Why would anyone go Linux only? OSX has a perfectly functional *NIX back-end to it so it's not like you lose out on any of the advantages of Linux by going with it. And you get to save on the hardware compatibility hassles that do still exist. Especially for laptops which I see more and more office workers getting.
Actually, most DVDs are widescreen. The cut down Pan and Scan style 4:3 movies are a mostly American phenomena that are becoming more and more rare even here. They are a legacy from the limited resolution of VHS and NTSC broadcast.
It's not just a case of the manufacturers being selfish. It's a form factor issue.
The biggest limiting factor on a laptop's width is the keyboard. Almost everything else you can shrink and expand without limitation. Resizing the keyboard is not as easy. By messing with the layout you can add or remove a row of keys but that's about it unless you want to significantly shrink the size of the keys themselves.
Add to that the fact that every centimeter of extra screen height equals a matching amount of extra case real estate in front that can't be put to very good use, where as extra width lets you expand the keyboard outward.
So, if you want a more portable laptop any shrinkage is going to have to come from the vertical instead of the horizontal. Also, many backpacks/bags/slip cases have the laptop inserted sideways so one that is smaller in that dimension is easier to get at.
This is not simply a religious freedoms issue. This is something that will affect everyone. For anyone wondering why this matters consider the following: India's future genetic engineers and biologists are certainly not being taught ID in school. China's future geologists are not being told that that the earth is only thousands of years old.
These examples and many like them discredit and undermine the entire educated underpinnings of our society. You can't ignore the machine that makes everything go and just assume that it will keep on working.
Well, for what it is worth, the MacBook Pro line of Apple laptops have the free choice of glossy or matte displays. Not sure if that would be your cup of tea, but at least one vendor is giving the option.
the GP is not saying that the community is not capable of this. Or that these people somehow need the government or major telcos help to be able to pull it off.
The GP is saying that the telcos, through lobbying and lawsuits and other means, are entirely likely to do all they can to CRUSH this effort. They have a history of similar actions. A suggestion was made that being a cooperative might help provide some protection in the legal sense. It wasn't some sort of backhanded way of saying that the communities involved weren't capable of cooperating on their own.
Well, all the astrophysicists and astronomers I have talked to seem to disagree with your interpritation. Seeing as I know their impeccable credentials, I hope you will forgive me if I remain sceptical about your take on this.
the explanation I have heard from a couple physicists and astronomers goes more like this:
Imagine space as a slightly inflated rubber balloon. Imagine two dots on the outside of that balloon. Then add air to the balloon, inflating it further.
What you get is two dots that are farther apart, more real distance between them but the same balloon.
Well, here is the catch. Who ever spends the money should gain control of the resulting infrastructure. If the BBC/British government pays to upgrade the lines you can expect a great big (politely worded) fuck you to the telecoms if they try to set any demands.
If the telecoms pay for the infrastructure, they get to say what happens to it. Within whatever terms they negotiate for the use of public land to build on. And if they continue the false advertising of their services, they can expect that at some point a class action lawsuit will be made and will break them.
Part of the shock that some people are feeling comes from the fact that 'beta' doesn't carry the same weight it used to. While others have jumped on the bandwagon, Google has been the big one for devaluing the term. Beta is supposed to mean a potentially unstable build released for testing and feedback purposes. It is labelled beta precisely because it might have some show stopping bugs lurking inside.
However, many people are now used to Google's beta software, which means a functional, polished release that happens to be missing some of the blue sky features that are planned. Oh, and it might get a UI redesign at some point.
The two uses are very different and anyone expecting one should be quite shocked to find the other.
Forget the player prices. It's the disk prices that really matter. I was in the store yesterday and was shocked to see that most of the blue ray movies were down into the $20-$30 range, even some of the new releases. Most of the special edition stuff and the box sets were priced the same as their DVD counterparts. In one case, it was even $10 cheaper (Discovery Planet/World? I think it was).
Give it a year and even if they are still carrying a $5 premium over DVDs the sales will be fine. After all, the value added is rather obvious.
Oh, and am I the only one who finds the blue-ray trade dress kind of attractive? That long shelf full of blue boxes looks neat.
I've been following the RepRap project for quite a while now. They have some really interesting ideas and a wonderful vision of the future.
However, in my opinion (such a rare thing on the internet) they are so enthralled with their grand ideas that it prevents them from actually getting anywhere. From their point of view, any design that can not replicate itself (except the metal) is an inherent failure. The other properties of the machine only start to matter once that is achieved.
