Shouldn't this article be about IBM moving from Windows desktops to Linux desktops in general? I mean, Vista is still in beta form, why jump on the bandwagon about a company dissing Vista before it has even hit the store shelves. This is non-news. A company drops an as of yet unreleased product to use another product.
All this is is flame bait. I mean, your going to get all those guys in the Linux coffers going on about how great Linux is and how much Vista sucks, but they are complaining about a product that doesn't really exist yet (i.e. most of them don't know what the heck they are talking about).
Anyways, considering IBM has been working on lots of Linux pet projects, this isn't no shocker. Let us know when a company without a vested interest in Linux moves to the Linux platform over Windows, that is slightly more legitimate news.
I can't stand those scroll bars that recenter themselves after you scroll. Google Picasa uses them, and I guess someone at Microsoft ripped off the idea. They are a pain in the ass and counter intuitive, especially considering you can tell how far down the list you are. While I know that Microsoft gets rid of the Page 1 2 3 4 5... links by using this method, it still is not a very well implemented control.
What I don't think Search engines get is that if you list more then 20 results your doing nobody a favour. How often have you searched for something and then actually scrolled or navigated to the 100th results page to click on the 10,003rd link? If you don't find what your looking for in the first 10 - 20 search results then you need to narrow your search, or the search engine has to become a little more selective in the results it returns. Listing millions of search results is just dumb.
I would applaud a search engine that only ever returned the top 10 links of a search. It can still have a link to list the millions of other search results, but it only gives you the top 10 links in a concise set of results. I just think that Google and MSN are trying to out do each other by listing as many search results as possible, to demonstrate who has the bigger....index, but this does nobody good.
Its time to bring some quality into search engine results and stop this need for large quantity search results. Then at least they can get rid of that God awful scroll bar as you would never need it.
So Mac OSX security only works for 3 days, while someone is closely monitoring all web traffic?
If this was a legit challenge, then don't close the challenge. Leave it open, so that when you least suspect it, someone has hacked your site.
But is this challenge stating the security of OSX? Defacing a website is the same as having a Trojan virus installed that wipes out your applications or formats your system? Why not offer a challenge to find out if someone can write a virus that will adversely affect OSX. The delivery is unimportant, as long as there are people happily downloading apps from P2P, opening email attachments, and downloading security updates from email warnings. No OS is truly secure from human ignorance.
I guarantee that some hacker will deface the website, but I question the legitimacy of imposing a time limit on the challenge. Certainly hackers don't have a time limit when they corrupt Linux or Windows based website servers, so why impose one for Mac. I think someone is closely monitoring the challenge website, ready to counter any possibility of it being hacked in order to solidify the OSX security myth.
If they are not going to even get game ports from popular PC titles, then yet another black mark against the Xbox 360.
I don't think it would be too bad to port a PC MMORPG to a game console, the problem is that generally most PC games play better with a keyboard, few game consoles have ever come out with decent gamepad controls for PC ports. Even first person shooters generally work better with a keyboard and mouse rather then a game pad.
The problem then is, you have to expect that people will be interested in buying the extra keyboard for a game console, which in the past has proven to be non-successful. Few people have ever made money selling keyboards and mice accessories for a game console. Honestly, the Xbox360 should have shipped with a keyboard or at least does the Xbox360 even have a USB port? At least the PS2 had a USB port and could support standard USB PC keyboards.
In the end, trying to bastardized WoW to work with a gamepad ultimately sealed its fate for not being ported over to a game console.
Ground based telescopes will end up being for hobbyists that want to look at mars or the moon, true astronomy work will come from orbital telescopes that can peer into the far reaching depths of space. At least optical ones. Global climate changes shouldn't affect radio frequency telescopes for deep space scanning.
What the difference is between an Apple x86 system and a non-Apple x86 system, because to me, they are one in the same. So this review is not so much about the MacBook Pro, but just comparing two Intel based systems against each other, running OSX. Any performance improvement could be attributed to the P4 HT CPU rather then any differences between a Dell and Apple notebook. I don't see anything in the MacBook Pro that should improve performance over PC systems as its 98% PC anyways.
Sorry, this might seem like flame bait, but Apple users need to realize now that Apple is shipping a PC clone, there are few actual Apple designed hardware in these things anymore, they are using off the shelf PC components and CPU's. A lot of review sites and news sites seem to thing that the MacBook will perform better then a PC, but your comparing the same hardware.
It would be interesting if they compared the MacBook running OSX to an AMD based system hacked to run OSX.
Their tag line will be "Finally, something fun to do with 59 trillion calculations per second!". But nobody will buy it still because there really isn't anything fun about Mac what with virtually no game support.
The last Tomb Raider game was simply marred by horrible controls that prevented you from doing anything properly in the game. I mean, I was stuck in the first alley way for a hour trying to carefully jump between platforms without falling and having to get myself back to that location. In a game all about precise jumping and timing, having poor game control simply ruined the experience.
While Tomb Raider's original interface was novel at the time, the idea of specifically leaping up to ledges, swining on vines, leaping over platforms, all with a more manual approach to gameplay, ultimately what they need to do is adopt a more 3rd person style shooter system, where the character responds more quickly and some of the movements are automated to make the franchise shine. I don't want to play another version where I spend a hour falling off a platform because they keyboard and or gamepad doesn't respond quickly enough.
Often I search for something in Google, and the top 5 results INCLUDING the sponsored link are all websites that simply take your keywords and generate a list of links to other websites or perform their own searches. I mean, how on earth can Google give top ranking to websites that generate content on the fly?
Google was very quick to make an example out of BMW for artificially inflating their page ranking, but, I mean, BMW is an original content provider. I don't understand how Google can allow these spam crap sites to get top ranking using OBVIOUSLY deceptive practices.
Google's whole page ranking system is flawed. It penalizes legitimate content providers if they do anything to increase their page ranking, but allow spam sites and portals to get top ranking. I can see why BMW would want their website ranked higher then the spam sites that are often listed in the top 5 almost by default now.
And to even allow these spam sites to be sponsored links? Honestly, Google needs to learn how to turn down a buck by only taking money from legitimate content providers, they need to be a little more selective about their clientele.
