I am generally all for competition, and government staying out of the way of private businesses.
That said, IMO blanketing a municipal area with publicly available hotspots seems like a legitimate use of public dollars if costs can be contained, and if implementation can be managed effectively (I know, I know, big ifs).
It may be cliched, but the internet has become a truly useful tool that can enrich the lives of those with access to it.
I think making this bandwidth available as a public service is in the taxpayer's best interest if it can be done with undue financial burden.
It would definitely help to decrease the digital divide. It doesn't take much hardware to surf the net. I could see the evolution of a sub $500 notebook market that evolved along side the widespread deployment of these municipal wifi networks.
I personally think it is unlikely that M$ will ever dominate Google no matter how much money they throw at it for a number of reasons.
#1) Google has been branded into people's consciousness as THE way to search the net. While the landscape of search engines is littered with now fallen former champs ala altavista, Google has a ton of momentum behind it as a brand.
As long as they continue to innovate and return the most relevant results, it is very unlikely MSN search will achieve much penetration of this market. Why would people switch otherwise?
#2) M$ has rarely been an innovator in ANYTHING. In the world of search engines, being one step behind just isn't going to cut it. Google has consistently shown themselves to have a bold, creative overall vision. M$ has always lacked one and still does.
#3) Google is now flush with cash after a very successful IPO. Earnings are going gangbusters and look like they will do so for the forseeable future. They are going to be in a financial position to execute on their game plan. M$ may also have a cash hoarde, but Google's stock price and cash give them the tools necessary to challenge M$ on their own turf if so desired.
Momentum is a powerful force, look at Ebay's domination of the auction market. As long as Google continues to lead, and M$ flails along behind, Mr. Softee will remain flaccid in the search engine market.
IMO it doesn't. A Mac Mini with the necessary amount of RAM to actually function is going to run you around $600 for the slower model with the smaller hard drive. I'm assuming you also need keyboards and mice, and you should really upgrade to the superdrive and faster processor if you're planning on editing and burning dvds. All that will put you over $800 for the mini.
If you're constrained by budget, you can get much more PC horsepower and capabilities building homebrew Athlon 64 systems. If you're creative and can get good pricing, sub $500 is doable on an x86 based system that is going to be much more powerful for editing.
I am toying with getting a mini to play with OS X, but it is a tough sell once you price in everything else you actually need with it and look at what you're actually getting specwise.
Well, if you're just moving up the speed from 1.25 to 1.42, cooling shouldn't be an issue since they are shipping minis at the higher speed in the upgraded one.
I would bet the chips are the same core in both, but the default 1.42 chips are certified qualitywise to run at that speed. Overclocking the 1.25 chip to 1.42 should really be no big deal.
Why do I get the feeling there is going to be a thriving blackmarket in hacked BIOSs and OSs in the unfortunate event that these chips are actually deployed and implemented in a widespread manner?!
Whatever happened to the user having full control over a piece of hardware they plunked down hard earned cash on?!
At the risk of inflaming passions, ANY OS is only as secure as its user. With a little common sense and attention to detail, it is relatively easy to keep a Windows XP installation spyware/malware/virus free.
It's even easier in the workplace where XP can be locked down on the security front.
IMHO, if Linux actually wants to have a chance of widespread adoption on the desktop, it needs to evolve into something like Mac OSX which is an incredibly user friendly UI with *nix hidden under the hood for those looking for it.
MythTV is a good example of why Linux is not ready for primetime on the desktop. I shouldn't have to read pages of docs and spend potentially hours tweaking files manually to get what is an otherwise amazing application up and running.
We can all hate M$ as much as we want to, but Windows XP is an OS that is pretty easy to use and VERY stable (stop snickering) in a home environment. It is incredibly rare these days to see a BSOD unless there is a major hardware issue or severe damage to system files.
Desktop users should never have to do ANYTHING by CLI. It's fine to offer it for power users like OS X does, but an OS should be a unobtrusive tool that is as simple as possible to use. It should be as close to invisible as possible, and shouldn't require a strong, varied skillset to use the computer itself. The focus for the average user should be on getting the job done (i.e. writing a letter, editing a photo, etc.).
Linux is IMO far away from being ready for the average user's desktop.
As an aside, MonsterCable is COMPLETELY unnecessary for excellent sounding home audio. Your hard earned money can be better spent on upgrading other components versus spending large sums on speaker wire that results in no better audible sound quality than a decent gauge generic wire.
