on the development of a communications infrastructure? His choice of words suggested that he is afraid that such a system will have a negative effect... or I just read it wrong.
Ok, I'll admit that was wrong. But seriously, this is not going to do anything but increase the demand for an actual internet connection. I promise, this guy delivering small doses of the internet by bus for a few rupees here and there is only creating a new market where almost none existed.
Good point... if I had mod points, you would get one.
Then again, it could be turned around as though Turnitin is providing a free plagiarism protection service to the copyright holder, and charging those who want to search their database a fee to cover the cost of freely protecting your work.
It's kinda like the RIAA saying, "hey record labels, we will prosecute your music pirates for free if you agree to let us keep X% of the judgments!" Sure the labels could pay someone to do this for them and keep the profit themselves, but it's cheaper and easier to let someone who specializes in raping the consumer do it. And it prevents the label from getting it's name drug through the mud.
Though, on a related note... How does this service compare to Google's book searching thing? Didn't google argue that since they just archive the books for indexing purposes, it was ok. Though might be slightly different as those books were published and part of a library. Good question, and I suspect it has to do with profit. Though Google is making their money on this somehow.
I would have agreed in part then... now that I am in the working world however I feel differently. That guy who skated through school on other's coat tails is now my competition. And though I am confident I am the better candidate for any position I am competing against them for, there is always the potential that I don't get the job. Or worse, they are ruining the status, reputation, and marketability for those in my position.
As an example, I have actually seen smallish companies fire their IT staff and hire consultants instead because they had a bad experience with one or two guys... had those guys not been TOTAL screw-ups I might have had a job there.
Programmers are being outsourced in droves, not just because of lower wages, but because of better results per dollar. How much of that movement was caused by lazy programmers who didn't take the time to really learn their trade? I am sure I'm not the only person who would prefer to work with a local development house, or even hire developers internally, if I could get good quality people.
So justifying cheating in school because they don't like the "busy work" is creating a group of people who will only hurt those they cheated off of.
I don't believe that is entirely true. I don't think it necessarily becomes the schools property, especially if the authors specify alternate copyrights. In addition, I don't believe that the school can use your work for absolutely any purpose they wish, which tells me that they are granted limited rights (educational use?) however they are not made THE copyright holder.
I realize that it does indeed violate their copyright, but as a student, wouldn't you want your paper in their catalog so that some lazy student can't make it through school by plagiarizing YOUR work?
I don't know about these students, but when I was in school nothing bothered me more than students asking to see my answers, cheat off my tests, or read my essays for 'inspiration'.
But then again, it is a violation all the same. I say if it bothers them, go for it the law is on their side.
It's always the devil you don't know that you're the most scared of." I'd say sometimes it's the devil you DO know that you should be most scared of.
I have to say, that when I don't know someone/something, I am typically very open minded and positive. Whereas, approaching an entity I know I can't trust (like MS) I am always very nervous.
Apple has never been afraid to enter a competitive market... in fact I think they purposely identify markets where innovation seems to have slowed and bring a product that shows the competition where they failed.
I am confident that the iPhone will be a success. Apple has been VERY good at seeing it's niche and developing the ideal product to fill that void. Once they have filled the niche, they are even better at attracting users who don't NEED the product by showing them a clean, functional, and enjoyable user experience that isn't offered by the competitors.
I am slowly becoming an Apple fanboy, and I hate to admit that. But when I compare their competitors products, I can rarely find a single one that so thoroughly meets it's customers expectations. Sure there are better music players than the iPod, better computers than the Mac, better STB's than the AppleTV, better media management apps than iTunes, and so on... but find one company that produces these products in such a way that they work as well together.
My family has recently become a Mac family, and I will get and iPhone for my wife and I because my experiences with other smart phones have all been mediocre at best, and I imagine that the iPhone will "just work" with my Mac. I could make anything work, given enough time, but the griping my wife will do when it doesn't "just work" isn't worth the cost savings. So I'll happily over pay for the iPhone.
I would imagine that these issues are being addressed. The advantage of shared memory, if it becomes the standard, is that multiple GPU cores, and even non GPU cores could manipulate it.
That and the advantage of having a GPU for use in pipelining tasks is far too great not to head in this direction.
There is no doubt in my mind that the days of the add on video card, as we know it, are getting short. These high end graphics cards simply have too much processing power to have them sitting idle during general computing tasks. With the ridiculously small transistors that Intel can fab these days, it makes sense to cram this power in next to a CPU core or two, a massive cache, very high speed memory controllers, and maybe even a kitchen sink.
And as stated in the article, it's not just GPU's... think co-processors for other common tasks. For example an encryption/decryption co-processor for secure web servers, floating point co-processor for various modeling systems, even heavily pipelined co-processors that can perform fast sorts and searches of databases are possible: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~ritesh/papers/gputerasort-m sr.html
I can see where Intel is going with this... and I see it being very similar to what AMD suggested a while back where you could place a coprocessor on the HyperTransport bus of a multiprocessor system. I think that AMD's implementation might actually be better, as it allows you to upgrade or replace the coprocessor without replacing your CPU, but having one in the same package as the CPU makes sense too.
