Posts by JEDIDIAH
1536 posts • joined Monday 26th January 2009 18:23 GMT
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Posted in WTF is... up with e-book pricing?
Completely unjustifiable level of optimism.
> The books you buy from Amazon are not tied to your kindle.
Of course it is. Or rather, it is tied to the Kindle app. It's not quite so much like proprietary Mac software but more like proprietary MS-DOS software. The effect is still the same. YOUR "property" remains essentially a rental that Amazon can revoke at any time it likes.
The fact that Amazon is not a single hardware vendor standard is somewhat nice but the same basic problem remains. You don't really own what you buy. You are not in a position to resell it or take your own steps to preserve it. You remain always at the mercy of Amazon.
As long as some corporation "owns the format" of your data, you are in the same vulnerable position.
Posted in Blu-ray barely better than DVD
Sturgeons Law
Of course Sturgeons Law still applies. Most stuff is crap anyways. The fact that the new consumer product is the all singing all dancing crap of the world doesn't change that fact. Quality varies WILDLY with both formats. You can cherry pick the videos to get whatever result you want out of this sort of study.
For BD to better, EVERY THING has to fall into line. The entire original production process and subsequent transfer to disk has to be done as if the studio cares about the end result. You also need a good player and comparisons are only valid if your DVD player is equally competent.
Trying to grease that slippery slope.
> if for every 10,000 pirates there exist 1 homebrew
> developer, then the main reason for the mod is
> piracy, homebrew is nothing more then a side effect
> of what was ultimately used for piracy (don't let the
> blood go to your head).
You could use the same logic to BAN OUTRIGHT all civilian ownership of general purpose computers.
THIS is the main problem with allowing Hollywood and friends to set technology and legal policy. ANY device that places control in the hands of end users "enables piracy". Copying stuff is one of the most very basic fundemental features of a computing device.
If they got their way, my Unix production servers would be burdened with measures to prevent the hardware from being repurchased for some dastardly private home use.
I bought it, I own it.
> Look at all the freetards trying to defend the pirate.
Look at the corporate serf trying to defend corporations stealing rights away from the common man.
Posted in WTF is... up with e-book pricing?
Crassius Maximus is the real problem.
> We haven't really caught on but our digital storage
> lasts a nanofraction of how long print lasts. Alright,
> there's plenty of pulp and acidic paper and ink that'll
> rot, but we know pretty well how to deal with it. We
> don't yet know that for digital.
Nonsense. If the data formats are open, and not owned by some company like Microsoft or Amazon then dealing with pure data is actually pretty simple.
My "media store" includes stuff that's over 15 years old. It includes things in well understood formats and even includes some older "e-books". If data is in a format that is actually intended to be read openly by any platform, then the challenges are much less difficult.
Most of my digital music collection predates any effort by Apple in this area.
Stuff like DRM and proprietary formats are what complicate things.
Are you stuck using a Microsoft, Apple or Amazon product to read your data?
Books simply should not come with a corporate brand and associated necessary proprietary decoders.
Posted in WTF is... up with e-book pricing?
Oh Pulleeeze...
> House big enough to keep a library of paper books - a very large six-figure sum.
Are you kidding? There were people in the Soviet Union that could afford books and had place to put them. What kind of spoiled American (oops, forgot where I was posting) suburbanite are you that you can't find a little space for a bookshelf or three?
You will put yourself in the poor house buying everything for that DRM-laden book reader. You will be stuck paying hard cover prices for stuff that you could get at the local used book shop for pennies on the dollar. Passing stuff around friends or lending from the local library would also be out.
I offered the kid an e-book reader. His immediate response was lackluster due to the understanding that we would have to pay to put stuff on it. Smart kid. Reads lots of books. Most come from the library.
No. LIBRARIES enable the poor.
Guns and thumb drives...
> For a start this is a fallacy. In the US you can legally own a Glock 9mm pistol.
and this is an entirely different fallacy.
Weapons are an entirely separate category of their own that are quite unlike anything else you could try to compare them to. Or are you seriously going to equate a semi-automatic pistol with a video game machine?
Your argument is disengious at best.
Posted in Linux life savers for paranoid penguins
Glossing over the details vs. providing tools...
Stuff like Time Machine it's nice and fancy but it's ultimately more version control than a proper backup. A proper backup includes multiple copies with some of those residing off site. Genuine redundancy ensures survival of at least one of your backups and also makes it more likely that one of your backups will be usable.