As much as everybody hypes about Google and their "miraculous" services, advertising, and page ranking technology, these same virtues will end up being Google's vices, especially if some other search engine starts weeding through the crap and only showing the websites with true content.
What Google needs to do is beside every link listed, for registered users, offer a REAL rating system which allows users to suggest that the site is excellent, on topic, spam, broken, or simply crap. Google needs to start adding some humanity to their ranking system, their bots are failing to identify between premium content and the garbage that is flooding the net.
And finally, Sun can come out with all the free crap they can dream up of, Java, OpenOffice, open DRM, open this, open that. If nobody uses it or supports it, who cares. How many digital media players support Sun's Open DRM? How many music stores use it? Open DRM is for people using Linux getting crappy independent basement band music off the web.
It is one thing to say, look, we have Open DRM? Its another to make it a viable product, as has been the problem with ALL open source software.
And what exactly does Apple do, offer free and open DRM and hardware so that all may benefit from iTunes and iPod. Apple doesn't control their own little part of the market with their own proprietary DRM for music and movie files? Geeze, here I was thinking that Apple is the most monopolistic company on earth, dictating exactly what software and hardware are sold to their customers, and exactly what price that hardware should be sold for not allowing 3rd party resellers to offer discounts to customers unless Apple first authorizes those discounts. Apple also forces smaller resellers to go bankrupt by ensuring that only Apple stores and large resellers get supply first, choking supply to smaller companies.
Thanks for setting me straight, I thought that Apple was a dictator as well, but it seems that only Microsoft, with their support for tens of thousands of hardware and software products, cheap and easy to use software development tools allowing for both open source and shareware application development, a variety of XP versions to cater to individual and regional needs and allowing support for multiple music stores and support for a variety of digital media players with easy and inexpensive licensing schemes... yes, Microsoft is the biggest dictator out there. And like all dictators, they hold a gun to your head and force you to use their products. Shame on them, shaaaame!
Compared to Dell, these are still overpriced for the features offered, but there are a slew of budget PC makers, not to mention that your local ma and pa computer store could setup a better system for the same money.
So many people focus on the fact that Linux is free compared to Windows, but few people realize that it isn't the OS that makes a computer, its the applications.
With regards to a school environment, there is a slew of software developed and aimed squarely at the education system on Windows compared to Linux.
Sure, you can run OpenOffice, which mimics Windows Office close enough, and you can find a handful of other applications that will work such as web browsers and even a few decent graphics applications like GIMP. But, to run a school full of Linux computers is to miss out an tonnes of edutainment and educational software available to your students.
People need to stop focusing on the price of the OS and start wondering about the software that is available. I won't suggest that Linux is NEVER a solution, perhaps in the school's administration Linux would be idea, offering the word processing, spreadsheet, and email/web utilities that faculty need to use. But when it comes to student software, Windows has it in abundance, Linux doesn't;
You also miss the point that Linux still isn't for the layman. Linux can still be difficult to install and manage. Ubuntu may be the easiest Linux around, but I spend 3 days and gave up trying to install it on my notebook because it just didn't have proper video card support. If your School PC's are old, or very new, you will find that Linux may not be appropriate for easy setup and maintenance, and you will waste YOUR valuable time trying to set them up.
I agree that schools get little funding to buy computers and software, but Microsoft among a LOT OF OTHER corporations have sponsorship programs that will donate or significantly reduce the cost of computers and software in the school. If you are finding that licensing Windows is too expensive, contact Microsoft directly and I think you will be surprise at how far they will go to ensure you run Windows in the school. I have heard of Microsoft donating PC's to schools for just setting up a discounted Windows licensing program. Also, instead of considering just what YOUR school needs, get together with other schools in the district and you could bet large quantity discounts for buying 100's of licenses and/or PC's as opposed to just the handful you need in your school.
Finally, why do you need to install Windows Pro as opposed to Windows Home? Many people think they need Pro because they need to setup a network, but few people realize that you can connect Windows XP Home workstations to a network.
In the long run, while Linux may offer an incentive over Windows for price alone, that is usually the only consideration that people look at when considering this debate. In an educational environment, exposing your children to the rich set of tools and applications available on Windows, an environment they will most likely use outside of school, is more important that just having a computer at the school running a free OS.
And then adding it later on, like what Microsoft did with HD-DVD on the Xbox360.
I mean, I would be pissed off if I bought a game console that was supposed to support some feature, it was excluded so that it could be shotgunned to the stores before Christmas full of flaws, and then 6 - 12 months later the company comes out with a revised game console that not only includes the system with the new feature for a cheaper price but also fixes a slew of problems they found in the system. Oh, if you want that new feature not only did you pay too much to get the console in the first place but you actually have to pay extra for the expansion hardware to support the new feature.
Anyways, I would rather Sony wait until they finalized blu-ray spec's before releasing the PS3. I don't want to buy a beta game console like what every current Xbox360 owner has.
I don't burn CD's or even DVD's anymore. I own a bunch of rewritable media of both types, I have an iPod, and I use my laptop to view movies and content on my TV. I am waiting for a good network multimedia box so I can stream content from various PC's in the house to my home theater system. Either that or a decent HTPC. I rarely, if ever, have a need to buy blank media anymore.
The bottom line is, why not tax the CD's and DVD's with Hollywood content on them? I mean, why not impose a tax on people buying the content as a pre-emptive strike against the possibility of them copying and distributing the content for free. Why tax a blank CD or DVD that may or may not be used in piracy and instead tax the content that IS being pirated? I mean this is why most retail software is generally expensive because software makers are recuperating the expected loss of sales of software piracy by forcing legitimate software buyers to pay more. The same should go for those people still buying pre-recorded CD's and DVD's.
I am being tongue in cheek about this, but it just shows how out of touch the entertainment industry is with reality when they start imposing and expecting profits off of media that many people never use to pirate their content. If your worried about losing sales with CD's and DVD's, then charge more for them. Its been working for the software industry, they are a multi-billion dollar industry because of it.
I move to introduce the concept of Open Source music and movies. Every song should have posted the sheet music and lyrics and every DVD should have posted its screenplay online so that you can build your own free music and movie library legitimately. Open Source IS the solution for everything after all!!!!!!