I worked for a company that ran Outlook as it's shell. Every user logged in and had their mail, calendar, and shortcuts for word, excel, and a couple of internal apps in the sidebar. At first I thought it was nuts, but it was a well managed network, and it worked really well actually.
Mind you, this was a relatively long time ago... Win 95 or 98 era if I remember correctly... when you could change your shell just by editing a line in your system.ini.
Slashdot Mirror
The Mac mini is more capable... but lacks a few things that the aTV has. Most notably is HDMI and component video output. Add that to the cost of the mini in your example.
There is no way anyone will by the aTV to use for desktop use, but for connecting to their TV as the frontend for mythtv server it's perfect!
Give us the patch already... I mean hell... they are telling us when it will be released... which means they have written it an tested it to some degree already.
They are probably using this few days to figure out how they can spin the whole issue to make them look good!
I don't know why I even care... this bug doesn't effect me in the least.
that broke.
I hope it is, as that might finally make these coalitions focus on developing the better technology for delivering the content instead of protecting it.
It's not worth the risk to release a format that is encumbered with complex copy protection schemes. They WILL get broken, and they WILL cause problems for consumers.
From what I understand of AAC audio, an essentially lossless CD rip of most CD's can be done in far less than the 320kbps used by mp3.
In fact, some have said that 128kbps is almost as good as 320kbps.
Couple that, with the fact that that you can sample AAC up to 96khz rather than just 48khz, you can encode up to 48 separate channels, and that EMI encodes their tracks from the digital masters rather than a lossy CD.
I suspect that the quality of these tracks may actually rival that of CD's... perhaps be superior in some regards.
I especially like the multi-track encoding idea. Labels could release the music so that the lead vocal, background vocals, and music were all on separate tracks... instant karaoke and instant remix ability. I don't suspect we can expect anything like this very soon, but the AAC format allows for it.
Can anyone confirm, is 256kbps enough for an AAC file to be indistinguishable from a CD in a true double blind listening test?
This has to be a typo... They act as if it's a big number then drop 14 on us... I figure it was more like 14K or at least 140.
Otherwise it wouldn't be "believed", as 14 full sized books isn't enough that you really need to make a guess.
We could use a Martyr in our crusade against ridiculous copyright laws.
Seriously, this aggression toward a relatively innocent school teacher who only wanted to give his students the best education he couldn't afford... it doesn't cause fear of piracy in the publics eye it causes ANGER.
Eventually these ridiculous lawsuits and penalties will drive the public to fix a damaged copyright system, or even drive them to embrace products that are not burdened by such copyrights. I just hope it happens soon!
I hate to say it, but you've made a common mistake MS Word users make. A word processor is not designed for creating high quality print materials, it's not designed for doing page layout, hell it's not really intended for doing anything beyond what a typewriter could do. I would imagine this is why the OOo developers are ignoring this at the moment, it is indeed a feature and not a bug.
Sure basic features have been implemented to allow some basic functionality in the desktop publishing area... but if your creating documents that are going to be sent to a professional printer you need a true desktop publishing application. Try Scribus, it's free and open source, and works quite well once you get the hang of using a desktop publishing application instead of a word processor.
As far as commercial apps are concerned, if you are developing single page content, Pagemaker or even Illustrator are pretty good. If your formatting books or manuals I like Framemaker.
Funny how you say Cytrix is thriving despite Microsoft's continuous theft (for lack of a better word) of their best ideas. Cytrix isn't still around because Microsoft is honoring anything, they are around because Microsoft knows that as soon as they make Cytrix obsolete they will face some difficult patent infringement and possibly antitrust law suits.
t alog.shtml that details companies that MS has bought or invested in. If you read through it, you will find that many of them no longer exist, their IP has been ditched, and I imagine most of their employees were out on their asses. NOTE: this list only includes those that MS "invested" in or bought outright, which I would call a "partnership".
Novell is a good example where a one time partner was nearly bankrupt by Microsoft. MS dropped support for the DEC Alpha after a lot of brotherly hype if I remember correctly. An interesting list can be found here: http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/catalog/yrca
I don't care what anyone says, partnering with Microsoft should only be taken with a HUGE dose of caution and the second best lawyers (MS has the best) reviewing the contracts. I will not say that all of their "partnerships" have been bad, however the vast majority have. Of course, a number of their partnerships were exactly what the other company wanted... a get rich quick buy out, and since MS loves to toss cash around I know that the number of these is probably skewing the statistics a bit.
Ok, I'll admit that was wrong. But seriously, this is not going to do anything but increase the demand for an actual internet connection. I promise, this guy delivering small doses of the internet by bus for a few rupees here and there is only creating a new market where almost none existed.
Good point... if I had mod points, you would get one.
Then again, it could be turned around as though Turnitin is providing a free plagiarism protection service to the copyright holder, and charging those who want to search their database a fee to cover the cost of freely protecting your work.