While there is nothing wrong with the goal, it means that there is almost no drive at all to produce a machine that is practical for anything BUT duplicating its own plastic parts. Their design calls for basic, lumpy plastic bits and so there is no emphasis on better precision. They are only willing to use materials that can be made yourself, and so there is no chance of it working with better quality plastics. They have designed a machine that needs no small parts or detail work and so there is no emphasis on getting a print head design or motors that supports a better resolution, not that the current plastic could support a better resolution.
Five years from now they are going to announce they they have been able to successfully create a machine that can cheaply and easily replicate itself and that now they will work on making it better. And not even/. will cover the announcement because there will be consumer machines on the shelves that don't cost that much more, are more dependable and can do useful work. And it's a real shame.
This kind of shocking. The ISO, an organization which has existed in high regard for sixty years, is done. They will no doubt continue as a holder of legacy certifications that will continue to matter for as long as they are not superseded, but as far as a respected body they are over. In a single act they have completely discredited their own approval process and by extension everything they approve.
No one looking to establish a new, credible, standard in an field relating to software or information exchange will ever use them as a prime standards body again. They are now a marketing term and not a professional resource.
I'd imagine that this would not be something implemented in software but rather a dedicated system clock. The oscillator would be slaved to a tiny bit of dedicated circuitry that handles the count and all the outside system sees is the output number. It's a black box. From the point of view of the rest of the system, this would have no more overhead than a dedicated clock running at the lower frequency.
Most of the big torrent programs have had packet encryption enabled by default for a while now. It's still effective against most of the ISPs. It is entirely possible that you just have not noticed.
And people have tried to develop such devices. And no one has bought them. No one has bought them because the UI is bad, the industrial design is worse and when people have problems they are told to fix them themselves or to search the forums.
Apple is extremely customer friendly. They make it easy and pleasant to use their devices for the purposes advertised. However, they are not particularly Open Source friendly. Not as bad as some, not as good as others. Open source and customer friendly occasionally overlap, but most open source is not particularly customer friendly and many of the basic devices that make our lives easier are not open source.
The big difference is that Firewire is continuous data transmission while USB is burst transmission. What it means is that while USB2 can hit better rates in very short bursts, it is filled with small drops. That's why firewire is king in the audio/visual world. You can't do live scrubbing through a tape on USB because the data rate isn't constant. The drops between the bursts add hiss and pop to audio.
Or better yet, I bet he has the proper pieces of paper to make the big bucks as a paid 'expert' for the Intelligent Design crowd or the Anti Global Warming industry.
Actually, decent chance that the sale may not go through.
First, for political reasons there are a lot of reasons to say no. Canada WILL be seeing a Federal election in the next six months or so. Selling off the company undermines a lot of the current government's platform. It looks bad on a national security front. It looks bad on an arctic sovereignty front. It looks bad on a selling out Canadian interests to the Americans front (which never goes over well with the voters). It looks bad on a public money front seeing as the Canadian government just finished bankrolling a lot of the research and tech that is making the company an attractive purchase.
The second reason the sale might not go through is that it might be illegal. The united states is basically the only first world country in the world that has not signed the Ottawa Convention on Landmines. Big-ass international treaty, famously brokered by Canada, that bans the production and use of anti-personnel landmines among other things. Now, seeing as the company trying to buy MDA is one of the largest landmine manufacturers in the world. Under the terms of the treaty, it may actually be illegal for Canada to approve any sale or business involving them.
In addition, many of the engineers and big brains that work for MDA are threatening to quit if the sale goes through. Plenty of them could be pulling in larger paycheques in the States already except that they don't want to build weapons or support companies that do.
So, very little advantage in Canada for the government to approve the sale. And the only real downside to not approving it is pissing off a few of Bush's friends. On the other hand, he is down to a few months now and it is looking like bending over for his administration now won't score many brownie points with whoever replaces him.
You are right that they don't go in for suicide bombing. After all, that would be a waste of all their bomber planes and missiles. If you don't think Americans* blow up random people who disagree with them, well where have you been for the last five years?
*Yes, I know not all Americans. Just the ones who decide where the bombs go.
Add to that the fact that AM radio is robust, understood and ubiquitous technology. The shit could it the fan tomorrow. Major economic collapse, dying infrastructure or whatever. AM radio would still be around and working. There is something to be said for a civilization having enough depth and legacy in its technology that there become no single point of failure.
I actually bought mine for the same reason. Was looking for a 15" laptop with dedicated graphics that wasn't two inches thick or weighed twenty pounds. I was planning on running 100% windows. I still boot into windows about a third of the time. It has full support for the hardware and mouse pad.