Microsoft used to offer two flavours of Windows, Workstation and Server. With XP, because of the advanced settings that professionals use and home users don't care about, they came out with XP Home and Professional, as well as Server, which makes a lot of sense in my books. Why pay $300 for a home OS that you won't use half the features.
But, the EU was not happy with having a multimedia player and browser built into the OS, so the EU forced Microsoft to come out with Windows XP N which does not include Media Player, and of course that applies to both Home and Pro versions. Also, Windows is being highly pirated in poorer countries, so Microsoft felt it best to offer a stripped down cheap version of Windows to curb piracy in poorer markets.
So, in all, Microsoft is catering to both the needs and excessive lawsuits filed against them, the world want's 6 versions of Windows, and I am sure once Vista is released, the EU won't be happy, the poorer countries will continue to pirate, and people will continue to sue Microsoft for not making a product that suits them individually, so expect more custom versions of Windows Vista to appear.
It's the old adage, you can't please all of the people, all of the time, Microsoft is trying to, the problem is that people will sue them the moment it appears Microsoft isn't catering to their specific needs.
Honestly, I don't see why a company should be forced to expose their source code. A company investing billions into code has the right to protect their investment.
Should Mercedez, GM, Ford, BMW, VW, Fiat, Ferrari etc post detailed plans of every car and engine technology they design. Should google disclose their indexing technology? Should the US or EU post documents about every weapon they are in development or have developed. Should an airplane company like AirBus post plans about the planes they make? Should KFC post their secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices. Why don't the EU "leaders" publish details reports about there day to day activities, lets just throw privacy rights out the window and force EVERYBODY to be transparent. Secrets are evil, apparently.
Honestly, Microsoft is being singled out as a company that apparently has no right to protect their intellectual property, yet this is a practices that many other companies swear by and could not do business without that IP protected.
If Microsoft is forced to expose their source code, then so too should Apple, why not show the source code for Sun's Java virtual machine for that matter, or Adobe's products, or Google, or etc, etc, etc. Why not make every video game open source and stop using proprietary media formats like DVD's and CD's and allow free distribution of movies and music.
Either you allow protected source code and intellectual property to exist, or you don't, period. Just don't give me that BS that Microsoft has to expose their source code and no other software company out there has to. While I do agree that Microsoft should be punished for anti-competitive behaviour, the path that the EU taking is just damn stupid and vindictive.
And why is Open Source the god damned friggin solution to the world's problems? Most Open source applications I have used work 80% of the time, but have about 20% imperfections and quirks in them that don't get resolved version after version despite the apparently thousands of "community" programmers striving to make it perfect. They take years to beta test and never get it quite right before a new version is released which is radically different then the last. While it may be free to distribute, usually the interfaces are clunky and the software is difficult to use, or, the just blatantly rip off the UI of some retail software product. I just tried out OpenOffice Calc for the first time a few days ago, frightening similar to Excel with little added innovation or identity, I don't understand why Micorosft doesn't sue for being blatantly ripped off. Open source is a hobby for most people, working on that while they earn an income from a real job. I cannot stand open source projects that beg for donations while distributing good ideas for free. I won't "donate money" to use software. I will gladdly pay for an application that works as expected with minimum hassle, but don't beg for donations. I will never donate a dime to open source software, sell me the fricken software and earn a real living.
I think the EU is being very unreasonable and highly targeted against Microsoft. Honestly, I think that Microsoft should just pull the Windows OS from the store shelves of EU countries and end this fiasco and circus. The EU would be pressured very quickly by its citizens screaming to get Windows put back on the the store shelves. Microsoft is not obligated or forced to sell their products to EU countries, and if the EU can't stand having an American company sell products that dominate on their country men's computers, then either ban the software outright or dump billions into EU companies to make an alternative (just, don't base it on Unix or Linux, write a new freaking OS for a change, linux derivatives are getting really stale considering they never last or become successful). The EU is hoping Microsoft to expose their source code for free so that some French or German company can rip off Microsoft's ideas and create som
Lets beat that dead horse. Didn't make enough money off King Kong compared to LOTR, so lets franchise it to death. Perhaps the next King Kong game will actually be beta tested so that you can actually see it playing on next gen consoles.
I think that the cell phone market has it all wrong if they are aiming to add massive amounts of storage to a cell phone.
If I was a supposed industry leader in the cell phone market, I would announce that my phones would NEVER have more then a few megs of storage in them. Here is why!
Cell phones are ALL ABOUT SUBSCRIPTION and PAY PER USE services. The only reason why you have a camera on your cell phone is so you either pay a monthly service charge to allow x number of pictures/kilobytes to be transmitted for free, OR you pay $.10 - $.20 for each picture sent. Same with text messaging, same with video on a cell phone, same with music on a cell phone. These features are not added to benefit mankind, but to drive up your cell phone bills and make the phone companies more money.
I.e. the cellphone is a money making device. It makes money from its very existence, you can't use or even have a cell phone without spending money.
This is unlike mp3 players, PDA's, computers, etc, where you buy the device, it comes with X amount of storage, and you fill the device with hopefully legal content that you can listen or watch at your convenience without paying a dime extra.
So, when someone decides to turn a cellphone into a ubiquitous multimedia player with ample storage, why should ANY cell phone maker rush to implement these feature? Why should a cellphone company allow the user to store gigabytes of high resolution pictures so they can return home to their PC and download the pictures FOR FREE to their computer. Why should a cellphone company allow people to listen to hours of music or watch hours of video FOR FREE. Why should a cellphone company allow ANY feature to be used for free on a cellphone.
Instead, the future of cellphone multimedia lies squarely in subscription services. You can stream music from the cellphone network, FOR A PRICE. Stream pictures taken to an online storage facility, FOR A PRICE. Stream video and data services FOR A PRICE. Even for those people that want to buy a song online with a cellphone, buying the music only puts the song into some online storage container that is streamed to your cellphone, for a price of course.
I can't see cellphone companies embracing technology that effectively ruins their subscription based market. Allowing users to store gigabytes of pictures, music, video, or text might get people to buy the cell phone, but cellular service providers won't want to carry a phone that doesn't force the end user to buy into some subscription or pay-per-use service.