I think the 'anime' elitists around here need to start taking themselves a little less seriously...
To get offended because someone is calling their precious anime a cartoon is laughable even by/. standards.
Cartoons represent a broad category spanning a broad range of topics and quality, and like it or not anime is part of it.
I wouldn't call 'Batman Beyond' anime, but it is one hell of a cartoon IMO. Calling it one doesn't diminish it's worth.
People need to get over themselves; for the love of Bog, we're talking about cartoons!
I'm no expert on homebrewing super computers, but I would think the reason they go with one power supply per cluster is for redundancy, so that it is very easy to swap out individual clusters with bad components.
I would guess in these types of applications clean power is an absolute must which is another reason to use individual power supplies with more than enough juice on the rails to keep the CPU happy.
Their copy protection schemes remain as weak as ever. Trust me, anyone who wants to run a pirated copy of Windows XP is running one. Ever since the original build of XP, they've been easily available, simple to install, and with a keygen/changer, easy enough to masquerade as a valid copy.
I doubt this is coming into play as a factor in helping their income.
Although I wouldn't buy one of these unless both the media and burner were pretty cheap, this would be great to use with a CD ripping program to automatically grab the song titles and times from something like Gracenote and automatically burn them onto the CD. It would be nice to see some of the major mp3 ripping/encoding packages supporting this feature quickly.
While I agree with your overall opinion of SBC from a customer perspective, they didn't lose cash last quarter. Profits were down year over year, but they still made $754 million for the quarter.
/. Joe: Is this your first time... with something like me?
Real Woman: I've never been with Mecha./. Joe: That makes one of us.
Real Woman: I'm afraid it will hurt./. Joe: Hu-man... once you've had a/.er you'll never want a real man again. Are these the wounds of passion?
Real Woman: Do you hear that music?/. Joe: You... are a goddess. You wind me up inside. But you deserve so much better in your life. You deserve... a beowulf cluster of me.
I guess/. has redefined the definition of "editor" and forgot to tell the rest of us.
editor SYLLABICATION: editor PRONUNCIATION: AUDIO: d-tr KEY NOUN: 1. One who edits, especially as an occupation. 2. One who writes editorials. 3. A device for editing film, consisting basically of a splicer and viewer. 4. Computer Science A program used to edit text or data files. ETYMOLOGY: Late Latin ditor, publisher, from Latin ditus, past participle of dere, to publish. See edit.
edit SYLLABICATION: edit PRONUNCIATION: AUDIO: dt KEY TRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: edited, editing, edits 1a. To prepare (written material) for publication or presentation, as by correcting, revising, or adapting. b. To prepare an edition of for publication: edit a collection of short stories. c. To modify or adapt so as to make suitable or acceptable: edited her remarks for presentation to a younger audience. 2. To supervise the publication of (a newspaper or magazine, for example). 3. To assemble the components of (a film or soundtrack, for example), as by cutting and splicing. 4. To eliminate; delete: edited the best scene out.
So what you're saying is that freedom of expression is fine - as long as the people are expressing a viewpoint that you concur with?
No matter who the authors are it's still taking someone's freedom of expression away - you shouldn't be able to pick and choose who can express themselves freely, and the US Government definitely shouldn't be deciding that!!!
When are people going to realize that a private ISP has no obligation to allow content they're not comfortable with. I am all for freedom of speech, but as a business, an ISP should have the right to filter content however they please.
If they want full control over their site, they should buy a pipe and host it themselves, or find another ISP. I'm sure there is one out of the thousands that will be more than happy to.
"...and let's just say that I ended up with a bevy of tits at the end of the evening."
Sure you did, kid, sure you did...Say hello to Booger, Wormser, and the rest of the Tri Delts for me.
Actually Marvel did go bankrupt, and the rights to all their stuff was bought by another company that has risen from the ashes as what we're calling Marvel Enterprises today.
Slashdot Mirror
I am generally all for competition, and government staying out of the way of private businesses.
That said, IMO blanketing a municipal area with publicly available hotspots seems like a legitimate use of public dollars if costs can be contained, and if implementation can be managed effectively (I know, I know, big ifs).
It may be cliched, but the internet has become a truly useful tool that can enrich the lives of those with access to it.
