Yeah, that was a quick google search for 32GB SSD and that was the only returned link.
After doing more thorough researching, I found expensive 32GB SSDs but also 16GB SSDs at around $600 here & here. I know that size is not always directly related to price but I guess the release of this laptop with 32GB means they've found cheaper ways to produce the 32GB versions.
The $3k price tag is probably pretty reasonable considering that two drives equating to the same size would run around $1,200. Heck, after thinking about the number of writes to the disk they're good for, it might benefit you to have your OS and apps on a drive apart from your userspace drive (a la Unix security layout).
Again, I apologize for not researching my link in the original post and for wasting your time. I only hope the discussion isn't waylayed by people pointing out my ignorance.
So I know a lot of people that get all excited when they read articles on the "semantic web."
I think that we are all missing some very important aspects of what it takes to make something capable of what they speak of. In all the projects I have worked on, to create something geared toward this sort of solution, you need two things: training data & a robust taxonomy.
First things first, how would we define or even agree on a taxonomy? By taxonomy, I mean something with breadth & depth that has been used and verified. By breadth I mean that it must be capable of normalization (pharmacetical concoctions, drugs & pills are all the same concept), stemming (go & went are the same action, dog & dogs are the same concept) and also important is how many tokens wide a concept can be. By depth I mean that we must be able to define specificity and use it to our advantage (a site about 747s is scored higher than a site about airline jets which is scored higher than a site about planes). By rigorous I mean that it must be tried and true... you start with a corpus of documents to "seed" it and have experts (or web surfers) contribute little by little until it is accurate. Oh, it must also be able to adapt quickly and stay current.
Without a taxonomy, how will we index sites and be able to tell between "water tanks" and "panzer tanks." I think that this is one of the great things that Google is missing to really improve its searching abilities. If you suggest an ontology to replace it, the problems encountered in developing it only multiply.
Where is the training data? Well, one may argue that the web content out there will suffice as training data but I think that more importantly, they need collections of traffic for these sites and user behavioral patterns to quickly and adequately deduce what the surfer is in need of.
I feel that these two aspects are missing and the taxonomy may be impossible to achieve.
Why are we even concerned with security if we can't even lay the foundations for the semantic web? I would argue that once we plan it out and determine it's viable, then we concern ourselves with the everyone's rights.
I think you're confusing JPEG with JPEG-LS. Yes, they are both "JPEG"s but I don't think many applications natively support JPEG-LS. In fact, I wanted to use it in Photoshop and had to go get a plug-in. Whether or not JPEG-LS is as efficient as the new proposed MS format, I do not know. I think that JPEG-LS was slow to catch on because people just didn't care about upgrading their software to use it. I would wager that Microsoft will force third party software to support their new filetype.
I'm not even sure if my browser supports JPEG-LS and I know that programming with JPEG-LS can be a pain if you're looking for libraries to read/write lossless compression image files.
I think the most important reason is stated in the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia article:
It can support both lossy as well as lossless compression...
If you read all of that article, they get to the specifics of how computationally expensive it can be and I must say it offers a high performance.
If you look at JPEG, the Wikipedia article states:
In computing, JPEG (pronounced jay-peg) is a commonly used standard method of lossy compression for photographic images.
And now you see that it only supports lossy. There are other lossless formats out there but I don't think there is another popular MIME file format that is widely used to support both lossy and lossless.
The big selling point here seems to be that you can have one file format to do all regardless of what kind of compression you prefer. I do agree that if it's not released open to the public, it will fail.
I think the editors should have entitled this one "Microsoft Proposes New Lawsuit Subject" instead of "Microsoft Proposes JPEG Alternative." I kid, I kid.
But seriously, is anyone else smelling that special scent of Microsoft imperialism where their current markets aren't satiating their need to dominate? I mean, they used to make only operating systems (which took them a while to perfect) and then they made Office (which took them a while to perfect) and then they made the Xbox and now they want us to use a new photo format?
I don't mind my JPEGs taking up 2 ~ 3MB each, in fact I prefer PNG which are small and widely supported. Granted, they're not half the size of a JPEG but--you know what?--PNG doesn't have a lawsuit history like JPEG & GIF have.
PNG is only lossless compression so I suppose it's only natural to switch to a file format that can be either lossless or lossy & will adequately adjust performance of the 'decoding' of the file if you select lossy. After reading the articles linked in the story, it sounds like Microsoft did a good job in the algorithm for this one... now if they release it as free to use, it might take hold. But I'm not worried about switching formats anytime soon, and to quote Steve Ballmer:
The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. If the government wants to put something in the public domain, it should. Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works.
Hard to buy that the company would support anything open for free use after hearing that from its CEO.
First off, you spelled the man's name wrong. It's Krakow, not Krackow.