Unlike digital multimedia players, cell phones are tied to a network. Given sufficient bandwidth, constant "always-on" music and video and data streaming should be possible, if for a price. I think cell companies are going to want to implement these subscription based features rather then slapping 8gb of hard drive into a cellphone so the end user doesn't spend a dime on ring tones, games, music, video, and other subscription services because they can find content on bit torrent or eDonkey.
In the end, perhaps only PDA based cellphones will get the boost in storage, but I can't see the average cell phone coming with gigabytes of storage, it just doesn't make sense.
But they are in ogg format. Didn't even know there was a ogg video format. As long as the Linux world continues to alienate those using Windows, I don't care about it.
I.e. Make the vides in WMV or even just avi or divx format and then let all the billions of PC users see what they are missing and possibly want to move over to Linux, instead of just catering to the millions of linux users that happen to use OGG. Its like preaching to the choir, they already heard that sermon thousands of times.
TCO estimates and debates are a complete waste of time. Either your trying to promote your product over some other product, or your biased against the product your testing. TCO's are inherently flawed "faq's".
The bottom line is, with Open Source software, while the source code can be inexpensive or even free, whether or not you have the write skill set to make use of it will determine your TCO.
Have a staff of people that are not skilled with OOS and your TCO will skyrocket with long development cycles (unless your getting your OOS work done on a voluntary basis). Switch to OOS solutions and if your IT department isn't skilled, your TCO will skyrocket because of flawed implementation or not recognizing proper "free" solutions to implement, thus costing your company money to resolve the issues.
Same goes on the retail software side. You can't expect retail paid for software to work miracles either, unskilled staff will drive up prices of both OOS and retail software/technology solutions.
I just grow tired of the whole, "My product is better then yours because it has less TCO", mentality. Anybody TRULY objective about TCO estimates will realize that you can't look at nice, trite, situations where the solutions work flawlessly with skilled staff. Any OOS proponent that claims OOS will always cost less then retail software is just deluding themselves and others. Same goes for retail software proponents.
In the end, the bottom line is, if you find a solution that works, stick with it. I find too often that companies paying for retail software/technology licenses suddenly decide to switch to Open source solutions, thinking it will save them money and they will get the same quality of service. If their retail solutions ARE working, and they are not affected by the cost of licensing retail software, DON'T SWITCH! The moment some CEO decides that it is time to switch to Open source solutions in order to make a few extra million on top of their already profitable business, then that is when companies fail.
If your in the process of looking for a solution because your existing solution is costly to implement AND isn't meeting your needs, then by all means look at ALL solutions, both open source and retail.
The last thing that TCO reports do is given management a false sense of security when moving to some solution just because some biased 3rd party wrote up a convincing argument that suggests it is cheaper to use their solution. TCO reports are inherently flawed, don't make the mistake of implementing a solution on cost alone.
Music is a stereo format. We only have two ears, so it only makes sense to encode two channels for music. Surround music is a superfluous and unnatural extension of digital music.
All our lives, we listen to music, even live music, coming from a single source. Whether its an individual voice or instrument, or a band, or even a symphony orchestra, we here music being radiated from essentially a point source, radiating to hit our ears. We turn to face the music, generally don't listen to live music from behind. We don't here music coming at us from all directions. Most of us have never sat in the middle of an orchestra or even in a band, so we have no point of reference to hear violins at our right, drums behind up, wind instruments off to the rear left, etc, etc. Most of us would find that cacophony of music to be distracting and distasteful. We don't need to "artificially" master music to come from multiple channels. There is no need for the vocals to come front center, the guitar to be played front right, drums rear left, bass rear right, and backup vocals off center to the left.
The only point I could see of multi-channel music is to record the reverb that actually radiates from behind us. And that would be a waste of bytes. Computer technology is capable of taking a stereo source and applying algorithms to add reverb back, so you can sound like your listening to music in a concert hall, or the intimate muted environment of a jazz club. There is no need to discretely record reverb. Recording reverb will only mess up the recorded source, as some people don't like the echo of a concert hall, so why record it and force people to hear the echo. Some people don't like the muted sounds of a jazz club, so why force them to listen to the music muted. Recording the music free of reverb and letting people fine tune playback of music using digital signal processing has succeeded in making music a popular entertainment format.
This is unlike movie soundtracks where a 2D screen is trying to record 3D reality. Having a car or helicopter roar from the background before appearing on screen overhead or an explosion off to the left is one of the ways to immerse viewers into the movie,we are expecting to hear sound coming from multiple points around the room, not just flatly projected from the front.
Multi-channel music will simply cause MP3's will become bloated, storing discrete 5.1 channels would increase file sizes by 2.5 times. For what purpose? None that I can imagine would actually make the MP3 format more popular.
MP3 also hopes to become the standard for encoding movies and games in 5.1 surround. Why? Don't we already have 2 competing standards that are more then capable of offering high quality multi-channel sound? (DTS and Dolby Digital), we don't need another format that doesn't have a chance to compete.
I would prefer if MP3 became a high fidelity format, storing music in BETTER then CD quality, storing music with higher bit and sampling rates. Storing more of the information, not just the audio range humans supposedly can only hear. These "inaudible" sounds create the ambiance that is missing from digital music, the stomach vibrating lows and the highs that interact with the environment in ways that we can FEEL rather then here. This is what is missing when digitally recording live music. I would rather MP3 files double or triple in size due to more of the original sound data being stored, rather then to store multiple channels of audio.
Multi-channel audio has failed to catch on, because it is unnatural. DVD Audio and Super CD both failed as a music format. Also, quadraphonic records back in the day didn't translate into quadraphonic CD's. Multi-channel MP3's will fail to catch on as well.
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Shouldn't this article be about IBM moving from Windows desktops to Linux desktops in general? I mean, Vista is still in beta form, why jump on the bandwagon about a company dissing Vista before it has even hit the store shelves. This is non-news. A company drops an as of yet unreleased product to use another product.
All this is is flame bait. I mean, your going to get all those guys in the Linux coffers going on about how great Linux is and how much Vista sucks, but they are complaining about a product that doesn't really exist yet (i.e. most of them don't know what the heck they are talking about).