My "small stuff" is replicated to every machine I have that has the space. Given the ever growing size of drives, that's pretty much any device in the house that doesn't have an Apple logo.
The "small stuff" even ends up on the Archos.
Posted in Linux life savers for paranoid penguins
So much for the "freetard" label...
> 4 Tb of data so far ? You have archived nearly 7000 cd ?
I have archived somewhere north of 1600 DVDs.
Just today I slapped in another 2TB drive. I shuffled some things around between my 2 "arrays" so that I would have the free bay in my main "Video Jukebox Array".
Tripping over the garden wall.
> There is no software reason to buy an android pad.
The software reason to buy an android pad is obvious. You want to do something that Steve won't allow. That could be any number of netbook-esque things that an iPad could do if only Steve would allow it.
The truth of the matter is that most people don't need a lot. However, they need what they need. If an alternate doesn't provide what they need, they won't use it.
This applies equally well to PhoneOS as it does Android.
Pomposity covering up poor taste.
There is a reason that a show like this is called a Space Opera or a Space Western because all it really is is a contemporary story in a different setting. There is not necessarily any real "sci fi" aspect to it. Trek was no less space opera than Star Wars. The same goes for BSG. It ultimately boils down to STYLE and whether or not you get bogged down in the bolonium.
Tech takes a back seat for most people, regardless of the era. It's not something to be fixated on to the exclusion of all else (like the plot).
"Wagon Train in space"
Also, fixating on minutia isn't any more realistic. It's just tedious.
Posted in Dell skunkworks brews ARM server future
Performance still matters in the data center
> One of the major problems faced by data centers is
> power requirements and cooling. ARMs are low
> power and run cooler. It's not just about the GHz.
No. It's about "getting stuff done". ARM kit is lousy for doing that. It's great for things like heat dissipation and power management. That's what makes a great mobile platform when married to speciality silicon that helps alleviate it's deficiencies.
The nature of open forks.
> If Java was real open source, patent free then there
> would be about 10 different versions all incompatible
> and with their own extensions. Some
Not necessarily.
It all depends on how you do it.
This is one of the great advantages of copyleft licenses. Such forks CAN'T be put under anyone's thumb. If you create a fork then anyone else can take your changes and re-integrate them with the original project.
This is why Oracle making noises about it's own version of Linux are so absurd. Anything it improves, it has to give back to the users.
Posted in Apple shrinks Mac Mini price
Dwarves and Midgets
> Awful UI?
>
> What open source UI would you recommend then?
> Most at just a rip off of what Apple or Microsoft have done.
"most are just a rip off" pretty much describes all of them.
This goes for Apple OpenStep too.
Linux desktops were mocking NeXT long before Apple decided to get in on the action.
Some highlights:
a) a pager that doesn't require you to interrupt your workflow
b) no stupid global menu
c) useful dock/panel/meu that can actually embed useful information.
d) global package management
e) useful context menus
Posted in The terabyte iPad is coming
Meh I say!
My tablet of choice already has a 500GB harddrive in it and it already seems cramped. Sure, it's a whole lot roomier than a 16G phone or a 16G tablet.. However, once you start to have use for a device with more than 120G, thinks quickly escalate. Individual HD recordings can be 20G a pop. So space can be eaten up fast.
A tablet that has enough room for all of my music, all of my photos, all my home videos and a nice selection of movies and TV?
Got that already. I don't have to wait until 2015. '-p
Posted in No wonder CompSci grads are unemployed
You don't know the WHY of SI units, do you?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte
>
>vs.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte
SI units are meant to be more practical and convenient than their traditional counterparts. They aren't meant to be just some other random fiat handed down from on high. If that's all that they really are, then there's no point in using them versus traditional units.
If you think that a base 10 definition of a computing quantity makes sense then you suffer from the same very superficial level of understanding that the article was complaining about.
Anything that increases the number of significant figures I must use is loaded with fail.
The shape of things to come.
> As said above, you'll still have the choice to install what
> you want anyway - so what's the issue?
Well, it's right here.
> There will be a simple, centralised repository where you
> can get a no doubt huge number of apps - easily.