Secondly, as Mr. Krakow points out, it's a Beta. Do we all know the concept of that word? It's still being tested. Ironically, he loves the operating system but his main gripe seems to be ill-supported hardware drivers. Laptops are notorious for having odds n' ends hardware in them as everyone thinks their proprietary integrated devices are the best but oddly stop supporting them after that model is done selling.
Ever installed Linux in a laptop? I think you'll find that the scavenger hunt for drivers is similar to what Gary experienced. It's a bit of a pain in the ass but a big payout at the end. Give Vista the year or two and when it's released, I'm pretty certain companies will start updating their drivers to be "Vista ready." Is this Microsoft's fault? Possibly for not making certain the early Beta versions were universal and adaptive to different hardware but I don't know enough about drivers to speculate any further.
The points he makes about the actual Vista operating system sound optimistic. In fact, I didn't hear him complain at all about the functioning aspects and features.
All in all, this review was a waste of my time to read. The man spent all his time bitching about his laptop/driver problems and no time at all on analyzing what the operating system has to offer.
Perhaps the next time he reviews Lenovo Laptops and raves about them, he'll actually check if their drivers are supporting all operating systems. I don't know if you can depend on IBM to support their old laptops or expect the new makers of Lenovo to support the old hardware. Hell, even my Dell laptop has some obscure sound and wireless card models which are painful to find the right drivers for.
I don't want to spout conspiracies but I think that Mr. Krakow favors the "almighty Apple" over "evil Microsoft." You can read his otherreviews which may be a bit biased. That last one is really pro-iTunes. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this man may be a tad biased... save yourself some time and just thoroughly read the Wikipedia article on it.
I don't understand something, these are supposed to be crank powered to solve the situation where there isn't any electricity. On the blog link, you can see the crank in the back. On the Flikr account, I can maybe see it being concealed in the blue-ish laptop but I can't figure out where it is on the other two. Perhaps it is folded up?
Why are they showing us pictures of them just sitting there? Why aren't their pictures of people powering them up or people checking e-mail/forums?
Possibly the biggest problem working on this laptop is its small 12' screen. I wish I could see what kind of resolution that results in but I can't see the screen in any of these shots.
If you want to make the pledge but don't know the specs, check out the Wikipedia article on it.
First off, this isn't really 'news' as it is an alarm. When a new coral reef is discovered, we aren't sending people to look for new species or attempting to preserve it... instead we're sending people to take samples to see if we can benefit medically from the reef.
Modern man has an impeccable record for destroying the natural environment that produces his fruits & resources. Then we sit and bitch about how it went away. Reefs are probably going to be no different. They're harder to get at, but if the run-off doesn't destroy them, I'm sure our medical companies will.
There's a report written by the UN University that details the problems being raised by this treasure of "blue gold."
Significantly, the ratio of potentially useful natural compounds to compounds screened is higher in marinesourced materials than with terrestrial organisms. There is, therefore, a higher probability of commercial success. Potential applications for marine organisms include: pharmaceuticals; enzymes; cryoprotectants; cosmaceuticals; agrichemicals; bioremediators; nutraceuticals; and fine chemicals. All the major pharmaceutical firms, including Merck, Lilly, Pfizer,
Hoffman-Laroche and Bristol-Myers Squibb, have marine biology departments. Estimates put worldwide sales of marine biotechnology-related products at US$ 100 billion for the year 2000. Profits from a compound derived from a sea sponge to treat herpes were estimated to be worth US$ 50 million to US$ 100 million annually, and estimates of the value of anti-cancer agents from marine organisms are up to US$ 1 billion a year.
Hypothetical scenario time! So, Pfizer's scientists find that a fairly common sponge produces a natural chemical that slows the growth of cancer. Unfortunately, each sponge only produces an ounce of this chemical when refined and there is no way to naturally synthesize it on a mass scale. Pfizer tries to buy the rights to harvest the sponge at a restricted rate in Florida. But they have to get permits from the local, state & federal governments and it costs them a lot of money because they send people down to the reef to hand pick the sponges. Instead, they find a supplier in a third world country (possibly around Indonesia) that promises them mass quantities of the sponge at a reduced rate. Now, the government there forbids it too but an official receives a large sum from this company and suddenly Pfizer has got incoming shipments of the sponge. The problem is that the company working for Pfizer is doing so with total blatant disregard for the ecosystem & probably its workers.
A farfetched scenario? Or something that's happened so often in the past, we'd be naïve to imagine it to stop here?
After Narcissus, the fictional Greek hero who became obsessed with his own reflection.
Pronunciation
'när-s&-"si-z&m
Noun
narcissism
1. Egoism; egocentrism.
2. Love of oneself.
3. Sexual desire for one's own body.
--
I grew up on a farm. If there's one thing that pisses me off, it's people who walk around with their noses in the air. Yuppies, politicians, etc. are prone to this behavior.
Sony's elitism sure is getting underneath my skin. I enjoyed their console but anymore of this "only-the-rich-are-worthy-of-experiencing-this" attitude and I'm going to take my ball (money) and play elsewhere.