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Why would anyone go Linux only? OSX has a perfectly functional *NIX back-end to it so it's not like you lose out on any of the advantages of Linux by going with it. And you get to save on the hardware compatibility hassles that do still exist. Especially for laptops which I see more and more office workers getting.
Actually, most DVDs are widescreen. The cut down Pan and Scan style 4:3 movies are a mostly American phenomena that are becoming more and more rare even here. They are a legacy from the limited resolution of VHS and NTSC broadcast.
It's not just a case of the manufacturers being selfish. It's a form factor issue.
The biggest limiting factor on a laptop's width is the keyboard. Almost everything else you can shrink and expand without limitation. Resizing the keyboard is not as easy. By messing with the layout you can add or remove a row of keys but that's about it unless you want to significantly shrink the size of the keys themselves.
Add to that the fact that every centimeter of extra screen height equals a matching amount of extra case real estate in front that can't be put to very good use, where as extra width lets you expand the keyboard outward.
So, if you want a more portable laptop any shrinkage is going to have to come from the vertical instead of the horizontal. Also, many backpacks/bags/slip cases have the laptop inserted sideways so one that is smaller in that dimension is easier to get at.
This is not simply a religious freedoms issue. This is something that will affect everyone. For anyone wondering why this matters consider the following:
India's future genetic engineers and biologists are certainly not being taught ID in school.
China's future geologists are not being told that that the earth is only thousands of years old.
These examples and many like them discredit and undermine the entire educated underpinnings of our society. You can't ignore the machine that makes everything go and just assume that it will keep on working.
Will it play MP3s as a fresh install? Yes or no.
If no, then it isn't ready for the masses. Period.
Well, for what it is worth, the MacBook Pro line of Apple laptops have the free choice of glossy or matte displays. Not sure if that would be your cup of tea, but at least one vendor is giving the option.
the GP is not saying that the community is not capable of this. Or that these people somehow need the government or major telcos help to be able to pull it off.
The GP is saying that the telcos, through lobbying and lawsuits and other means, are entirely likely to do all they can to CRUSH this effort. They have a history of similar actions. A suggestion was made that being a cooperative might help provide some protection in the legal sense. It wasn't some sort of backhanded way of saying that the communities involved weren't capable of cooperating on their own.
Well, all the astrophysicists and astronomers I have talked to seem to disagree with your interpritation. Seeing as I know their impeccable credentials, I hope you will forgive me if I remain sceptical about your take on this.
the explanation I have heard from a couple physicists and astronomers goes more like this:
Imagine space as a slightly inflated rubber balloon. Imagine two dots on the outside of that balloon. Then add air to the balloon, inflating it further.
What you get is two dots that are farther apart, more real distance between them but the same balloon.
Well, here is the catch. Who ever spends the money should gain control of the resulting infrastructure. If the BBC/British government pays to upgrade the lines you can expect a great big (politely worded) fuck you to the telecoms if they try to set any demands.
If the telecoms pay for the infrastructure, they get to say what happens to it. Within whatever terms they negotiate for the use of public land to build on. And if they continue the false advertising of their services, they can expect that at some point a class action lawsuit will be made and will break them.
Part of the shock that some people are feeling comes from the fact that 'beta' doesn't carry the same weight it used to. While others have jumped on the bandwagon, Google has been the big one for devaluing the term. Beta is supposed to mean a potentially unstable build released for testing and feedback purposes. It is labelled beta precisely because it might have some show stopping bugs lurking inside.
However, many people are now used to Google's beta software, which means a functional, polished release that happens to be missing some of the blue sky features that are planned. Oh, and it might get a UI redesign at some point.
The two uses are very different and anyone expecting one should be quite shocked to find the other.
Forget the player prices. It's the disk prices that really matter. I was in the store yesterday and was shocked to see that most of the blue ray movies were down into the $20-$30 range, even some of the new releases. Most of the special edition stuff and the box sets were priced the same as their DVD counterparts. In one case, it was even $10 cheaper (Discovery Planet/World? I think it was).
Give it a year and even if they are still carrying a $5 premium over DVDs the sales will be fine. After all, the value added is rather obvious.
Oh, and am I the only one who finds the blue-ray trade dress kind of attractive? That long shelf full of blue boxes looks neat.
I've been following the RepRap project for quite a while now. They have some really interesting ideas and a wonderful vision of the future.
/. will cover the announcement because there will be consumer machines on the shelves that don't cost that much more, are more dependable and can do useful work. And it's a real shame.
However, in my opinion (such a rare thing on the internet) they are so enthralled with their grand ideas that it prevents them from actually getting anywhere. From their point of view, any design that can not replicate itself (except the metal) is an inherent failure. The other properties of the machine only start to matter once that is achieved.
