More importantly, it's not a monopoly when another company (AMD, Intel, etc) can build a compatible processor that can do essentially the same tasks. Everyone agrees that AMD and Intel chips can both run workstations and desktops.
This is why I see Windows as a monopoly -- in order to be certain of being able to run all of the Windows applications out there, you need to have Windows, not Wine or MacOS etc.
Competition is a good thing. I've traditionally run AMD chips in my machines, since I've had good results and gotten good value, but I wish Intel well, too -- if only to keep AMD honest.
...but does nobody else really REALLY hate the new Mickey-Mouse-ish interface? Where's the menu bar? (Yeah, I know, you can enable it if you go digging.) Where are the standard icons that have been with us in roughly the same form since who-knows-when?
They wouldn't try to foist a DVR on us that didn't use the standard control scheme (square == stop; triangle == play; circle == record etc) -- why force (okay, okay, strongly suggest -- which is just delayed forcing) that everybody relearn how to use their browsers?
Now I *really* like Firefox. And having tried the IE7 beta (as a last-ditch attempt to avoid an XP reinstall), it's amazing how many things suddenly have a new look (IE7 apparently uses a newer version of Cleartype or something -- and the fonts on a LOT of apps suddenly look a little different.) It really is that ubiquitous. Scary, given its history of security bugs.
Re:All the cool stuff comes out after I grow up
on
Hydrogen Powered Toy Car
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Thames and Kosmos already have produced a fuel cell car kit that works fairly well. (I.E. you really can use photovoltaics to split distilled 2*H20 into 2*H2 + O2, and recombine it to provide power to run the car.)
This has been out for what, two years? Good to see they're getting more popular, I guess.
A fire-breathing, liquid-helium-cooled 256-core graphics engine, complete with 2KW independent power supply, temperature throttling, and VR interfaces.
(Oh, yeah -- and we think there may be a CPU in there somewhere, too.)
IANABiologist, but this sounds very important.
on
DNA Origami
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Aren't programs like Folding@Home spending thousands of hours of computer time trying to come up with the proper shape to get drugs to behave in a desired way? Even if there's more to it (which there probably is; biology is far from my strongest subject), the potential for nanomanufacturing sounds very very interesting.
I'm thinking that, if this can be applied to materials of varying conductivity -- or if these materials can be made to replace certain types of DNA -- you could make super-efficient capacitors, photovoltaic cells, etc.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if this ended up being as important a development as the integrated circuit.
...aren't Jamie and Grant already quite knowledgeable about robotics? I mean, Grant has experience in competitive robotics, and Jamie built that soda-can-shooting, remote-controlled vending machine. Not exactly your typical RS customers.
That said, I am looking forward to seeing them build the kit...
We have the technology to build drives that support both, but this will result in more expensive devices, especially given that both formats require different physical lasers. I for one won't be buying one until it's clear that it will support any new media -- and it will probably take a lot longer for drives to drop to the magic price point where Joe Sixpack will buy one, if they have to include support for two physical formats.
The whole DVD+-RW thing was a mess, but at least they're relatively similar formats, and a drive supporting both can be made reasonably cheaply.
The format war will fizzle -- but wouldn't it be better for everyone, including device manufacturers, if we skipped the nonsense this time?
If prices weren't artificially high, I think a lot of people wouldn't bother pirating clips -- and the whole IP discussion wouldn't be as important. If, for example, you could download songs you liked at $0.10US each, why bother pirating them? Same for video -- let people freely trade small clips (say, 2 minutes or less) legally -- and add a link to the traded file to make it easy to purchase the whole episode for not too much money. Trading small video clips would become *good* for the companies that produce them, as it would get more people interested in the programs.
...the Russians are planning on making a sequel to "Armageddon" in which a cowboy-hat-wearing stereotypical American astronaut says in broken Russian...
"Welcome aboard sopheeesticated American shuttle!"
WHY does everybody keep talking about Microsoft monopolies, then talking about Explorer, Outlook, and... everything but the OS?
Nobody is forced to use Explorer (even if it is a part of the OS). Nobody is forced to use Outlook, Active Directory, or WMP.
What we ARE forced to put up with as software engineers (if we want to actually sell any units) is their OS! Mac users and some expert PC gurus running Linux aside, Microsoft has a monopoly on the OS market. If we in the US are so anti-monopoly (and there's a lot of precedent -- Standard Oil, Ma Bell etc), why haven't we broken up this one by making the OS open-source and allowing MS to continue as it pleases with its other products (which don't force anyone to use them.)