They do realize that many of their customers also buy their competitor's products, right? By stomping all over Nintendo and Microsoft, they may be alienating a large selection of their consumer base.
I agree with these book selections though I think that it's wrong to say "these are must-haves for the Linux/Unix user" if they cost money. That's because Linux should be free, you shouldn't 'need' to drop $200 to be proficient in it. You need to invest time but not money.
Hemos, Where did you get this "Biggest Obstacle" from? The researcher didn't claim it in the article, and it isn't true. IANANP, but from what I've heard, the biggest obstacle to nuclear fusion is maintaining the reaction for long periods of time, and doing so with relativly low energy input.
This is a cool development, but unless I read incorrectly it doesn't solve those problems.
So there was a lot of talk of lighter elements being used (easier to force together) and devising a way to create self sustaining reactions. That is, the first nuclear reactions create enough energy to spur the next reactions and a little more energy on top of that.
I'm not a nuclear physicist either and your same questions came to me when I saw the headline. In actuality, there are ways to accomplish this. It doesn't matter how much energy was your start-up cost because you have a self sustaining system with some output--eventually you recoup your losses. Although I've heard much talk of this, has it ever been proven that it can be done? I think so, but you'll have to read the wikipedia entry on it.
A substantial energy barrier must be overcome for fusion to occur. Nuclei repel one another because of the electrostatic force between their positively charged protons. If two nuclei can be brought close enough together, however, the electrostatic force is overwhelmed by the more powerful strong nuclear force which only operates over short distances.
To answer your question in short, I think there have been some very clever ways of continually inputting a little more of a hydrogen isotope into the system and then clearing out the resulting product while feeding a little energy back into the system to maintain its temperatures. The whole while, you are tapping some of the heat to produce the energy.
You raise a valid point and this initially plagued models but now we are concerned with how we control and divert the energy (heat) of the system. It's been shown the return on this nuclear process can be slightly greater than the input. We're not "creating" energy, we're merely changing the molecules and harvesting the byproduct of that reaction so the laws of thermodynamics are adhered to in these models.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I know this and value it as one of my most important rights as an American. The piece we are dealing with here is "freedom of the press." It is my belief that this protection of our press from our government is what makes our system just and, when the justice system fails, provides a means of prosecution for law enforcement, companies and politicians.
What I can't quote are "some statutes" that Mr. Gonzales is referring to. And, frankly, I don't give a damn what they say. There's nothing that could convince me to give up or sacrifice any part of the First Amendment.
I believe my government has a duty to protect the information that is important or sensitive. If the government fails to do adequately protect this information then it should not be illegal for an instution of the press to point it out. If by doing so they print the classified information then so be it. The people have a right to know the shortcomings of their government whether they be scandal or lack of security.
I fear that if they make this illegal, it will also be illegal to point out inadequacies of the government &, before we know it, the press will be unable to criticize the government. Releasing information of sensitivity is a form of criticism and should be treated as such.
I lived in Leningrad (before it was St. Petersburg...
First of all, I know that Leningrad & Moscow are different than greater Russia. They might as well be considered separate countries from what I've read. I read about what happens in other countries. I try to educate myself and I form an opinion. I voice my opinion and appearantly I piss someone off. Well, you know what? Nobody's doing anything about this problem so how we start throwing out ideas?
Go ask a beat cop in NYC (where I moved after Leningrad) which he would rather do, arrest the crack dealer who is peddling rock outside the school or track down the suburban kid who runs a botnet and steals credit card info.
They are both crimes. I shouldn't be asking him which one he'd rather deal with but instead asking him how his force is going to handle both situations concurrantly. If he can't, then let's get organized and arrange a vote for a larger police budget.
You make me sick.
A crime is a crime and deserves punishment. This is an internal conceptualization I have of the word "justice." The fact that you're already resigned to allow one of these crimes to go unpunished merely proves to me that you're ignorant & lack the mentality to understand justice. We value our justice system and she is blind.
Your attitude is typical of a middle class white american.
That's great, stereotype me. I'm glad you view me as "just another white american." Should I continue to try and treat you as an equal human being or not?
You have no concept of things like poverty, REAL crime that does more then hurt a credit report and possibly cost $50, or what it is like to not have the world cater to you and your hedonistic needs.
So I'm confused. If someone is living below the poverty line trying to make it (like my family as I grew up) and some Russian thug steals $350 from a credit card then I don't eat for a while. Crime is crime--no matter how great the effects. I don't have hedonistic needs. My needs entail justice and a stable capitalistic system.
... Then again, many americans do.
Honestly, you make me sick.
.
.
.
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And I don't discriminate or stereotype people by nationality. You and people who are resigned to allow a crime to occur without justice make me sick.
If you think a Blu-Ray player by itself might be £600-700, and we're coming in at just £425, it's a bargain.'