Anyways, considering IBM has been working on lots of Linux pet projects, this isn't no shocker. Let us know when a company without a vested interest in Linux moves to the Linux platform over Windows, that is slightly more legitimate news.
I can't stand those scroll bars that recenter themselves after you scroll. Google Picasa uses them, and I guess someone at Microsoft ripped off the idea. They are a pain in the ass and counter intuitive, especially considering you can tell how far down the list you are. While I know that Microsoft gets rid of the Page 1 2 3 4 5... links by using this method, it still is not a very well implemented control.
What I don't think Search engines get is that if you list more then 20 results your doing nobody a favour. How often have you searched for something and then actually scrolled or navigated to the 100th results page to click on the 10,003rd link? If you don't find what your looking for in the first 10 - 20 search results then you need to narrow your search, or the search engine has to become a little more selective in the results it returns. Listing millions of search results is just dumb.
I would applaud a search engine that only ever returned the top 10 links of a search. It can still have a link to list the millions of other search results, but it only gives you the top 10 links in a concise set of results. I just think that Google and MSN are trying to out do each other by listing as many search results as possible, to demonstrate who has the bigger....index, but this does nobody good.
Its time to bring some quality into search engine results and stop this need for large quantity search results. Then at least they can get rid of that God awful scroll bar as you would never need it.
So Mac OSX security only works for 3 days, while someone is closely monitoring all web traffic?
If this was a legit challenge, then don't close the challenge. Leave it open, so that when you least suspect it, someone has hacked your site.
But is this challenge stating the security of OSX? Defacing a website is the same as having a Trojan virus installed that wipes out your applications or formats your system? Why not offer a challenge to find out if someone can write a virus that will adversely affect OSX. The delivery is unimportant, as long as there are people happily downloading apps from P2P, opening email attachments, and downloading security updates from email warnings. No OS is truly secure from human ignorance.
I guarantee that some hacker will deface the website, but I question the legitimacy of imposing a time limit on the challenge. Certainly hackers don't have a time limit when they corrupt Linux or Windows based website servers, so why impose one for Mac. I think someone is closely monitoring the challenge website, ready to counter any possibility of it being hacked in order to solidify the OSX security myth.
If they are not going to even get game ports from popular PC titles, then yet another black mark against the Xbox 360.
I don't think it would be too bad to port a PC MMORPG to a game console, the problem is that generally most PC games play better with a keyboard, few game consoles have ever come out with decent gamepad controls for PC ports. Even first person shooters generally work better with a keyboard and mouse rather then a game pad.
The problem then is, you have to expect that people will be interested in buying the extra keyboard for a game console, which in the past has proven to be non-successful. Few people have ever made money selling keyboards and mice accessories for a game console. Honestly, the Xbox360 should have shipped with a keyboard or at least does the Xbox360 even have a USB port? At least the PS2 had a USB port and could support standard USB PC keyboards.
In the end, trying to bastardized WoW to work with a gamepad ultimately sealed its fate for not being ported over to a game console.
. . . . I got nothing. Its going to be called the PS3?
Ground based telescopes will end up being for hobbyists that want to look at mars or the moon, true astronomy work will come from orbital telescopes that can peer into the far reaching depths of space. At least optical ones. Global climate changes shouldn't affect radio frequency telescopes for deep space scanning.
"Highly explosive". Fuel cells are about as highly explosive as a Zippo lighter. We all know how many people have died when their Zippo blew up.
What the difference is between an Apple x86 system and a non-Apple x86 system, because to me, they are one in the same. So this review is not so much about the MacBook Pro, but just comparing two Intel based systems against each other, running OSX. Any performance improvement could be attributed to the P4 HT CPU rather then any differences between a Dell and Apple notebook. I don't see anything in the MacBook Pro that should improve performance over PC systems as its 98% PC anyways.
Sorry, this might seem like flame bait, but Apple users need to realize now that Apple is shipping a PC clone, there are few actual Apple designed hardware in these things anymore, they are using off the shelf PC components and CPU's. A lot of review sites and news sites seem to thing that the MacBook will perform better then a PC, but your comparing the same hardware.
It would be interesting if they compared the MacBook running OSX to an AMD based system hacked to run OSX.
Their tag line will be "Finally, something fun to do with 59 trillion calculations per second!". But nobody will buy it still because there really isn't anything fun about Mac what with virtually no game support.
The last Tomb Raider game was simply marred by horrible controls that prevented you from doing anything properly in the game. I mean, I was stuck in the first alley way for a hour trying to carefully jump between platforms without falling and having to get myself back to that location. In a game all about precise jumping and timing, having poor game control simply ruined the experience.
While Tomb Raider's original interface was novel at the time, the idea of specifically leaping up to ledges, swining on vines, leaping over platforms, all with a more manual approach to gameplay, ultimately what they need to do is adopt a more 3rd person style shooter system, where the character responds more quickly and some of the movements are automated to make the franchise shine. I don't want to play another version where I spend a hour falling off a platform because they keyboard and or gamepad doesn't respond quickly enough.
Just, don't make another movie out of it, please!
Often I search for something in Google, and the top 5 results INCLUDING the sponsored link are all websites that simply take your keywords and generate a list of links to other websites or perform their own searches. I mean, how on earth can Google give top ranking to websites that generate content on the fly?
Google was very quick to make an example out of BMW for artificially inflating their page ranking, but, I mean, BMW is an original content provider. I don't understand how Google can allow these spam crap sites to get top ranking using OBVIOUSLY deceptive practices.
Google's whole page ranking system is flawed. It penalizes legitimate content providers if they do anything to increase their page ranking, but allow spam sites and portals to get top ranking. I can see why BMW would want their website ranked higher then the spam sites that are often listed in the top 5 almost by default now.
And to even allow these spam sites to be sponsored links? Honestly, Google needs to learn how to turn down a buck by only taking money from legitimate content providers, they need to be a little more selective about their clientele.
As much as everybody hypes about Google and their "miraculous" services, advertising, and page ranking technology, these same virtues will end up being Google's vices, especially if some other search engine starts weeding through the crap and only showing the websites with true content.