It's kinda like the RIAA saying, "hey record labels, we will prosecute your music pirates for free if you agree to let us keep X% of the judgments!" Sure the labels could pay someone to do this for them and keep the profit themselves, but it's cheaper and easier to let someone who specializes in raping the consumer do it. And it prevents the label from getting it's name drug through the mud.
I would have agreed in part then... now that I am in the working world however I feel differently. That guy who skated through school on other's coat tails is now my competition. And though I am confident I am the better candidate for any position I am competing against them for, there is always the potential that I don't get the job. Or worse, they are ruining the status, reputation, and marketability for those in my position.
As an example, I have actually seen smallish companies fire their IT staff and hire consultants instead because they had a bad experience with one or two guys... had those guys not been TOTAL screw-ups I might have had a job there.
Programmers are being outsourced in droves, not just because of lower wages, but because of better results per dollar. How much of that movement was caused by lazy programmers who didn't take the time to really learn their trade? I am sure I'm not the only person who would prefer to work with a local development house, or even hire developers internally, if I could get good quality people.
So justifying cheating in school because they don't like the "busy work" is creating a group of people who will only hurt those they cheated off of.
I don't believe that is entirely true. I don't think it necessarily becomes the schools property, especially if the authors specify alternate copyrights. In addition, I don't believe that the school can use your work for absolutely any purpose they wish, which tells me that they are granted limited rights (educational use?) however they are not made THE copyright holder.
Of course I could be wrong.
I realize that it does indeed violate their copyright, but as a student, wouldn't you want your paper in their catalog so that some lazy student can't make it through school by plagiarizing YOUR work?
I don't know about these students, but when I was in school nothing bothered me more than students asking to see my answers, cheat off my tests, or read my essays for 'inspiration'.
But then again, it is a violation all the same. I say if it bothers them, go for it the law is on their side.
I have to say, that when I don't know someone/something, I am typically very open minded and positive. Whereas, approaching an entity I know I can't trust (like MS) I am always very nervous.
Dough... thank you... I do that all the damn time!
Blog about it's inevitable failure... he's always wrong, or at least redundant.
Oh wait, he may just be redundant in this case.
Damn I hate the submit button... that should be
"because JD told us to."
Just had to correct that before a grammar Nazi put me in a "concentration" camp for my lack of focus during proof reading.
Apple has never been afraid to enter a competitive market... in fact I think they purposely identify markets where innovation seems to have slowed and bring a product that shows the competition where they failed.
I am confident that the iPhone will be a success. Apple has been VERY good at seeing it's niche and developing the ideal product to fill that void. Once they have filled the niche, they are even better at attracting users who don't NEED the product by showing them a clean, functional, and enjoyable user experience that isn't offered by the competitors.
I am slowly becoming an Apple fanboy, and I hate to admit that. But when I compare their competitors products, I can rarely find a single one that so thoroughly meets it's customers expectations. Sure there are better music players than the iPod, better computers than the Mac, better STB's than the AppleTV, better media management apps than iTunes, and so on... but find one company that produces these products in such a way that they work as well together.
My family has recently become a Mac family, and I will get and iPhone for my wife and I because my experiences with other smart phones have all been mediocre at best, and I imagine that the iPhone will "just work" with my Mac. I could make anything work, given enough time, but the griping my wife will do when it doesn't "just work" isn't worth the cost savings. So I'll happily over pay for the iPhone.
I would imagine that these issues are being addressed. The advantage of shared memory, if it becomes the standard, is that multiple GPU cores, and even non GPU cores could manipulate it.
I ID=66653&p=1 It details the differences between GPU's and CPU's and starts to discuss the future (what's finally happening now).
m sr.html
That and the advantage of having a GPU for use in pipelining tasks is far too great not to head in this direction.
A good write-up can be found here: http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article.asp?SCID=15&C
There is no doubt in my mind that the days of the add on video card, as we know it, are getting short. These high end graphics cards simply have too much processing power to have them sitting idle during general computing tasks. With the ridiculously small transistors that Intel can fab these days, it makes sense to cram this power in next to a CPU core or two, a massive cache, very high speed memory controllers, and maybe even a kitchen sink.
And as stated in the article, it's not just GPU's... think co-processors for other common tasks. For example an encryption/decryption co-processor for secure web servers, floating point co-processor for various modeling systems, even heavily pipelined co-processors that can perform fast sorts and searches of databases are possible: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~ritesh/papers/gputerasort-
I can see where Intel is going with this... and I see it being very similar to what AMD suggested a while back where you could place a coprocessor on the HyperTransport bus of a multiprocessor system. I think that AMD's implementation might actually be better, as it allows you to upgrade or replace the coprocessor without replacing your CPU, but having one in the same package as the CPU makes sense too.
I worked for a company that ran Outlook as it's shell. Every user logged in and had their mail, calendar, and shortcuts for word, excel, and a couple of internal apps in the sidebar. At first I thought it was nuts, but it was a well managed network, and it worked really well actually.
Mind you, this was a relatively long time ago... Win 95 or 98 era if I remember correctly... when you could change your shell just by editing a line in your system.ini.