Buddy, if your logic rests upon the consumer thinking about this being a blu-ray player, then you had better change your marketing strategy.
When I look for a gaming console, I don't care if it plays 8 tracks. I want to be able to play fun games and I would like to do it without too high of a price tag. If you want people to buy it for blu-ray functionality, you better market it as such because the gaming & movie crowds might overlap but one is far larger than the other.
And that's not even bringing up the problems me and my friends experienced with first generation PS2s and their ability (or lack thereof) to play DVDs. I haven't played a DVD in a PS2 for years... now I've learned my lesson and don't care what a console can do aside from gaming.
Do one thing right and don't bloat your hardware please. You haven't had a spotless track record for testing prior to release and more functionality means a lot more testing.
Do you want me to see this as "The Playstation Three" or "The Sony Blu-Ray Player"? Pick one and make a solid product.
Also, tense political relations sometimes complicate efforts to obtain cooperation with local law enforcement.
I've heard that in many places of the former Soviet Union, the "local law enforcement" only enforces laws when it suits their financial needs. I've talked to people from places like Lithuania and Russia and one of the many reasons they left was because justice has a price on the streets.
If you're caught doing something illegal, it's almost guaranteed there is some price you can pay the police to be let go.
In my opinion, this hurts local small businesses immensely. I believe that it makes them more difficult to succeed and lays the groundwork for an instable/weak capitalistic system. There's even a problem with local law enforcement and bribes in many other countries. Honestly, if there was one thing I think that would help countries get back on track, it would be better law enforcement especially on the local level. How can people be expected to work and thrive in a system when the letter of the law is uncertain? How can you expect them to run a business and distribute goods/services if a thief can pay off police when he burglarizes the store?
Sorry, but this is just brain-dead protection with a thick layer of xenophobic scaremongering.
Appearantly one man's security measures are another man's "xenophobic scaremongering."
And you can be certain that SOMEONE would bitch if Lenovo was slapping spychips onto the system in defiance of the design parameters of the designers.
First off, the United States government assumes it knows nothing of technology when doing these investigations. And that's a very good thing because often times the people putting it through these investigations are complete idiots, technologically speaking. Now, tell a government inspector to take apart a Lenovo and verify that there are no spychips in it. They'll simply laugh and say, "It has spent time outside of this country, it cannot be used to store or process sensitive information." This isn't saying "Chinese bad," it's simply a fail safe security measure for them.
In fact, if you want to use hardware/software in a classified area, it has to be from a United States based company and passed through a rigorous investigation as to whether or not it is safe to use. Even things like Java or C++ libraries have to undergo this for the simple fact of the matter that the US government is over-cautious.
Do you blame them? Can you strip down a Laptop and really ensure that there's nothing like a keystroke logger or a very very low-level chipset process running on a side processor or microcontroller that captures choice information and automatically sends it out the NIC to a Chinese agency?
You have to remember that there are conspiracy theorists out there that are paid and unpaid. The paid ones are simply better at controlling their imagination to realistic limits and are hired by governments to think & fear.
Now, do you remember when certain Chinese conspiracy theorists decided that China's government suspected Windows SP2 of foul play? This is more of the same kind of thinking...
I think Google should only serve ads from legitimate businesses.
If an ad happens to offer free software, the target of the complaint shouldn't be Google but instead the business that is actually breaking the law. That's what makes sense to me.
Google should be able to take the ads down and halt service of those ads if an inquiry is warranted.
Otherwise, I've got a great business plan:
1. Make a piece of shill software.
2. Have your friend start a business that cracks it and offers it through Google ads.
3. Sue Google for the ads.
4. Profit.
You know, I might be the only one to feel this way, but I am glad that Nintendo isn't planning on monthly payments to leech money out of its victim... er... consumer.
In the eyes of Sony, you are addicts willing to pay anything for a console. In the eyes of other console makers/game producers, you are merely sacks of money and they want the moneys from inside you. One year of playing an online game at $12/month comes out to $144. The amount of money they get from advertisers is also very large considering putting it in a game.
I think that today, communications and technology are cheap. I pay for my broadband internet service provider, why do I have to pay again for another service of essentially the same thing? I would prefer paying $400 with no monthly fee for World of Warcraft instead of $40 with a $13 monthly fee. Why? Because in the two and a half years that it has been out, you've accumulated a price of $40 + $13*30 = $420 and we all know it won't end there. Monthly payments are a means to milk your users. I would rather them charge me lots of money and promise the service until the company is bankrupt. I like that Iwata wants to develop that as a successful business model and I hate that everyone is moving the other way.
I also don't care for product placement in my games. We're so concerned about society not viewing games as art when really they should be! They are the next new media to for artists and it's things like capitalising off of the end user and sacrificing content for product placement that really destroy any efforts to make this happen. Let's make a game that evokes emotions and deep responses from the user... then let's exploit them, charge them a monthly fee to do so and make their character collect cans of Jolt(TM) to "power-up." Good luck.