I can't be the only one to see this -- but I just don't get why people keep talking about the big, bad Microsoft monopoly -- then looking right PAST the one thing they *do* have a monopoly on. It's all very confusing to me.
As a Democrat, I thought we were supposed to be the ones wanting accountability and paper voting records -- especially in light of the 2000 election and recent questions about Diebold machines. How can accountability be anything but good in this case? Isn't sunshine "the best disinfectant," no matter which party benefits?
My Treo already has email, a Web browser, and SMS capability. This would just involve Microsoft, and as good as they are at designing easy UIs, I don't see how that would be necessary.
...complete with cassette tape drive and flaky 16K memory expansion pack, which had the bad habit of freezing up the system right as I was about to (finally) beat it at Chess.
I learned all sorts of bad programming habits on that thing. (Not only line-numbered BASIC, but LET statements, for cryin' out loud.) I loved it.
Our next box was an original 4.77MHz IBM PC (pre-XT). With 128K of memory, since the store didn't have the second bank in stock yet. It took all of a week for my parents to go from "don't touch the computer unless we're there" to "how do you make this work?" 8-)
I'm not yet "old and grey," but I've never liked FPS games. DOOM was unique when it came out, but if you've seen one, you've seen them all. (Yes, I've tried more modern versions; the graphics are much more realistic, but there's still really no plot.)
Why aren't there more games like Syberia, Myst, The 7th Guest? Even Zork, with *no* graphics, was more interesting than the shoot-anything-that-moves games that the industry seems to concentrate on these days.
Why not, for example, a space exploration game -- concentrating on the science, economics, and logistics involved, instead of the usual shoot-the-evil-green-aliens theme?
Slashdot Mirror
More importantly, it's not a monopoly when another company (AMD, Intel, etc) can build a compatible processor that can do essentially the same tasks. Everyone agrees that AMD and Intel chips can both run workstations and desktops.
This is why I see Windows as a monopoly -- in order to be certain of being able to run all of the Windows applications out there, you need to have Windows, not Wine or MacOS etc.
Competition is a good thing. I've traditionally run AMD chips in my machines, since I've had good results and gotten good value, but I wish Intel well, too -- if only to keep AMD honest.
Especially with the facelift it just got...!
When you go and ban booth babes, what's the point of going to E3, anyway?
...but does nobody else really REALLY hate the new Mickey-Mouse-ish interface? Where's the menu bar? (Yeah, I know, you can enable it if you go digging.) Where are the standard icons that have been with us in roughly the same form since who-knows-when? They wouldn't try to foist a DVR on us that didn't use the standard control scheme (square == stop; triangle == play; circle == record etc) -- why force (okay, okay, strongly suggest -- which is just delayed forcing) that everybody relearn how to use their browsers? Now I *really* like Firefox. And having tried the IE7 beta (as a last-ditch attempt to avoid an XP reinstall), it's amazing how many things suddenly have a new look (IE7 apparently uses a newer version of Cleartype or something -- and the fonts on a LOT of apps suddenly look a little different.) It really is that ubiquitous. Scary, given its history of security bugs.
... so why grow up?
Thames and Kosmos already have produced a fuel cell car kit that works fairly well. (I.E. you really can use photovoltaics to split distilled 2*H20 into 2*H2 + O2, and recombine it to provide power to run the car.) This has been out for what, two years? Good to see they're getting more popular, I guess.
Any site that not only uses open-source, but has cool games like Sushi Samurai is OK in my book!
(...even if the game is a shameless clone of BurgerTime with different sprites. Using Wasabi as a weapon is just too cool for words.)
If they have to make the source available under the GPL, then it's child's play to unhook the DRM, yes?
A fire-breathing, liquid-helium-cooled 256-core graphics engine, complete with 2KW independent power supply, temperature throttling, and VR interfaces.
(Oh, yeah -- and we think there may be a CPU in there somewhere, too.)
Aren't programs like Folding@Home spending thousands of hours of computer time trying to come up with the proper shape to get drugs to behave in a desired way? Even if there's more to it (which there probably is; biology is far from my strongest subject), the potential for nanomanufacturing sounds very very interesting.