What Google needs to do is beside every link listed, for registered users, offer a REAL rating system which allows users to suggest that the site is excellent, on topic, spam, broken, or simply crap. Google needs to start adding some humanity to their ranking system, their bots are failing to identify between premium content and the garbage that is flooding the net.
And finally, Sun can come out with all the free crap they can dream up of, Java, OpenOffice, open DRM, open this, open that. If nobody uses it or supports it, who cares. How many digital media players support Sun's Open DRM? How many music stores use it? Open DRM is for people using Linux getting crappy independent basement band music off the web.
It is one thing to say, look, we have Open DRM? Its another to make it a viable product, as has been the problem with ALL open source software.
And what exactly does Apple do, offer free and open DRM and hardware so that all may benefit from iTunes and iPod. Apple doesn't control their own little part of the market with their own proprietary DRM for music and movie files? Geeze, here I was thinking that Apple is the most monopolistic company on earth, dictating exactly what software and hardware are sold to their customers, and exactly what price that hardware should be sold for not allowing 3rd party resellers to offer discounts to customers unless Apple first authorizes those discounts. Apple also forces smaller resellers to go bankrupt by ensuring that only Apple stores and large resellers get supply first, choking supply to smaller companies.
Thanks for setting me straight, I thought that Apple was a dictator as well, but it seems that only Microsoft, with their support for tens of thousands of hardware and software products, cheap and easy to use software development tools allowing for both open source and shareware application development, a variety of XP versions to cater to individual and regional needs and allowing support for multiple music stores and support for a variety of digital media players with easy and inexpensive licensing schemes... yes, Microsoft is the biggest dictator out there. And like all dictators, they hold a gun to your head and force you to use their products. Shame on them, shaaaame!
Compared to Dell, these are still overpriced for the features offered, but there are a slew of budget PC makers, not to mention that your local ma and pa computer store could setup a better system for the same money.
So many people focus on the fact that Linux is free compared to Windows, but few people realize that it isn't the OS that makes a computer, its the applications.
With regards to a school environment, there is a slew of software developed and aimed squarely at the education system on Windows compared to Linux.
Sure, you can run OpenOffice, which mimics Windows Office close enough, and you can find a handful of other applications that will work such as web browsers and even a few decent graphics applications like GIMP. But, to run a school full of Linux computers is to miss out an tonnes of edutainment and educational software available to your students.
People need to stop focusing on the price of the OS and start wondering about the software that is available. I won't suggest that Linux is NEVER a solution, perhaps in the school's administration Linux would be idea, offering the word processing, spreadsheet, and email/web utilities that faculty need to use. But when it comes to student software, Windows has it in abundance, Linux doesn't;
You also miss the point that Linux still isn't for the layman. Linux can still be difficult to install and manage. Ubuntu may be the easiest Linux around, but I spend 3 days and gave up trying to install it on my notebook because it just didn't have proper video card support. If your School PC's are old, or very new, you will find that Linux may not be appropriate for easy setup and maintenance, and you will waste YOUR valuable time trying to set them up.
I agree that schools get little funding to buy computers and software, but Microsoft among a LOT OF OTHER corporations have sponsorship programs that will donate or significantly reduce the cost of computers and software in the school. If you are finding that licensing Windows is too expensive, contact Microsoft directly and I think you will be surprise at how far they will go to ensure you run Windows in the school. I have heard of Microsoft donating PC's to schools for just setting up a discounted Windows licensing program. Also, instead of considering just what YOUR school needs, get together with other schools in the district and you could bet large quantity discounts for buying 100's of licenses and/or PC's as opposed to just the handful you need in your school.
Finally, why do you need to install Windows Pro as opposed to Windows Home? Many people think they need Pro because they need to setup a network, but few people realize that you can connect Windows XP Home workstations to a network.
In the long run, while Linux may offer an incentive over Windows for price alone, that is usually the only consideration that people look at when considering this debate. In an educational environment, exposing your children to the rich set of tools and applications available on Windows, an environment they will most likely use outside of school, is more important that just having a computer at the school running a free OS.
And then adding it later on, like what Microsoft did with HD-DVD on the Xbox360.
I mean, I would be pissed off if I bought a game console that was supposed to support some feature, it was excluded so that it could be shotgunned to the stores before Christmas full of flaws, and then 6 - 12 months later the company comes out with a revised game console that not only includes the system with the new feature for a cheaper price but also fixes a slew of problems they found in the system. Oh, if you want that new feature not only did you pay too much to get the console in the first place but you actually have to pay extra for the expansion hardware to support the new feature.
Anyways, I would rather Sony wait until they finalized blu-ray spec's before releasing the PS3. I don't want to buy a beta game console like what every current Xbox360 owner has.
I don't burn CD's or even DVD's anymore. I own a bunch of rewritable media of both types, I have an iPod, and I use my laptop to view movies and content on my TV. I am waiting for a good network multimedia box so I can stream content from various PC's in the house to my home theater system. Either that or a decent HTPC. I rarely, if ever, have a need to buy blank media anymore.
The bottom line is, why not tax the CD's and DVD's with Hollywood content on them? I mean, why not impose a tax on people buying the content as a pre-emptive strike against the possibility of them copying and distributing the content for free. Why tax a blank CD or DVD that may or may not be used in piracy and instead tax the content that IS being pirated? I mean this is why most retail software is generally expensive because software makers are recuperating the expected loss of sales of software piracy by forcing legitimate software buyers to pay more. The same should go for those people still buying pre-recorded CD's and DVD's.
I am being tongue in cheek about this, but it just shows how out of touch the entertainment industry is with reality when they start imposing and expecting profits off of media that many people never use to pirate their content. If your worried about losing sales with CD's and DVD's, then charge more for them. Its been working for the software industry, they are a multi-billion dollar industry because of it.
I move to introduce the concept of Open Source music and movies. Every song should have posted the sheet music and lyrics and every DVD should have posted its screenplay online so that you can build your own free music and movie library legitimately. Open Source IS the solution for everything after all!!!!!!
Why do you think this is Microsoft's fault?
Microsoft used to offer two flavours of Windows, Workstation and Server. With XP, because of the advanced settings that professionals use and home users don't care about, they came out with XP Home and Professional, as well as Server, which makes a lot of sense in my books. Why pay $300 for a home OS that you won't use half the features.