So, if you haven't seen these charts, view them... now.
The PS3 price is insane.
It's not insane historically speaking (see the charts) but it's insane to price it at $500 or $600.
The Wii is rumored to come out at $200-$250, so that's two for the price of the minimal PS3. But to compare the PS3 to Xbox 360, we have can look at it's price percentage. Between min and max, PS3's percent difference is (600-500)/500 or approximately 20%. The Xbox 360 has a difference of (400-300)/300 which is 33%. What's the point of upgrading later when another 20% of the bill will get you the full thing? To me that sounds foolish. I can definitely see that working with the Xbox but not when you're talking about prices around $600. If I'm going to pay that much, might as well throw on another $100.
I'm not concerned if it's upgradable and, frakly, I won't be too concerned with the PS3 until I see what it can do. Can it do twice what the Wii or Xbox 360 can? That remains to be seen.
It looks like the OpenDocument Fellowship will have another application to add to its list.
If you're a developer, like myself, you may be wondering how you can take advantage of OpenDocument. Afterall, the point of it is not to have to have developing licenses or the inability to generate your own documents for applications that your user uses. Check out their site for developers. From there, you can find the resources to begin writing your own code that generates ODF compliant files. If Microsoft ever switches to ODF compliance, you might be ahead of the game!
I'm surprised that they aren't taking weekly or monthly magnetic resonance images (MRI's) of the child's brain to track the growth of Broca's Area, a region of the brain long believed to control and develop speech.
It was this that Carl Sagan wrote of in Broca's Brain when he speculated on our ability to speak and communicate adeptly and sets us apart from animals.
I couldn't get the MOV files to work, something about a codec I was missing. The AVIs worked fine though.
If you can't see them, there are 9 fish eye cameras mounted at certain points of the house and a day passes in 30 seconds (a la National Geographic plant blooming or Requiem for a Dream old lady on crack).
Each camera seems to have a round piece of paper ready to flip up and down to cover it (possibly via light switch in the room/area) should the family choose it to be necessary.
I think this is a wonderful and innovative idea, my only concern resides in the child's rights.
Roy is aware that the project raises ethical issues. But ultimately he thinks he may be providing his son with an incredible gift. "He might be the first person to have a memory that goes back to birth," he says.
I'm going to say I don't agree with even releasing these short clips to the public. I believe that this footage should be collected, protected & anonymity of the child enforced until the child is 18--at which point they will be capable of releasing the footage under whatever license (GPL even, lol) they deem appropriate. I understand that the parents have full custody, I only hope this child is in no way taken advantage of like so many prodigious children are by their parents.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that was a quick google search for 32GB SSD and that was the only returned link.
After doing more thorough researching, I found expensive 32GB SSDs but also 16GB SSDs at around $600 here & here. I know that size is not always directly related to price but I guess the release of this laptop with 32GB means they've found cheaper ways to produce the 32GB versions.
The $3k price tag is probably pretty reasonable considering that two drives equating to the same size would run around $1,200. Heck, after thinking about the number of writes to the disk they're good for, it might benefit you to have your OS and apps on a drive apart from your userspace drive (a la Unix security layout).
Again, I apologize for not researching my link in the original post and for wasting your time. I only hope the discussion isn't waylayed by people pointing out my ignorance.
Seek time for a 7200 laptop hard disk: ~ 10ms
Seek time for solid state hard disk: < 0.1ms
They're at least a hundred (if not thousand) times faster and on sale for $160 USD for 32GB size of it. Now, why is the laptop so damned expensive? You also forgot to say "less heat." Which is my biggest concern with the lifetime of my laptop and my sperm count.
So I know a lot of people that get all excited when they read articles on the "semantic web."
... you start with a corpus of documents to "seed" it and have experts (or web surfers) contribute little by little until it is accurate. Oh, it must also be able to adapt quickly and stay current.
I think that we are all missing some very important aspects of what it takes to make something capable of what they speak of. In all the projects I have worked on, to create something geared toward this sort of solution, you need two things: training data & a robust taxonomy.
First things first, how would we define or even agree on a taxonomy? By taxonomy, I mean something with breadth & depth that has been used and verified. By breadth I mean that it must be capable of normalization (pharmacetical concoctions, drugs & pills are all the same concept), stemming (go & went are the same action, dog & dogs are the same concept) and also important is how many tokens wide a concept can be. By depth I mean that we must be able to define specificity and use it to our advantage (a site about 747s is scored higher than a site about airline jets which is scored higher than a site about planes). By rigorous I mean that it must be tried and true
Without a taxonomy, how will we index sites and be able to tell between "water tanks" and "panzer tanks." I think that this is one of the great things that Google is missing to really improve its searching abilities. If you suggest an ontology to replace it, the problems encountered in developing it only multiply.
Where is the training data? Well, one may argue that the web content out there will suffice as training data but I think that more importantly, they need collections of traffic for these sites and user behavioral patterns to quickly and adequately deduce what the surfer is in need of.