I'm thinking that, if this can be applied to materials of varying conductivity -- or if these materials can be made to replace certain types of DNA -- you could make super-efficient capacitors, photovoltaic cells, etc.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if this ended up being as important a development as the integrated circuit.
...aren't Jamie and Grant already quite knowledgeable about robotics? I mean, Grant has experience in competitive robotics, and Jamie built that soda-can-shooting, remote-controlled vending machine. Not exactly your typical RS customers.
That said, I am looking forward to seeing them build the kit...
We have the technology to build drives that support both, but this will result in more expensive devices, especially given that both formats require different physical lasers. I for one won't be buying one until it's clear that it will support any new media -- and it will probably take a lot longer for drives to drop to the magic price point where Joe Sixpack will buy one, if they have to include support for two physical formats.
The whole DVD+-RW thing was a mess, but at least they're relatively similar formats, and a drive supporting both can be made reasonably cheaply.
The format war will fizzle -- but wouldn't it be better for everyone, including device manufacturers, if we skipped the nonsense this time?
I aim to please...
If prices weren't artificially high, I think a lot of people wouldn't bother pirating clips -- and the whole IP discussion wouldn't be as important. If, for example, you could download songs you liked at $0.10US each, why bother pirating them? Same for video -- let people freely trade small clips (say, 2 minutes or less) legally -- and add a link to the traded file to make it easy to purchase the whole episode for not too much money. Trading small video clips would become *good* for the companies that produce them, as it would get more people interested in the programs.
So you say you wanna be a blogger, but you're just too darn lazy? No problem!
...the Russians are planning on making a sequel to "Armageddon" in which a cowboy-hat-wearing stereotypical American astronaut says in broken Russian...
"Welcome aboard sopheeesticated American shuttle!"
Somehow I thought Google was the added-content provider (ya know, with the search engine and all) -- and Earthlink was an ISP. Silly me...
WHY does everybody keep talking about Microsoft monopolies, then talking about Explorer, Outlook, and... everything but the OS?
Nobody is forced to use Explorer (even if it is a part of the OS). Nobody is forced to use Outlook, Active Directory, or WMP.
What we ARE forced to put up with as software engineers (if we want to actually sell any units) is their OS! Mac users and some expert PC gurus running Linux aside, Microsoft has a monopoly on the OS market. If we in the US are so anti-monopoly (and there's a lot of precedent -- Standard Oil, Ma Bell etc), why haven't we broken up this one by making the OS open-source and allowing MS to continue as it pleases with its other products (which don't force anyone to use them.)
I can't be the only one to see this -- but I just don't get why people keep talking about the big, bad Microsoft monopoly -- then looking right PAST the one thing they *do* have a monopoly on. It's all very confusing to me.
As a Democrat, I thought we were supposed to be the ones wanting accountability and paper voting records -- especially in light of the 2000 election and recent questions about Diebold machines. How can accountability be anything but good in this case? Isn't sunshine "the best disinfectant," no matter which party benefits?
My Treo already has email, a Web browser, and SMS capability. This would just involve Microsoft, and as good as they are at designing easy UIs, I don't see how that would be necessary.
...complete with cassette tape drive and flaky 16K memory expansion pack, which had the bad habit of freezing up the system right as I was about to (finally) beat it at Chess.
I learned all sorts of bad programming habits on that thing. (Not only line-numbered BASIC, but LET statements, for cryin' out loud.) I loved it.
Our next box was an original 4.77MHz IBM PC (pre-XT). With 128K of memory, since the store didn't have the second bank in stock yet. It took all of a week for my parents to go from "don't touch the computer unless we're there" to "how do you make this work?" 8-)
I'm not yet "old and grey," but I've never liked FPS games. DOOM was unique when it came out, but if you've seen one, you've seen them all. (Yes, I've tried more modern versions; the graphics are much more realistic, but there's still really no plot.)
Why aren't there more games like Syberia, Myst, The 7th Guest? Even Zork, with *no* graphics, was more interesting than the shoot-anything-that-moves games that the industry seems to concentrate on these days.
Why not, for example, a space exploration game -- concentrating on the science, economics, and logistics involved, instead of the usual shoot-the-evil-green-aliens theme?
...that if they were designing one to observe Weakly-Interacting Massive Particles, that they wouldn't name it SuperWIMP?
If it's true -- talk about having egg on your face!
What, are they running the webserver on Nixie tubes, too?