If you want to be a first class citizen on the Mac platform you
have to basically put up with Apple's HOA and all of their
bogus CCNRs. This is in start contrast to a more open platform
like Linux where you can take advantage of all of the benefits
of an "app store" interface without having to make any compromises,
give up your liberties or sell your soul.
Of course Apple seeks to influence the nature of the platform. There
would be no other reason for subjecting developers to these sorts of
restrictions. Of course it is their hope that their desktop platform
becomes more like their phone platform.
Otherwise they would not bother with the BS and restrictions.
Without the sort of apps that Apple would not approve of, Macintosh simply isn't a truely n00b friendly platform.
Disingenous Apple response at best.
> Can you only add iTunes purchases to an iPod..........er, no.
Actually, you can only add iTunes approved content to an iPod. It sits as the gatekeeper telling you what you can or can't put on the device. Also, the devices themselves can only handle the most basic QuickTime supported content.
If you try to "adapt" anything else, the Fanboys will instantly try to brand you a pirate.
There is a reason jailbreaking is so popular.
> Isn't this basically the same as a package manager on Linux?
No. A Linux package manager is offered to everyone in a non-discriminatory manner.
There is nothing non-discriminatory about how Apple provides package install services.
People jailbreak their phones over this nonsense.
People jailbreak their phones to get access to a proper package manager that doesn't try to play favorites. Cydia is more the model of a Linux package manager. The Apple store is not.
It's not the tech, it's the policies.
Beat you to it.
> After all if MS is a big bad wolf because of "patent waving"
> what does one say about Apple?
Where have you been? Some of us have been calling Apple the new Microsoft for quite some time now. All that remains now is to see if Microsoft has become completely toothless and will Apple become the new monopoly?
Posted in World+dog keep taking the tablets
Think Different
I am much more interested in tablets that do things that Apple has decided it won't do. I don't care quite so much if the tablet is a "proper knockoff of PhoneOS" or whatever other nonsense that the Jobs worshipping ninnies think. I am more interested in something that actually replaces a netbook and other devices like an Archos. These are things the iPad has failed to completely displace.
Posted in HTML5 web video flashes past Flash
meh I say!
There has NEVER been the need for a special tag to play video in a browser. You simply need to be willing to present the content as a simple hyperlink. Even the 1.1N version of Netscape could handle managing the mime types for video and calling an appropriate external application.
Flash is all about keeping things away from the user. Having a simple "video tag" addresses none of the real requirements here.
That said, I still have not forgotten about all of the Sorenson codec nonsense with Apple and QuickTime.
Freetard vs. Retard.
> But Linux users are mostly freetards, they won't pay for software
Why should I pay for something that's a rehashed version of a tired old 20 year old idea?
That's just stupid.
That's just garden variety "retarded".
office was always overhyped.
I have already dumped msoffice on Windows. Why would I want to bother with it on Linux? There is this bogus notion that msoffice is the least bit necessary even in a corporate setting. It's the obscure vertical apps that keep people on Windows and will tend to do so.
Although cloud and web based applications threaten to undermine even that part of Microsoft's edge.
Posted in Microsoft's Office ribbon hits Mac fans
Even a "good change" is still a change.
> the reality is that the Ribbon in Office 2007 / 2010
> is a NON-issue. Any I.T. person that indicates that's
> their "hold-up" obviously hasn't used Office 2007
> / 2010 extensively.
IT people?
I think the whole point here is that these "grand redesigns" negatively impact all of the end users that DO NOT have some sort of computer science degree.
Any IT person that doesn't think that a change of this magnitude is highly disruptive needs to hand back in their CS degree.
The biggest leech
No. The entire development community made Linux usable on the desktop.
Canonical just rode the wave.
From the looks of things, it looks like this is the way IT SHOULD STAY. Let Canonical do the packaging and the final touches but keep them far away from any of the important stuff.
People like to whine about GNOME but don't really say much.
Posted in Hands on with the new Apple MacBook Air
The concept is strangely familar...
This is an Apple netbook. It's even got the weak CPU and strong GPU of a higher end netbook.
If you can stand the Apple keyboard and the pricetag, I suppose you could find this thing suitable. The same goes for the competition really. If you're not married to one OS or another, how the thing feels under fingers is bound to be the final arbiter here.
Posted in Hands on with the new Apple MacBook Air
Steve is not the Pope
> based on their recent profits, I'm fairly certain Apple are aware what sells.
Yes. iPods and other consumer electronics.