I feel that these two aspects are missing and the taxonomy may be impossible to achieve.
Why are we even concerned with security if we can't even lay the foundations for the semantic web? I would argue that once we plan it out and determine it's viable, then we concern ourselves with the everyone's rights.
I think you're confusing JPEG with JPEG-LS. Yes, they are both "JPEG"s but I don't think many applications natively support JPEG-LS. In fact, I wanted to use it in Photoshop and had to go get a plug-in. Whether or not JPEG-LS is as efficient as the new proposed MS format, I do not know. I think that JPEG-LS was slow to catch on because people just didn't care about upgrading their software to use it. I would wager that Microsoft will force third party software to support their new filetype.
I'm not even sure if my browser supports JPEG-LS and I know that programming with JPEG-LS can be a pain if you're looking for libraries to read/write lossless compression image files.
If you look at JPEG, the Wikipedia article states: And now you see that it only supports lossy. There are other lossless formats out there but I don't think there is another popular MIME file format that is widely used to support both lossy and lossless.
The big selling point here seems to be that you can have one file format to do all regardless of what kind of compression you prefer. I do agree that if it's not released open to the public, it will fail.
But seriously, is anyone else smelling that special scent of Microsoft imperialism where their current markets aren't satiating their need to dominate? I mean, they used to make only operating systems (which took them a while to perfect) and then they made Office (which took them a while to perfect) and then they made the Xbox and now they want us to use a new photo format?
I don't mind my JPEGs taking up 2 ~ 3MB each, in fact I prefer PNG which are small and widely supported. Granted, they're not half the size of a JPEG but--you know what?--PNG doesn't have a lawsuit history like JPEG & GIF have.
PNG is only lossless compression so I suppose it's only natural to switch to a file format that can be either lossless or lossy & will adequately adjust performance of the 'decoding' of the file if you select lossy. After reading the articles linked in the story, it sounds like Microsoft did a good job in the algorithm for this one
First off, you spelled the man's name wrong. It's Krakow, not Krackow.
... save yourself some time and just thoroughly read the Wikipedia article on it.
Secondly, as Mr. Krakow points out, it's a Beta. Do we all know the concept of that word? It's still being tested. Ironically, he loves the operating system but his main gripe seems to be ill-supported hardware drivers. Laptops are notorious for having odds n' ends hardware in them as everyone thinks their proprietary integrated devices are the best but oddly stop supporting them after that model is done selling.
Ever installed Linux in a laptop? I think you'll find that the scavenger hunt for drivers is similar to what Gary experienced. It's a bit of a pain in the ass but a big payout at the end. Give Vista the year or two and when it's released, I'm pretty certain companies will start updating their drivers to be "Vista ready." Is this Microsoft's fault? Possibly for not making certain the early Beta versions were universal and adaptive to different hardware but I don't know enough about drivers to speculate any further.
The points he makes about the actual Vista operating system sound optimistic. In fact, I didn't hear him complain at all about the functioning aspects and features.
All in all, this review was a waste of my time to read. The man spent all his time bitching about his laptop/driver problems and no time at all on analyzing what the operating system has to offer.
Perhaps the next time he reviews Lenovo Laptops and raves about them, he'll actually check if their drivers are supporting all operating systems. I don't know if you can depend on IBM to support their old laptops or expect the new makers of Lenovo to support the old hardware. Hell, even my Dell laptop has some obscure sound and wireless card models which are painful to find the right drivers for.
I don't want to spout conspiracies but I think that Mr. Krakow favors the "almighty Apple" over "evil Microsoft." You can read his other reviews which may be a bit biased. That last one is really pro-iTunes. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this man may be a tad biased
I don't understand something, these are supposed to be crank powered to solve the situation where there isn't any electricity. On the blog link, you can see the crank in the back. On the Flikr account, I can maybe see it being concealed in the blue-ish laptop but I can't figure out where it is on the other two. Perhaps it is folded up?
Why are they showing us pictures of them just sitting there? Why aren't their pictures of people powering them up or people checking e-mail/forums?
Possibly the biggest problem working on this laptop is its small 12' screen. I wish I could see what kind of resolution that results in but I can't see the screen in any of these shots.
If you want to make the pledge but don't know the specs, check out the Wikipedia article on it.
Modern man has an impeccable record for destroying the natural environment that produces his fruits & resources. Then we sit and bitch about how it went away. Reefs are probably going to be no different. They're harder to get at, but if the run-off doesn't destroy them, I'm sure our medical companies will.
There's a report written by the UN University that details the problems being raised by this treasure of "blue gold." One of the interesting sources it cites is Blue Genes: Sharing and Conserving the World's Aquatic Biodiversity (another interesting document on the global problem of sharing the world's oceans).