But, the EU was not happy with having a multimedia player and browser built into the OS, so the EU forced Microsoft to come out with Windows XP N which does not include Media Player, and of course that applies to both Home and Pro versions. Also, Windows is being highly pirated in poorer countries, so Microsoft felt it best to offer a stripped down cheap version of Windows to curb piracy in poorer markets.
So, in all, Microsoft is catering to both the needs and excessive lawsuits filed against them, the world want's 6 versions of Windows, and I am sure once Vista is released, the EU won't be happy, the poorer countries will continue to pirate, and people will continue to sue Microsoft for not making a product that suits them individually, so expect more custom versions of Windows Vista to appear.
It's the old adage, you can't please all of the people, all of the time, Microsoft is trying to, the problem is that people will sue them the moment it appears Microsoft isn't catering to their specific needs.
Why is open source the solution?
Honestly, I don't see why a company should be forced to expose their source code. A company investing billions into code has the right to protect their investment.
Should Mercedez, GM, Ford, BMW, VW, Fiat, Ferrari etc post detailed plans of every car and engine technology they design.
Should google disclose their indexing technology?
Should the US or EU post documents about every weapon they are in development or have developed.
Should an airplane company like AirBus post plans about the planes they make?
Should KFC post their secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices.
Why don't the EU "leaders" publish details reports about there day to day activities, lets just throw privacy rights out the window and force EVERYBODY to be transparent. Secrets are evil, apparently.
Honestly, Microsoft is being singled out as a company that apparently has no right to protect their intellectual property, yet this is a practices that many other companies swear by and could not do business without that IP protected.
If Microsoft is forced to expose their source code, then so too should Apple, why not show the source code for Sun's Java virtual machine for that matter, or Adobe's products, or Google, or etc, etc, etc. Why not make every video game open source and stop using proprietary media formats like DVD's and CD's and allow free distribution of movies and music.
Either you allow protected source code and intellectual property to exist, or you don't, period. Just don't give me that BS that Microsoft has to expose their source code and no other software company out there has to. While I do agree that Microsoft should be punished for anti-competitive behaviour, the path that the EU taking is just damn stupid and vindictive.
And why is Open Source the god damned friggin solution to the world's problems? Most Open source applications I have used work 80% of the time, but have about 20% imperfections and quirks in them that don't get resolved version after version despite the apparently thousands of "community" programmers striving to make it perfect. They take years to beta test and never get it quite right before a new version is released which is radically different then the last. While it may be free to distribute, usually the interfaces are clunky and the software is difficult to use, or, the just blatantly rip off the UI of some retail software product. I just tried out OpenOffice Calc for the first time a few days ago, frightening similar to Excel with little added innovation or identity, I don't understand why Micorosft doesn't sue for being blatantly ripped off. Open source is a hobby for most people, working on that while they earn an income from a real job. I cannot stand open source projects that beg for donations while distributing good ideas for free. I won't "donate money" to use software. I will gladdly pay for an application that works as expected with minimum hassle, but don't beg for donations. I will never donate a dime to open source software, sell me the fricken software and earn a real living.
I think the EU is being very unreasonable and highly targeted against Microsoft. Honestly, I think that Microsoft should just pull the Windows OS from the store shelves of EU countries and end this fiasco and circus. The EU would be pressured very quickly by its citizens screaming to get Windows put back on the the store shelves. Microsoft is not obligated or forced to sell their products to EU countries, and if the EU can't stand having an American company sell products that dominate on their country men's computers, then either ban the software outright or dump billions into EU companies to make an alternative (just, don't base it on Unix or Linux, write a new freaking OS for a change, linux derivatives are getting really stale considering they never last or become successful). The EU is hoping Microsoft to expose their source code for free so that some French or German company can rip off Microsoft's ideas and create som
Lets beat that dead horse. Didn't make enough money off King Kong compared to LOTR, so lets franchise it to death. Perhaps the next King Kong game will actually be beta tested so that you can actually see it playing on next gen consoles.
Infinium CEO: "Mirror Mirror on the wall, who has the greatest console of all."
Mirror: "Nintendo, deposit $10 million in my Caymen bank account please!"
Infinium CEO: "No, Mirror Mirror on the wall, who has the GREATEST console of all!"
Mirror: "er, Microsoft? deposit $50 million in my Bermuda account."
Infinium CEO: "No, listen jerk! Mirror Mirror on the wall, who has the f*cking GREATEST console of all f*cking time!!!!"
Mirror: "Yeah, thats Sony! It's going to cost you another $300 million before you figure that out asshole!"
I think that the cell phone market has it all wrong if they are aiming to add massive amounts of storage to a cell phone.
If I was a supposed industry leader in the cell phone market, I would announce that my phones would NEVER have more then a few megs of storage in them. Here is why!
Cell phones are ALL ABOUT SUBSCRIPTION and PAY PER USE services. The only reason why you have a camera on your cell phone is so you either pay a monthly service charge to allow x number of pictures/kilobytes to be transmitted for free, OR you pay $.10 - $.20 for each picture sent. Same with text messaging, same with video on a cell phone, same with music on a cell phone. These features are not added to benefit mankind, but to drive up your cell phone bills and make the phone companies more money.
I.e. the cellphone is a money making device. It makes money from its very existence, you can't use or even have a cell phone without spending money.
This is unlike mp3 players, PDA's, computers, etc, where you buy the device, it comes with X amount of storage, and you fill the device with hopefully legal content that you can listen or watch at your convenience without paying a dime extra.
So, when someone decides to turn a cellphone into a ubiquitous multimedia player with ample storage, why should ANY cell phone maker rush to implement these feature? Why should a cellphone company allow the user to store gigabytes of high resolution pictures so they can return home to their PC and download the pictures FOR FREE to their computer. Why should a cellphone company allow people to listen to hours of music or watch hours of video FOR FREE. Why should a cellphone company allow ANY feature to be used for free on a cellphone.