That whole "computer" thing didn't work out so well for them. They even had trouble competing with MS-DOS off all things.
Out of touch Billionaires...
SSD won't replace spinning disk simply because of cost and capacity. There will always be demand for larger devices. There will demand for larger devices than are available in SSD and demand for lower cost solutions. That demand might be mainly driven by corporations but it will remain.
It's only pretending to be a toaster.
> After all, people don't go around upgrading their
> washing machines, or adding new options to
> their vacuum cleaner.
Your vacuum cleaner doesn't have an "app store" where the owner likes to crow about how many after market modifications are available for your vacuum cleaner.
The whole point of computers is that they can be many tools.
...ignoring important details.
> Show me a 2.3 lbs PC laptop with a Core 2 Duo
Make mine something not so weak that you wonder why not just get an Atom?
1.4Ghz? Indeed.
It's little wonder you left that little detail out.
Out of touch Billionaires...
Engineering is about learning to live with economic constraints, not completely ignoring them.
So yes "it's too bloody expensive" is a valid criticism.
This is another fine example of Jobs living as if it is 10 years in the future.
Posted in Jobs' Lion to marry Mac OS X and iOS
Re-inventing Unix badly.
> It's about time there was a central place to go to browse and download software.
You mean like Debian apt-get that was available 10 years ago?
Until Quicktime can do what Totem does on Ubuntu I will remain unimpressed. That is the real potential of a centralized package manager. Replacing well mannered Internet download sites is not terribly interesting.
Posted in Jobs' Lion to marry Mac OS X and iOS
Don't destroy the Mac.
Yes, as others have intimated: I might not personally agree with everything that Apple does these days but the Mac still seems like a much better commercial consumer platform than Windows. It avoids all of the pitfalls of Windows without being a "garden of pure ideology". This can be useful for those of us that are not totally clueless.
Don't destroy the Mac. I want an other option I can suggest to people I know that insist on running Windows for whatever reason.
Posted in Jobs' Lion to marry Mac OS X and iOS
It's all about knowing what you want.
> They are implemented in a so much more user
> friendly way than most Linux repositories.
You must be joking.
Even with the much overhyped Apple iStore I still have to wade through a bunch of dreck to get to something useful. I will likely not find what I am looking for or something worth having without going to an outside source for recommendations.
H*ll, I get more useful information HERE about what's in the App Store.
Both provide a simple means to install something once you realize it's what you want. If you can't call it by name, then the "store" interface probably won't help you.
Microsoft's Flash Knockoff
> What on earth is Silverlight anyway?
It's supposed to be a better Flash than Flash.
It's supposed to be better than Adobe's version at certain things like support for GPU video playback. Although it clearly doesn't do this on my NV based Mac. The main thing you would be missing out on is Netflix.
Dunno if anything else uses it.
Way to miss the big picture.
> How is the Mac App Store any different to the new Ubuntu Software Centre, other than the QA?
The Ubuntu Software Center is not restricted. At worst, it is an alternate view
of a very open system that allows for even YOU PERSONALLY to participate
with a very low bar in terms of permission or consent or anual fees.
It's like trying to compare proprietary iApps to the World Wide Web.
I wonder how Adobe Air apps would fare here. I just bought one of those at an Apple B&M store yesterday.
UI Wizards indeed...
If Apple is genuinely worried about stuff that gets bad user feedback or is explicitly labeled as a beta then perhaps they should make their interface robust enough to account for that?
Or is the only way they can manage to deliver something is if it is completely trivial?
Nevermind the barcode interface...
...just put some heat sensors in the microwave that can keep track of
the internal state of the food so that the microwave can regulate itself
without any need for outside instructions.
That and some stuff you have to "play by ear" even when you have
a special purpose button for that item already on the microwave.
...just the very idea that you can leave the microwave alone to do it's
own thing is perhaps a bad idea.
Posted in Boxee box to come to Blighty
meh I say!
> It's called "product differentiation"
I don't want my Living Room content consumption devices to be "different". I want them to be INVISIBLE. This includes working as expected with minimal problems or need to fuss.
A melted cube that doesn't play nice with the rest of the AV components does not fit the bill.
Otherwise it's a good concept.
Posted in OOo's put the willies up Microsoft
"geeks" indeed...
> When confronted in the flesh by OOo evangelists I often
> ask "Can you do a mail merge from a source database
> that contains the information in stored queries or views?"