Hypothetical scenario time! So, Pfizer's scientists find that a fairly common sponge produces a natural chemical that slows the growth of cancer. Unfortunately, each sponge only produces an ounce of this chemical when refined and there is no way to naturally synthesize it on a mass scale. Pfizer tries to buy the rights to harvest the sponge at a restricted rate in Florida. But they have to get permits from the local, state & federal governments and it costs them a lot of money because they send people down to the reef to hand pick the sponges. Instead, they find a supplier in a third world country (possibly around Indonesia) that promises them mass quantities of the sponge at a reduced rate. Now, the government there forbids it too but an official receives a large sum from this company and suddenly Pfizer has got incoming shipments of the sponge. The problem is that the company working for Pfizer is doing so with total blatant disregard for the ecosystem & probably its workers.
A farfetched scenario? Or something that's happened so often in the past, we'd be naïve to imagine it to stop here?
After Narcissus, the fictional Greek hero who became obsessed with his own reflection.
Pronunciation
- 'när-s&-"si-z&m
Nounnarcissism
1. Egoism; egocentrism.
2. Love of oneself.
3. Sexual desire for one's own body.
--
I grew up on a farm. If there's one thing that pisses me off, it's people who walk around with their noses in the air. Yuppies, politicians, etc. are prone to this behavior.
Sony's elitism sure is getting underneath my skin. I enjoyed their console but anymore of this "only-the-rich-are-worthy-of-experiencing-this" attitude and I'm going to take my ball (money) and play elsewhere.
They do realize that many of their customers also buy their competitor's products, right? By stomping all over Nintendo and Microsoft, they may be alienating a large selection of their consumer base.
I agree with these book selections though I think that it's wrong to say "these are must-haves for the Linux/Unix user" if they cost money. That's because Linux should be free, you shouldn't 'need' to drop $200 to be proficient in it. You need to invest time but not money.
Perhaps there are free resources out there.
I'm not a nuclear physicist either and your same questions came to me when I saw the headline. In actuality, there are ways to accomplish this. It doesn't matter how much energy was your start-up cost because you have a self sustaining system with some output--eventually you recoup your losses. Although I've heard much talk of this, has it ever been proven that it can be done? I think so, but you'll have to read the wikipedia entry on it.
On top of that, there is the issue of the forces acting against the atoms: To answer your question in short, I think there have been some very clever ways of continually inputting a little more of a hydrogen isotope into the system and then clearing out the resulting product while feeding a little energy back into the system to maintain its temperatures. The whole while, you are tapping some of the heat to produce the energy.
You raise a valid point and this initially plagued models but now we are concerned with how we control and divert the energy (heat) of the system. It's been shown the return on this nuclear process can be slightly greater than the input. We're not "creating" energy, we're merely changing the molecules and harvesting the byproduct of that reaction so the laws of thermodynamics are adhered to in these models.
What I can't quote are "some statutes" that Mr. Gonzales is referring to. And, frankly, I don't give a damn what they say. There's nothing that could convince me to give up or sacrifice any part of the First Amendment.
I believe my government has a duty to protect the information that is important or sensitive. If the government fails to do adequately protect this information then it should not be illegal for an instution of the press to point it out. If by doing so they print the classified information then so be it. The people have a right to know the shortcomings of their government whether they be scandal or lack of security.
I fear that if they make this illegal, it will also be illegal to point out inadequacies of the government &, before we know it, the press will be unable to criticize the government. Releasing information of sensitivity is a form of criticism and should be treated as such.
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And I don't discriminate or stereotype people by nationality. You and people who are resigned to allow a crime to occur without justice make me sick.
When I look for a gaming console, I don't care if it plays 8 tracks. I want to be able to play fun games and I would like to do it without too high of a price tag. If you want people to buy it for blu-ray functionality, you better market it as such because the gaming & movie crowds might overlap but one is far larger than the other.
And that's not even bringing up the problems me and my friends experienced with first generation PS2s and their ability (or lack thereof) to play DVDs. I haven't played a DVD in a PS2 for years
Do one thing right and don't bloat your hardware please. You haven't had a spotless track record for testing prior to release and more functionality means a lot more testing.
Do you want me to see this as "The Playstation Three" or "The Sony Blu-Ray Player"? Pick one and make a solid product.
If you're caught doing something illegal, it's almost guaranteed there is some price you can pay the police to be let go.
In my opinion, this hurts local small businesses immensely. I believe that it makes them more difficult to succeed and lays the groundwork for an instable/weak capitalistic system. There's even a problem with local law enforcement and bribes in many other countries. Honestly, if there was one thing I think that would help countries get back on track, it would be better law enforcement especially on the local level. How can people be expected to work and thrive in a system when the letter of the law is uncertain? How can you expect them to run a business and distribute goods/services if a thief can pay off police when he burglarizes the store?
This is old news to anyone who works in Defense.