Instead, the future of cellphone multimedia lies squarely in subscription services. You can stream music from the cellphone network, FOR A PRICE. Stream pictures taken to an online storage facility, FOR A PRICE. Stream video and data services FOR A PRICE. Even for those people that want to buy a song online with a cellphone, buying the music only puts the song into some online storage container that is streamed to your cellphone, for a price of course.
I can't see cellphone companies embracing technology that effectively ruins their subscription based market. Allowing users to store gigabytes of pictures, music, video, or text might get people to buy the cell phone, but cellular service providers won't want to carry a phone that doesn't force the end user to buy into some subscription or pay-per-use service.
Unlike digital multimedia players, cell phones are tied to a network. Given sufficient bandwidth, constant "always-on" music and video and data streaming should be possible, if for a price. I think cell companies are going to want to implement these subscription based features rather then slapping 8gb of hard drive into a cellphone so the end user doesn't spend a dime on ring tones, games, music, video, and other subscription services because they can find content on bit torrent or eDonkey.
In the end, perhaps only PDA based cellphones will get the boost in storage, but I can't see the average cell phone coming with gigabytes of storage, it just doesn't make sense.
But they are in ogg format. Didn't even know there was a ogg video format. As long as the Linux world continues to alienate those using Windows, I don't care about it.
I.e. Make the vides in WMV or even just avi or divx format and then let all the billions of PC users see what they are missing and possibly want to move over to Linux, instead of just catering to the millions of linux users that happen to use OGG. Its like preaching to the choir, they already heard that sermon thousands of times.
TCO estimates and debates are a complete waste of time. Either your trying to promote your product over some other product, or your biased against the product your testing. TCO's are inherently flawed "faq's".
The bottom line is, with Open Source software, while the source code can be inexpensive or even free, whether or not you have the write skill set to make use of it will determine your TCO.
Have a staff of people that are not skilled with OOS and your TCO will skyrocket with long development cycles (unless your getting your OOS work done on a voluntary basis). Switch to OOS solutions and if your IT department isn't skilled, your TCO will skyrocket because of flawed implementation or not recognizing proper "free" solutions to implement, thus costing your company money to resolve the issues.
Same goes on the retail software side. You can't expect retail paid for software to work miracles either, unskilled staff will drive up prices of both OOS and retail software/technology solutions.
I just grow tired of the whole, "My product is better then yours because it has less TCO", mentality. Anybody TRULY objective about TCO estimates will realize that you can't look at nice, trite, situations where the solutions work flawlessly with skilled staff. Any OOS proponent that claims OOS will always cost less then retail software is just deluding themselves and others. Same goes for retail software proponents.
In the end, the bottom line is, if you find a solution that works, stick with it. I find too often that companies paying for retail software/technology licenses suddenly decide to switch to Open source solutions, thinking it will save them money and they will get the same quality of service. If their retail solutions ARE working, and they are not affected by the cost of licensing retail software, DON'T SWITCH! The moment some CEO decides that it is time to switch to Open source solutions in order to make a few extra million on top of their already profitable business, then that is when companies fail.
If your in the process of looking for a solution because your existing solution is costly to implement AND isn't meeting your needs, then by all means look at ALL solutions, both open source and retail.
The last thing that TCO reports do is given management a false sense of security when moving to some solution just because some biased 3rd party wrote up a convincing argument that suggests it is cheaper to use their solution. TCO reports are inherently flawed, don't make the mistake of implementing a solution on cost alone.
Music is a stereo format. We only have two ears, so it only makes sense to encode two channels for music. Surround music is a superfluous and unnatural extension of digital music.
All our lives, we listen to music, even live music, coming from a single source. Whether its an individual voice or instrument, or a band, or even a symphony orchestra, we here music being radiated from essentially a point source, radiating to hit our ears. We turn to face the music, generally don't listen to live music from behind. We don't here music coming at us from all directions. Most of us have never sat in the middle of an orchestra or even in a band, so we have no point of reference to hear violins at our right, drums behind up, wind instruments off to the rear left, etc, etc. Most of us would find that cacophony of music to be distracting and distasteful. We don't need to "artificially" master music to come from multiple channels. There is no need for the vocals to come front center, the guitar to be played front right, drums rear left, bass rear right, and backup vocals off center to the left.
The only point I could see of multi-channel music is to record the reverb that actually radiates from behind us. And that would be a waste of bytes. Computer technology is capable of taking a stereo source and applying algorithms to add reverb back, so you can sound like your listening to music in a concert hall, or the intimate muted environment of a jazz club. There is no need to discretely record reverb. Recording reverb will only mess up the recorded source, as some people don't like the echo of a concert hall, so why record it and force people to hear the echo. Some people don't like the muted sounds of a jazz club, so why force them to listen to the music muted. Recording the music free of reverb and letting people fine tune playback of music using digital signal processing has succeeded in making music a popular entertainment format.
This is unlike movie soundtracks where a 2D screen is trying to record 3D reality. Having a car or helicopter roar from the background before appearing on screen overhead or an explosion off to the left is one of the ways to immerse viewers into the movie,we are expecting to hear sound coming from multiple points around the room, not just flatly projected from the front.
Multi-channel music will simply cause MP3's will become bloated, storing discrete 5.1 channels would increase file sizes by 2.5 times. For what purpose? None that I can imagine would actually make the MP3 format more popular.
MP3 also hopes to become the standard for encoding movies and games in 5.1 surround. Why? Don't we already have 2 competing standards that are more then capable of offering high quality multi-channel sound? (DTS and Dolby Digital), we don't need another format that doesn't have a chance to compete.
I would prefer if MP3 became a high fidelity format, storing music in BETTER then CD quality, storing music with higher bit and sampling rates. Storing more of the information, not just the audio range humans supposedly can only hear. These "inaudible" sounds create the ambiance that is missing from digital music, the stomach vibrating lows and the highs that interact with the environment in ways that we can FEEL rather then here. This is what is missing when digitally recording live music. I would rather MP3 files double or triple in size due to more of the original sound data being stored, rather then to store multiple channels of audio.
Multi-channel audio has failed to catch on, because it is unnatural. DVD Audio and Super CD both failed as a music format. Also, quadraphonic records back in the day didn't translate into quadraphonic CD's. Multi-channel MP3's will fail to catch on as well.