The capabilities described seem to be no greater than (modified) ham radio gear. I simply don't see what all the fuss is about. Commercial products are __far__ cheaper and far easier to assess the bugs, including "birdies". (If you've ever used a spectrum analyser you why there called birdies.
Any MSWindows sound is an "audiophile torture device". In a bar after a business meeting, we were constantly telling the bartender to "Turn it down". It is almost certain he recognized us as being part of the music business and simply wanted us to hear his music. MS Windows -- No thanks.
ALSA isn't that bad and I thought OSS was open-source, at least it is to me. To emulate ALSA just requires a few symlinks in
Linux sound is OK, but I stick to BSD because it offers the best "multimedia" performance available today. Of course I use a hand-compiled MPlayer for the video stuff. Doesn't everybody use libmad.so for mpeg sound? Madplayer is a simple demo for the library and nothing beats it for mp3. Today FLAC is the smart choice and you can encode with virtually just the libs. I like flac123, but pulse sure doesn't.
BillSF
Maybe it sounds a bit trollish, but Windows is in reality a 'browser OS'. The CMD prompt really isn't a DOS prompt or at least not in its 'out-of-the-box' form. (Desktop abstractions on any system are just browsers, but at least one can go 'under the hood' in a fairly straight-forward manner on Unix-like systems.)
The previous author appears to want a stand-alone browser that requires no OS and is written in assembly. I'm sure it would run circles around any compiled browser -- even at 100MHz.
If things ever settle, maybe then, truly good software will appear again. With the present rate of obsolescence, it just isn't economical to compete with just a truly good product. When memory was expensive (all types) and processor speeds were very slow, say in the early 70s, there wasn't any alternative to good coding. Even at a handful of MHz, there seemed to be greater satisfaction than today. What people want from a computer is quite twisted from what a machine can really deliver. So, we live with the fact the masses of idiots have computers.
How can such a helpful class of drugs be so demonised? Pilots, mostly military -- presumably -- have often said it was what got them and their plane home alive. Clearly there is a downside,
but 15mG of a racemic mix is a very small dose of amphetamine. Its a very common 'programing fluid' which can be borne out by studying some code. No names mentioned, but there are those that smoke pot, drink coffee/Jolt and those that do amphetamines and amphetamine-like drugs or even beer.
If I was stoned, I might have to get stoned to understand what I did, same for 'drunk', wired or jacked up on caffein or any combination. MODERATION is key -- always. I never used stimulants,
alcohol or pot in university. (college was the reward for not using)
What's the big deal? I guess its 'still shocking' to the New Yorker types, but used properly, drugs get the job done. Personally I can't type stoned, but I can make written notes. LSD is
certainly not very smart, but it can in rare moments provide access to 'hidden insights'. Only once did I get a good piece written while tripping that impressed many when published in the
S.F. Chronicle.
Finally drugs are best on the short term. Take speed (meth) to kick out those lines of code and meet a deadline. Maybe a week of use is about all its good for? As another reader said: "What's new" and I agree. Smoke a joint to relax when done.
others: Moderation! Be cool.
BillSF
To almost any musical act: "Airplay" is everything! File sharing may not be the most efficient way, but it does accomplish what all entertainment wants: "Airplay". Also remember the basic right: 'Try before you buy'. The article is bullshit; no way in hell can anyone expect payment for all times a song (or movie) is played. Within the people I know, the vast majority of downloads are discarded. It would be unacceptable to pay for everything. There is no better way to discover new talent. If the mass media radio won't play it, you must take it and see/hear it for yourself.
Its like free software. Mostly you either toss it, but if its a good idea, you expand on it. Somehow I can't see the difference: Market sets the price. Stamping on price tags is just a delusion from those that think they are worth far more than the market provides. ANY COST is set by the market, not the producer.
BillSF
Most removable 'flash' media probably dies from ESD and wear of the connectors. I've never knowingly lost one, but from the destroyed ones brought to me, it looks like static or possibly 'hot insertion'. 'Flash' is ideal for static file systems like
So to make it simple: Read from the flash and write to it sequentially before power is removed. This is the Unix solution. I'm not that sure if Windows can do it. Also write times will be up to 100x faster, often greatly exceeding the rated speed which is based on the FAT that it comes pre-formatted with.
BillSF
Two decent articles from a magazine geared to the consumer computing world. "X" is certainly not an OS as was finally revealed on the last page of the first article. Every modern graphical display uses some mode of "X" to paint the picture. The foolishness of NT, up to and including NT7 (Windows 7) is making X an OS.
Surprisingly nobody mentions VMS, but doesn't everybody know VMS clicks up to WNT? IBM becomes HAL
The articles make it very clear every modern OS is somehow related to UNIX. It fails to mention that QDOS means "Quick and Dirty Operating System". The extremely awkward '\' and the use of '/' as a weak form of '-' in Unix, were indeed intended to poke fun at Unix itself. (Microsoft never got the joke.)