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In fact, if you want to use hardware/software in a classified area, it has to be from a United States based company and passed through a rigorous investigation as to whether or not it is safe to use. Even things like Java or C++ libraries have to undergo this for the simple fact of the matter that the US government is over-cautious.
Do you blame them? Can you strip down a Laptop and really ensure that there's nothing like a keystroke logger or a very very low-level chipset process running on a side processor or microcontroller that captures choice information and automatically sends it out the NIC to a Chinese agency?
You have to remember that there are conspiracy theorists out there that are paid and unpaid. The paid ones are simply better at controlling their imagination to realistic limits and are hired by governments to think & fear.
Now, do you remember when certain Chinese conspiracy theorists decided that China's government suspected Windows SP2 of foul play? This is more of the same kind of thinking
I think Google should only serve ads from legitimate businesses.
If an ad happens to offer free software, the target of the complaint shouldn't be Google but instead the business that is actually breaking the law. That's what makes sense to me.
Google should be able to take the ads down and halt service of those ads if an inquiry is warranted.
Otherwise, I've got a great business plan:
1. Make a piece of shill software.
2. Have your friend start a business that cracks it and offers it through Google ads.
3. Sue Google for the ads.
4. Profit.
You know, I might be the only one to feel this way, but I am glad that Nintendo isn't planning on monthly payments to leech money out of its victim ... er ... consumer.
... then let's exploit them, charge them a monthly fee to do so and make their character collect cans of Jolt(TM) to "power-up." Good luck.
In the eyes of Sony, you are addicts willing to pay anything for a console. In the eyes of other console makers/game producers, you are merely sacks of money and they want the moneys from inside you. One year of playing an online game at $12/month comes out to $144. The amount of money they get from advertisers is also very large considering putting it in a game.
I think that today, communications and technology are cheap. I pay for my broadband internet service provider, why do I have to pay again for another service of essentially the same thing? I would prefer paying $400 with no monthly fee for World of Warcraft instead of $40 with a $13 monthly fee. Why? Because in the two and a half years that it has been out, you've accumulated a price of $40 + $13*30 = $420 and we all know it won't end there. Monthly payments are a means to milk your users. I would rather them charge me lots of money and promise the service until the company is bankrupt. I like that Iwata wants to develop that as a successful business model and I hate that everyone is moving the other way.
I also don't care for product placement in my games. We're so concerned about society not viewing games as art when really they should be! They are the next new media to for artists and it's things like capitalising off of the end user and sacrificing content for product placement that really destroy any efforts to make this happen. Let's make a game that evokes emotions and deep responses from the user
The PS3 price is insane.
It's not insane historically speaking (see the charts) but it's insane to price it at $500 or $600.
The Wii is rumored to come out at $200-$250, so that's two for the price of the minimal PS3. But to compare the PS3 to Xbox 360, we have can look at it's price percentage. Between min and max, PS3's percent difference is (600-500)/500 or approximately 20%. The Xbox 360 has a difference of (400-300)/300 which is 33%. What's the point of upgrading later when another 20% of the bill will get you the full thing? To me that sounds foolish. I can definitely see that working with the Xbox but not when you're talking about prices around $600. If I'm going to pay that much, might as well throw on another $100.
I'm not concerned if it's upgradable and, frakly, I won't be too concerned with the PS3 until I see what it can do. Can it do twice what the Wii or Xbox 360 can? That remains to be seen.
The most respectable collection I can find is the OpenCD which has both OOo & Thunderbird on it, I believe.
This is becoming a popular idea.
It looks like the OpenDocument Fellowship will have another application to add to its list.
If you're a developer, like myself, you may be wondering how you can take advantage of OpenDocument. Afterall, the point of it is not to have to have developing licenses or the inability to generate your own documents for applications that your user uses. Check out their site for developers. From there, you can find the resources to begin writing your own code that generates ODF compliant files. If Microsoft ever switches to ODF compliance, you might be ahead of the game!
I'm surprised that they aren't taking weekly or monthly magnetic resonance images (MRI's) of the child's brain to track the growth of Broca's Area, a region of the brain long believed to control and develop speech.
It was this that Carl Sagan wrote of in Broca's Brain when he speculated on our ability to speak and communicate adeptly and sets us apart from animals.
I'd like to see this invetsigated further.
If you can't see them, there are 9 fish eye cameras mounted at certain points of the house and a day passes in 30 seconds (a la National Geographic plant blooming or Requiem for a Dream old lady on crack).
Each camera seems to have a round piece of paper ready to flip up and down to cover it (possibly via light switch in the room/area) should the family choose it to be necessary.
I think this is a wonderful and innovative idea, my only concern resides in the child's rights. I'm going to say I don't agree with even releasing these short clips to the public. I believe that this footage should be collected, protected & anonymity of the child enforced until the child is 18--at which point they will be capable of releasing the footage under whatever license (GPL even, lol) they deem appropriate. I understand that the parents have full custody, I only hope this child is in no way taken advantage of like so many prodigious children are by their parents.