While there is nothing wrong with the goal, it means that there is almost no drive at all to produce a machine that is practical for anything BUT duplicating its own plastic parts. Their design calls for basic, lumpy plastic bits and so there is no emphasis on better precision. They are only willing to use materials that can be made yourself, and so there is no chance of it working with better quality plastics. They have designed a machine that needs no small parts or detail work and so there is no emphasis on getting a print head design or motors that supports a better resolution, not that the current plastic could support a better resolution.
Five years from now they are going to announce they they have been able to successfully create a machine that can cheaply and easily replicate itself and that now they will work on making it better. And not even
I think catching the stupid and inattentive is kind of the point.
Feel free to swing by any college library you like. They have an entire section.
This kind of shocking. The ISO, an organization which has existed in high regard for sixty years, is done. They will no doubt continue as a holder of legacy certifications that will continue to matter for as long as they are not superseded, but as far as a respected body they are over. In a single act they have completely discredited their own approval process and by extension everything they approve.
No one looking to establish a new, credible, standard in an field relating to software or information exchange will ever use them as a prime standards body again. They are now a marketing term and not a professional resource.
I'd imagine that this would not be something implemented in software but rather a dedicated system clock. The oscillator would be slaved to a tiny bit of dedicated circuitry that handles the count and all the outside system sees is the output number. It's a black box. From the point of view of the rest of the system, this would have no more overhead than a dedicated clock running at the lower frequency.
Most of the big torrent programs have had packet encryption enabled by default for a while now. It's still effective against most of the ISPs. It is entirely possible that you just have not noticed.
And people have tried to develop such devices. And no one has bought them. No one has bought them because the UI is bad, the industrial design is worse and when people have problems they are told to fix them themselves or to search the forums.
Apple is extremely customer friendly. They make it easy and pleasant to use their devices for the purposes advertised. However, they are not particularly Open Source friendly. Not as bad as some, not as good as others. Open source and customer friendly occasionally overlap, but most open source is not particularly customer friendly and many of the basic devices that make our lives easier are not open source.
The big difference is that Firewire is continuous data transmission while USB is burst transmission. What it means is that while USB2 can hit better rates in very short bursts, it is filled with small drops. That's why firewire is king in the audio/visual world. You can't do live scrubbing through a tape on USB because the data rate isn't constant. The drops between the bursts add hiss and pop to audio.
Or better yet, I bet he has the proper pieces of paper to make the big bucks as a paid 'expert' for the Intelligent Design crowd or the Anti Global Warming industry.
Actually, decent chance that the sale may not go through.
First, for political reasons there are a lot of reasons to say no. Canada WILL be seeing a Federal election in the next six months or so. Selling off the company undermines a lot of the current government's platform. It looks bad on a national security front. It looks bad on an arctic sovereignty front. It looks bad on a selling out Canadian interests to the Americans front (which never goes over well with the voters). It looks bad on a public money front seeing as the Canadian government just finished bankrolling a lot of the research and tech that is making the company an attractive purchase.
The second reason the sale might not go through is that it might be illegal. The united states is basically the only first world country in the world that has not signed the Ottawa Convention on Landmines. Big-ass international treaty, famously brokered by Canada, that bans the production and use of anti-personnel landmines among other things. Now, seeing as the company trying to buy MDA is one of the largest landmine manufacturers in the world. Under the terms of the treaty, it may actually be illegal for Canada to approve any sale or business involving them.
In addition, many of the engineers and big brains that work for MDA are threatening to quit if the sale goes through. Plenty of them could be pulling in larger paycheques in the States already except that they don't want to build weapons or support companies that do.
So, very little advantage in Canada for the government to approve the sale. And the only real downside to not approving it is pissing off a few of Bush's friends. On the other hand, he is down to a few months now and it is looking like bending over for his administration now won't score many brownie points with whoever replaces him.
You are right that they don't go in for suicide bombing. After all, that would be a waste of all their bomber planes and missiles. If you don't think Americans* blow up random people who disagree with them, well where have you been for the last five years?
*Yes, I know not all Americans. Just the ones who decide where the bombs go.
Add to that the fact that AM radio is robust, understood and ubiquitous technology. The shit could it the fan tomorrow. Major economic collapse, dying infrastructure or whatever. AM radio would still be around and working. There is something to be said for a civilization having enough depth and legacy in its technology that there become no single point of failure.
I actually bought mine for the same reason. Was looking for a 15" laptop with dedicated graphics that wasn't two inches thick or weighed twenty pounds. I was planning on running 100% windows. I still boot into windows about a third of the time. It has full support for the hardware and mouse pad.