> and typically get back a blank look.
>
> OOo is still an office suite for geeks
I think you have that exactly backwards.
OO is an office suite for normal people that don't want anything terribly "geeky".
I would be surprised if you've ever done a mail merge either.
Posted in Apple to lead fanbois 'Back to the Mac'
That sucking chest wound is like a paper cut...
Macs tend to be pretty anemic when it comes to memory and 2G really doesn't cut it for this sort of thing despite your declarations to the contrary. People taking you at your word are bound for a pretty rude experience.
Saying that there is some "associated cost" really glosses over the magnitude of the situation rather horribly.
Posted in Apple to lead fanbois 'Back to the Mac'
Use it before you give advice about it.
> They ship with Apple's GUI and an X server. You can then install Parallels or VMWare
> or whatever and run Windows apps alongside your OS X and X11 apps
No, not really. These things are power hungry and memory hungry. You're either going to be creating a big fat VM with enough room for the AltOS to run properly or skimping so much that it's crippled. If you have a proper VM, that's going to impact the performance of your under-build Mac. This is assuming that your machine even supports running a VM with the proper requirements for the guest OS.
Posted in Apple to lead fanbois 'Back to the Mac'
Who's on the take?
> Due to the specs required for win7, the individual machines
> are actually more expensive than an equivalent iMac.
What specs? A Quad Core with 4G and a very respectable GPU will set you back less than a Mini.
The idea that anyone would need to spend more than an iMac for a secretary's PC is simply absurd.
If you are not trying to cram components into a laptop sized chassis, PC parts are dirt cheap.
Posted in Apple to lead fanbois 'Back to the Mac'
Free Software versus Apple Software
> No, seriously, buy one. It's clear you've never used one.
Quit swimming in the cool-aid. To know it is not necessarily to love it.
> With Macs it just bloody works.
Only if you have very simple needs.
If you stray the slightest bit off the garden path then things quickly get nasty. It no longer "just works". This could be slightly interesting devices or use cases that the people in Cupertino didn't account for.
This is why VLC is such a popular MacOS download. It makes up for the self imposed limitations of Quicktime. It's a lot easier than sorting out Quicktime plugins manually and dealing with variations that the pundit community might shout you down for wanting.
Don't be such a pansy.
What do you intend on replacing the Harrier with exactly?
This isn't the sort of thing that you buy from other countries. It's the sort of thing that you sell to other countries.
Never mind you guys. What happens when our own USMC needs to replace it's Harriers. Build a new Harrier so we have some place to buy ours.
Expectations of total dependence or indepence are both equally absurd.
Android rebellion indeed.
You know, I have a SHELL SCRIPT. Yes, that's right a SHELL SCRIPT on my iPhone because the guys at Cupertino don't seem to have a mind for business. I created it for quick cleanup of my SMS messages as I might get 300 pages in a day. Apple didn't seem to acknowledge this possibiilty as most phone makers like Nokia do (with a delete all button).
I would have thrown my phone against a wall by now if not for that hack.
Posted in Google TV transplants Android on Intel
Of course it was ported, it's Unix.
There's no good reason for Android or any other Unix to be tied to one particular hardware platform. The whole point of Unix is so that such tight coupling is entirely unnecessary. Google TV should already be running on HTPCs and desktops of anyone that's interested (just like Hulu).
Posted in Google TV transplants Android on Intel
Dwarves and Midgets.
...and Atom is not such a bad platform once you rip away the special purpose video decoders.
Sure it's not a fast CPU. Neither is ARM. Anyone whining about the performance of Atom as it relates to ARM is just a dwarf calling a midget shorty. They are both abominable and require outside help to be usable.
Proprietary nonsense.
TV is mired with proprietary nonsense that interferes with everyone including Apple. Apple gear is cheap but it is also limited. Google is also similarly limited for the same reasons. The gatekeepers of TV content don't want to play nice. This makes integration harder so Apple doesn't even try. Apple marginalizes itself with this. Google at least tries.
Ultimately the only thing you can really do is to avoid these companies entirely so you can have the freedom to create a solution that won't be at the mercy of media moguls.
The fact that my iThing can talk to my AirVideo server is much more relevant than whether or not it can talk to an AppleTV. It's routing around Big Content DRM nonsense that ultimately provides the most value.