In many cases, the Unix command line is far more efficient than using a graphical environment. The awkwardness of DOS may be just cause for saying the command line in Windows may not be better at anything. (CMD is the suckiest shell ever made.) If stuck with Windows, (rarely happens) the CMD shell can really save you, but lacks most of the useful commands and features of the Unix shells.
Might I add, I forever tossed out the idea of using NT back in 1993 when it destroyed ten CD writeables that were ten or twenty bucks each. Long live Unix and X!
The single most important part of any camera is the lens. My old Cannon is better with 2.2MP than the modern 'snapshot machines' with up to 16MP. Its got a decent lens, no snapshot thing or phone, for that matter does.
No, never! If something gets through my filters I will make it a point to NEVER buy from the company that "placed" the ad. I can make one exception: Those are the ads that come from the actual site. If they use flash or move in any way, that halts at once. You cannot easily focus when something is moving.
Some may argue that ads keep the net alive. (Yes servers that take targeted ads pay many times more.) To that I say, I keep the ad, but it never gets to my eyes. This serves a second purpose -- Advertisers in print and on TV often have the control of the editorial content. Its therefore worth periodically taking a quick check on who advertises. Chances are I don't buy from them and __certainly NOT__ if it is through the Internet!
BillSF
Somehow I must question those surveys. While quite a number of people I know use Windows, almost no-one I know actually uses IE as their default browser. Unfortunately severely insecure features of IE, like ActiveX, are needed to upgrade Windows. I'm sure Mozilla is capable of making its own 'ActiveX', but I guess they'd be sued as we are talking essentially American businesses. As we all know, it is rather difficult to remove IE from Windows. Clearly, the best option is the trend: Abandon Windows!
Any hacker can make their Firefox (or Opera) look like IE or any other browser. For instance, I don't use "Flash", but while I use FreeBSD, the scripts say its "Flash-10" on "IE-7" on Windows. Perhaps I should have some pride and tell the truth? I'm using Firefox, but I'm not sure that Firefox is what I have set in my proxy. Let me explain. Ikea, in Holland, gives you a 5% discount if you order with IE. Of course I'm not going to fire up Windows to order from Ikea! So, I simply "lie" and take 5% off.
If IE has up to 70% market share, its simply because Windows doesn't allow you to choose your browser like any other system does. If they did, they could just as well throw in the towel on IE. The percentage that use Windows is suspect too. Maybe some have it on hand just for an application or two? I know for a fact that many Windows desktops are running in Linux. (Doesn't an Xterm look great on a Windows desktop?
Finally: (Taco) How many more people say they use Firefox on Slashdot than your logs indicate? I think you see what I mean.
BillSF
Madplayer hicked three times at about 0100 CET. I thought it might have been my RAID system I had just repaired. (There was a bad sas/sata controller.) This happened over about 20 seconds. I only use Unix/Unix-like systems and to the best of my knowledge there are no embedded MS devices in this house.
Unix/Linux, etc. handles things like this well. All time sync services like NTP, DCF-77, MSF, WWVB, GPS and the rest give fair warning. I personally are in favour of ditching 'leap seconds'. Time corrections would best be made day to day, the length of today being based on yesterday. That's better, but surely someone can think up the real solution?
BillSF
PS: Frequent updates to Java caused by US daylight saving time are pathetic.
If there is anything I don't like about flying, its taking off your shoes when flying from the US. Seriously, airports have watched people in a number of different ways long before '9-11'. What I fear is two-fold: Security will rely too much on non-proven technology and anybody who'd blow themselves up or hijack a plane is a psychopath and probably won't show outside signs of intent. As one reader correctly said: "This is a remote polygraph." How many courts of law accept that as evidence?
Its not the 1% false-positive rate, but rather the apparent 12% false negative rate. There will always be a need for some sort of human security. Surely it can be better than the TSA's song and dance. Security is better at many airports of the West. Flying has been and always will be the safest way to travel -- even if there was no security at all. Its those very few psychopaths that make the headlines that make people actually believe terrorism is a problem.
BillSF
Of course I remember when SMS first appeared and it was not expected to make it. It as obvious a failure as "home shopping" but suckers are born every minute! Yes, its on the control channel and yes, it costs less for a text message as to 'ding' someones phone so they got your number -- that later is free to do , of course.
In these days when 1Mbit/s is pathetic and 10Mbit/10Mbit is more what you need and what that costs, it doesn't take too much imagination to conclude correctly that SMS costs less to GSM than ARP to Internet Protocol. Duh, duh, duh.....
BillSF
That is the big point as far as volunteer developers are concerned. Most developers would only use an Office Suite only to look at documents others (office slaves) write. Impress may be occasionally used to show the 'suits' what you intend to do in a language they understand. Applications like *TeX, CAD packages and even Ventura have existed much longer than MSOffice. (or OOo AFAIK)
Remember we are __engineers__ not secretaries.
BillSF
PS: Panic in Redmond....
PPS: Future failure of Windows7: Terror in Redmond!
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?