I think making this bandwidth available as a public service is in the taxpayer's best interest if it can be done with undue financial burden.
It would definitely help to decrease the digital divide. It doesn't take much hardware to surf the net. I could see the evolution of a sub $500 notebook market that evolved along side the widespread deployment of these municipal wifi networks.
I personally think it is unlikely that M$ will ever dominate Google no matter how much money they throw at it for a number of reasons.
#1) Google has been branded into people's consciousness as THE way to search the net. While the landscape of search engines is littered with now fallen former champs ala altavista, Google has a ton of momentum behind it as a brand.
As long as they continue to innovate and return the most relevant results, it is very unlikely MSN search will achieve much penetration of this market. Why would people switch otherwise?
#2) M$ has rarely been an innovator in ANYTHING. In the world of search engines, being one step behind just isn't going to cut it. Google has consistently shown themselves to have a bold, creative overall vision. M$ has always lacked one and still does.
#3) Google is now flush with cash after a very successful IPO. Earnings are going gangbusters and look like they will do so for the forseeable future. They are going to be in a financial position to execute on their game plan. M$ may also have a cash hoarde, but Google's stock price and cash give them the tools necessary to challenge M$ on their own turf if so desired.
Momentum is a powerful force, look at Ebay's domination of the auction market. As long as Google continues to lead, and M$ flails along behind, Mr. Softee will remain flaccid in the search engine market.
IMO it doesn't. A Mac Mini with the necessary amount of RAM to actually function is going to run you around $600 for the slower model with the smaller hard drive. I'm assuming you also need keyboards and mice, and you should really upgrade to the superdrive and faster processor if you're planning on editing and burning dvds. All that will put you over $800 for the mini.
If you're constrained by budget, you can get much more PC horsepower and capabilities building homebrew Athlon 64 systems. If you're creative and can get good pricing, sub $500 is doable on an x86 based system that is going to be much more powerful for editing.
I am toying with getting a mini to play with OS X, but it is a tough sell once you price in everything else you actually need with it and look at what you're actually getting specwise.
Well, if you're just moving up the speed from 1.25 to 1.42, cooling shouldn't be an issue since they are shipping minis at the higher speed in the upgraded one.
I would bet the chips are the same core in both, but the default 1.42 chips are certified qualitywise to run at that speed. Overclocking the 1.25 chip to 1.42 should really be no big deal.
Why do I get the feeling there is going to be a thriving blackmarket in hacked BIOSs and OSs in the unfortunate event that these chips are actually deployed and implemented in a widespread manner?!
Whatever happened to the user having full control over a piece of hardware they plunked down hard earned cash on?!
At the risk of inflaming passions, ANY OS is only as secure as its user. With a little common sense and attention to detail, it is relatively easy to keep a Windows XP installation spyware/malware/virus free.
It's even easier in the workplace where XP can be locked down on the security front.
IMHO, if Linux actually wants to have a chance of widespread adoption on the desktop, it needs to evolve into something like Mac OSX which is an incredibly user friendly UI with *nix hidden under the hood for those looking for it.
MythTV is a good example of why Linux is not ready for primetime on the desktop. I shouldn't have to read pages of docs and spend potentially hours tweaking files manually to get what is an otherwise amazing application up and running.
We can all hate M$ as much as we want to, but Windows XP is an OS that is pretty easy to use and VERY stable (stop snickering) in a home environment. It is incredibly rare these days to see a BSOD unless there is a major hardware issue or severe damage to system files.
Desktop users should never have to do ANYTHING by CLI. It's fine to offer it for power users like OS X does, but an OS should be a unobtrusive tool that is as simple as possible to use. It should be as close to invisible as possible, and shouldn't require a strong, varied skillset to use the computer itself. The focus for the average user should be on getting the job done (i.e. writing a letter, editing a photo, etc.).
Linux is IMO far away from being ready for the average user's desktop.
As an aside, MonsterCable is COMPLETELY unnecessary for excellent sounding home audio. Your hard earned money can be better spent on upgrading other components versus spending large sums on speaker wire that results in no better audible sound quality than a decent gauge generic wire.
I think the 'anime' elitists around here need to start taking themselves a little less seriously... To get offended because someone is calling their precious anime a cartoon is laughable even by /. standards.
Cartoons represent a broad category spanning a broad range of topics and quality, and like it or not anime is part of it.
