Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Moo (Score 1) 469

A modern instrument may sound better right away she says, but an old Italian may be able to produce more colors of sound that only become apparent after months of use, she says.

The phrase "confirmation bias" springs immediately to mind. People hear what they want to hear, and the knowledge that they're playing on a three-century-old, million-dollar violin gives them certain expectations.

If that were the case, then you'd expect them to think the older, more valuable one sounded better right away, not the newer, less special one; so this seems to be a statement against confirmation bias.

Comment Re:clunky software? (Score 1) 143

Most people just want to be able to download an object from the internet and print it out.

Missing a part for that new 'some assembly required' doodad that you bought? Hit their website and print it out.

Cheap plastic part snapped under abusive strain? Print out a new one.

Exactly. I have a battery with a broken latching mechanism. A replacement battery is $50. I could print a replacement plastic part for pennies if I had a model for it.

Here's your killer app: an online database of battery covers for remote controls. No more duct tape holding your batteries in!

Comment Re:Complete access and indefinite support for free (Score 1) 650

There are people in this discussion suggesting that someone who doesn't want to comply with such rules can go **** themselves and just give up on entering the US market. Well, guess what? They probably would. The burden imposed by this kind of requirement would almost certainly be prohibitive in cost. A vendor such as Microsoft would therefore do better to sacrifice the entire US market if it meant avoiding both an eternal unfunded mandate to support everything they ever sold and giving up their trade secrets to all their competitors.

It's more likely that they'd make Windows subscription-only, charging by the month or year, with a feature that causes your product to stop working if you don't renew your subscription. Which for an OS is crazy, but that's the incentive this requirement would create. Microsoft might even prefer this business model, but would never think they could get away with it, unless there was a rule that essentially mandated it. And perpetual free support would pretty much mandate perpetually charging for a product.

How this would relate to XP EOL is that they wouldn't renew any licenses for an OS past it's expiration date, and when the terms of your license agreement explicitly state you can't use the product, they can't be forced to support it any more.

Comment Re:Who? How? (Score 1) 196

No, he's saying that if you want to do assignment in the if clause, use

if ((variable=value)) ...

so the inner parentheses explicitly return the value of the assignment (showing the compiler that you meant to do that). As for

if (consant == variable)

he's just saying it looks bad and is harder for human readers to intuitively understand. See this random blog post that I just found for some commentary that echoes the GP's sentiment. I tend to agree - readability is more important in this case.

Comment Can I Stream It? (Score 5, Informative) 96

Can I Sream.It is a must-have smartphone app (or website). Anyone who makes one of these streaming boxes should just license a version that searches the catalogs of whatever services you've installed on the box. That alone would make all of these boxes tremendously more useful - it's really the missing key to this puzzle. That and more content, although a lot of progress has been made on this front - compare with Netflix's initial pitiful streaming selections.

I know Roku supports centralized search for some of their "channels" (apps).

Comment Re:Android, No? (Score 1) 88

Android is sufficiently powerful for certain tasks, and TV's typically have a good (easy and intuitive) UI.

We've been hearing for a while about how casual games are the new norm, at the expense of the serious gamer/console market. We're also seeing "internet TV" functionality on high-end consoles. So this seems to fit that niche perfectly. It's less expensive and power hungry (as if anyone really cared about that - do they?).

I could see this working nicely for someone who wants to replace cable, and likes casual games more than OMG Graphics or Super Violence V, as long as the games are good. If the games are crap, then it's just an expensive Roku or Chromecast.

Comment Re:Holy shit did they get cheap fast (Score 1) 353

I'd recommend 240+. My work PC has a 120GB drive; and Win7, four versions of Visual Studio, SQL Server, and a few other apps pretty much fill it up. I've had to continually shuffle data including some source code to my secondary platter drive (slower compilation, boo) just to keep some space free (currently 3.3GB).

Comment Re:This is one thing I love about it (Score 1) 544

I don't get how people can "miss" the sound of a regular engine, and having to shift.

Because it's beautiful.

One of my favorite sounding cars is the BMW M1 Procar.

And a manual can be obnoxious in traffic (or parallel parking on ice), but in many other instances is more fun. Especially racing. There's a practical reason for a manual in racing, too, in that you get precise control of the engine speed, which is necessary to maximize traction.

Comment Re:What corresponds to renting a truck? (Score 1) 180

Hulu+ is $8/month. You've got a bit of a wait if you've using that money to pay for a PC.

Nine months and you've already covered the cost of a Bluetooth remote so that you can reuse an existing PC that has HDMI, DVI, or VGA output.

If you have an Android phone, you can install Gmote and use your phone as the remote control. I've used it successfully with our Win7 laptop on the TV.

Comment Re:Back in my day (Score 1) 142

Technology is the foundation of all of society. It is the wheel, it is hospitals, it is the phone, is is electricity. Losing fervor about technology is like giving up on life and the betterment of society. Communications is the backbone of all technology, without the sharing of ideas, nothing would be accomplished.

That's right, you have a moral obligation to buy the fastest internet access available to you.

Hmm, now that I think about it, I'm going to try this argument on my wife. If she doesn't let me buy an ultrabook, she hates humanity.

Slashdot Top Deals

An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.

Working...