If you read the Microsoft announcement you'd see that XBox Live Gold is not required for BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5, or LoveFilm content. Sky player looks like it will remain Gold only however.
Handbrake can rip directly from encrypted DVD's as well. Also check out a fork of Handbrake called "MediaFork". (The official version of Handbrake has not be under active development for some time)
Am I the only one who read the article properly ? I see lots of people saying Macbook Pro's have ATI graphics chips - yeah they do, but he's talking about a Mac Pro, (the new high end desktop workstation) not a Macbook Pro!
If I'd paid as much as he would have for a Mac Pro I'd be a bit annoyed too if technical support queries about driver bugs got deleted...
To install it, you either need to jumper the CPU down to a slower speed, or boot the computer in Safe mode, as the bug doesn't prevent booting in safe mode...
Optical mice have been out for a *long* time. I used one on a Mac Plus years ago, I have a Mouse Systems Optical mouse on my PC now, that I've had for over a year.
The Microsoft one, although optical, works on a different principle to most optical mice, and because of that, it can be called "new".
A conventional optical mouse has a pair of light emiting diodes of different colours, which point at a special mouse pad which has a pattern on it. In the early days it was a crosshatch pattern where the horizontal and vertical lines were different colours, so one diode picked up the vertical movement, and the other the horizontal. The lines were quite large and obvious, and the resolution wasnt that high.
Later ones like my Mouse systems one have a grid of tiny silver dots on a dark grey background, and the pad is aluminium. The problem with that is that although its very accurate, you really have to look after the pad. Drop it, bend it, scratch it, and you're in trouble.
As well as that, the mouse has felt pads for feet, not the conentional teflon feet (which would scratch the surface) so what tends to happen is sweat builds up on the pad, soaks into the feet and prevents the mouse from sliding smoothly:(
Needless to say the mouse wont work on anything but its proper pad.
The Microsoft one on the other hand essentially has a small CCD camera in the bottom, (and an led for illumination) which takes pictures of the surface 1500 times a second, and uses a DSP processor to correlate the pictures and determine direction and speed of movement.
Because of this it will work on nearly any surface, (excluding things like mirrors etc) because most surfaces are grainy when you look at them closely. For me it combines the best of both worlds - optical precision, but with the ability to use most types of mouse pads or surfaces..
The first Amiga was based on an 8MHz (actually 7.14) 68000 with 256k ram. Yes thats right, 256k, not 128, but that was about a year later than the Mac, and the extra memory was partially offset by the fact that it was *color* and higher resolution than the early Macintoshes, hence requiring more memory to display the graphics.
The Amiga had fully pre-emptive multitasking from day 1, using a well written and extremely efficient Microkernal architechture, with dynamic loading libraries and fully asyncronous IO, among things.
Part of the reason it was so small and fast was that the entire microkernal was written in hand coded assembly.
If you're interested in specifics, there is a *very* good interview with Carl Sassenrath, the designer of the Amiga kernel, at http://technetcast.ddj.com/tnc_981120.html
I challenge you to say that the 8Mhz early Macintoshes, (Mac 128 to 512 or Mac Classic) were faster than the early Amiga's for real world applications. No way.
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If you read the Microsoft announcement you'd see that XBox Live Gold is not required for BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5, or LoveFilm content. Sky player looks like it will remain Gold only however.
RTFA - this attack DOES work in online transactions, and the entered PIN is not sent to the bank even in online transactions.
Errrr, you mean 256 * 256 * 256 for a true 8 bit display, which equals 16777216 colours ;)
Handbrake can rip directly from encrypted DVD's as well. Also check out a fork of Handbrake called "MediaFork". (The official version of Handbrake has not be under active development for some time)
:) The current best version is MediaFork 0.8.0 beta 1.
http://handbrake.m0k.org/
Ok, I spoke too soon, it looks like MediaFork and handbrake are being re-merged
Am I the only one who read the article properly ? I see lots of people saying Macbook Pro's have ATI graphics chips - yeah they do, but he's talking about a Mac Pro, (the new high end desktop workstation) not a Macbook Pro!
If I'd paid as much as he would have for a Mac Pro I'd be a bit annoyed too if technical support queries about driver bugs got deleted...
To install it, you either need to jumper the CPU down to a slower speed, or boot the computer in Safe mode, as the bug doesn't prevent booting in safe mode...
Annoying, yes.
DUH.
:)
Maybe next time I should read a post more carefully before replying. Your figures are correct....but so are mine
Nice try, but no cigar :)
20 dB is 10 times _voltage_ (when measuring an electrical signal that is) or in other words 100 times the power into a fixed impedance.
Power x2 = 3 dB
Voltage x2 = 6 dB
Power x10 = 10 dB
Voltage x10 = 20 dB
Power x20 = 13 dB
Power x100 = 20 dB
Yes and no.
:(
Optical mice have been out for a *long* time. I used one on a Mac Plus years ago, I have a Mouse Systems Optical mouse on my PC now, that I've had for over a year.
The Microsoft one, although optical, works on a different principle to most optical mice, and because of that, it can be called "new".
A conventional optical mouse has a pair of light emiting diodes of different colours, which point at a special mouse pad which has a pattern on it.
In the early days it was a crosshatch pattern where the horizontal and vertical lines were different colours, so one diode picked up the vertical movement, and the other the horizontal. The lines were quite large and obvious, and the resolution wasnt that high.
Later ones like my Mouse systems one have a grid of tiny silver dots on a dark grey background, and the pad is aluminium. The problem with that is that although its very accurate, you really have to look after the pad. Drop it, bend it, scratch it, and you're in trouble.
As well as that, the mouse has felt pads for feet, not the conentional teflon feet (which would scratch the surface) so what tends to happen is sweat builds up on the pad, soaks into the feet and prevents the mouse from sliding smoothly
Needless to say the mouse wont work on anything but its proper pad.
The Microsoft one on the other hand essentially has a small CCD camera in the bottom, (and an led for illumination) which takes pictures of the surface 1500 times a second, and uses a DSP processor to correlate the pictures and determine direction and speed of movement.
Because of this it will work on nearly any surface, (excluding things like mirrors etc) because most surfaces are grainy when you look at them closely. For me it combines the best of both worlds - optical precision, but with the ability to use most types of mouse pads or surfaces..
Obviously you never used an Amiga.
The first Amiga was based on an 8MHz (actually 7.14) 68000 with 256k ram. Yes thats right, 256k, not 128, but that was about a year later than the Mac, and the extra memory was partially offset by the fact that it was *color* and higher resolution than the early Macintoshes, hence requiring more memory to display the graphics.
The Amiga had fully pre-emptive multitasking from day 1, using a well written and extremely efficient Microkernal architechture, with dynamic loading libraries and fully asyncronous IO, among things.
Part of the reason it was so small and fast was that the entire microkernal was written in hand coded assembly.
If you're interested in specifics, there is a *very* good interview with Carl Sassenrath, the designer of the Amiga kernel, at
http://technetcast.ddj.com/tnc_981120.html
I challenge you to say that the 8Mhz early Macintoshes, (Mac 128 to 512 or Mac Classic) were faster than the early Amiga's for real world applications. No way.