I wouldn't call 'Batman Beyond' anime, but it is one hell of a cartoon IMO. Calling it one doesn't diminish it's worth.
People need to get over themselves; for the love of Bog, we're talking about cartoons!
Your employer might disagree with you. Most employers look at it as buying your time during working hours to do with you as they see fit.
There are very few who look kindly on paying people to pursue outside interests during working hours.
If your boss considers it a fine suggestion, you're luckier than most.
I'm no expert on homebrewing super computers, but I would think the reason they go with one power supply per cluster is for redundancy, so that it is very easy to swap out individual clusters with bad components.
I would guess in these types of applications clean power is an absolute must which is another reason to use individual power supplies with more than enough juice on the rails to keep the CPU happy.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these things!
Star Wars has now become a parody of Space Balls...
Their copy protection schemes remain as weak as ever. Trust me, anyone who wants to run a pirated copy of Windows XP is running one. Ever since the original build of XP, they've been easily available, simple to install, and with a keygen/changer, easy enough to masquerade as a valid copy.
I doubt this is coming into play as a factor in helping their income.
Although I wouldn't buy one of these unless both the media and burner were pretty cheap, this would be great to use with a CD ripping program to automatically grab the song titles and times from something like Gracenote and automatically burn them onto the CD. It would be nice to see some of the major mp3 ripping/encoding packages supporting this feature quickly.
Welcome to the wonderful world of publicly traded companies...
While I agree with your overall opinion of SBC from a customer perspective, they didn't lose cash last quarter. Profits were down year over year, but they still made $754 million for the quarter.
You hear that MPAA/RIAA?... That is the sound of inevitability... It is the sound of your death... Goodbye, MPAA/RIAA...
Yeah, and profit in a big way sometimes... According to the article, Intergraph has raked in over $860 million in IP related cases. Sue everyone!
Wow...rough crowd...Getting modded off topic for posting a modified quote from the movie "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE."
No respect I tell ya, I get no respect...
/. Joe: Is this your first time... with something like me?
/. Joe: That makes one of us.
/. Joe: Hu-man... once you've had a /.er you'll never want a real man again. Are these the wounds of passion?
/. Joe: You... are a goddess. You wind me up inside. But you deserve so much better in your life. You deserve... a beowulf cluster of me.
Real Woman: I've never been with Mecha.
Real Woman: I'm afraid it will hurt.
Real Woman: Do you hear that music?
I guess /. has redefined the definition of "editor" and forgot to tell the rest of us.
editor
SYLLABICATION: editor
PRONUNCIATION: AUDIO: d-tr KEY
NOUN: 1. One who edits, especially as an occupation.
2. One who writes editorials.
3. A device for editing film, consisting basically of a splicer and viewer.
4. Computer Science A program used to edit text or data files.
ETYMOLOGY: Late Latin ditor, publisher, from Latin ditus, past participle of dere, to publish. See edit.
edit
SYLLABICATION: edit
PRONUNCIATION: AUDIO: dt KEY
TRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: edited, editing, edits
1a. To prepare (written material) for publication or presentation, as by correcting, revising, or adapting. b. To prepare an edition of for publication: edit a collection of short stories. c. To modify or adapt so as to make suitable or acceptable: edited her remarks for presentation to a younger audience.
2. To supervise the publication of (a newspaper or magazine, for example).
3. To assemble the components of (a film or soundtrack, for example), as by cutting and splicing.
4. To eliminate; delete: edited the best scene out.
So what you're saying is that freedom of expression is fine - as long as the people are expressing a viewpoint that you concur with? No matter who the authors are it's still taking someone's freedom of expression away - you shouldn't be able to pick and choose who can express themselves freely, and the US Government definitely shouldn't be deciding that!!! When are people going to realize that a private ISP has no obligation to allow content they're not comfortable with. I am all for freedom of speech, but as a business, an ISP should have the right to filter content however they please. If they want full control over their site, they should buy a pipe and host it themselves, or find another ISP. I'm sure there is one out of the thousands that will be more than happy to.
"...and let's just say that I ended up with a bevy of tits at the end of the evening." Sure you did, kid, sure you did...Say hello to Booger, Wormser, and the rest of the Tri Delts for me.
Actually Marvel did go bankrupt, and the rights to all their stuff was bought by another company that has risen from the ashes as what we're calling Marvel Enterprises today.