Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Sony makes memory cards? (Score 1) 49

Who knew? I can't name a single product this company makes besides the PlayStation (that's headed for US $1200.00). They're a dead company walking. China is making more desirable products for less money.

In addition to games and gaming consoles and services linked to these, Sony also sells headphones, microphones, cameras and accessories in the electronics space. E.g. they sell the arguably best wireless headset, the Sony wh-1000xm6. As you can see from the name, they suck at marketing. They also provide a lot of OEM audio equipment for cars - they're partnered with Ford, Volkswagen, and Toyota. They produce a lot of imaging sensors, that are used in many cameras and cell phones. They also have a massive movie and music division.

Comment Peanuts... (Score 1) 53

OpenAI's US Ad Pilot Exceeds $100 Million In Annualized Revenue In Six Weeks means the revenue in 6 weeks was about $10 million.

That's a rounding error - was it worth destroying the product image over? I almost wrote "and their reputation", but the deal with drunk Fox news-host currently roleplaying as a secretary of a department that doesn't exist that had dipped into gutter already.

Comment Re:Thought so (Score 4, Interesting) 42

It is not actually that hard. And it exists. The Ogg codecs are it. But because they are FOSS, large parts of the industry is irrationally scared of them.

As to AV1, it may not infringe in any way. But it is a commercial target because of the backers behind it and they can get endless litigation and maybe even a settlement even if it is perfectly fine, just from sabotaging its use via a broken legal system.

Ogg is used by large parts of the industry: It is used by the most popular streaming service, Spotify. Not only is the Spotify client widely used on PCs, TVs, and all kinds of streaming boxes etc - a lot of audio equipment also has Spotify connect. All of these devices support Ogg.

As for why not everyone is using it - mp3 had the inertia, and AAC is better than Ogg for the same bandwidth. For mobile devices, that matters. These days, free lossless codecs (FLAC mostly, some ALAC) are taking the spotlight - alongside proprietary spatial audio format, like Dolby Atmos.

Comment Re:Anonymous to whom? (Score 3, Insightful) 90

Apple probably never promised that it would be anonymous to Apple, only that average joe won't get the information.

Indeed. Providing anonymous emails to avoid giving your real information to spammers, tracking companies, and other commercial entities is one thing - but providing it so your authorities don't get it is a completely different ballgame. If you want rule of law back in the US, you need to get "MAGA" out of power completely and let the GOP rebuild as a conservative party while out of power for a long time at all levels. Maybe you even need a completely different party to emerge.

Comment Re:the last mac pro had an big upchange for very l (Score 1) 91

Even more than the PCI-lanes, there wasn't hardware to justify it. With Apple Silicon, the GPU is built in and you can't fill the case with cards from NVidia to make it a CUDA-monster or handle graphics beyond the (impressive) abilities of the combined CPU/GPU.

Exactly this. Apple neutered the Mac Pro by making all of its additional functionality useless.

[...]

More than that, the Apple Silicon Mac Pro is a sad toy that was never truly worthy of the Mac Pro name by any stretch of the imagination. It doesn't even have ECC memory or upgradable RAM. IMO, Apple really should have just been honest with its pro users and said "We no longer care about you," and then they should have dropped the Mac Pro as part of the Apple Silicon transition, rather than shipping something so massively downgraded that is so many miles from being a true pro desktop machine.

Anyone who is even slightly surprised by it being discontinued was obviously not paying attention.

I disagree with Apple really should have just been honest with its pro users and said "We no longer care about you,"'.They've abandoned a very specific and shrinking segment of pro users, but the vast majority of pro users are covered by today's lineup with Mac Studio at the top. There just aren't that many things which need a traditional tower anymore. And I'd argue that almost no-one needed the Mac Pro - as you excellently explain.

One minor peeve - what is "pro" today? Most office workers can do their work just fine with the some of the cheapest equipment you get - isn't that "professional" enough? Even most developers can do most of their work on laptops these days - and if they need more horsepower, that's likely to be on the server side anyway. Don't they count? And what about project managers, lawyers, and CEOs - aren't they "pro" either?

Comment Re:I know the trash can had a lot of different mod (Score 1) 91

But I seem to remember them all being pretty crazy expensive for what you got. I guess it would be probably quieter than the equivalent Windows PC or hackintosh but most of the models I see out in the wild are the really expensive ones that would have sold for $5,000 and up

They were targeted as a workstation, not a "Mac in a PC-like chassis for home". So they had Intel Xeon CPUs, AMDs workstation line of GPUs, ECC memory etc.When looking at similar offerings, they weren't priced that bad.

Comment Re:the last mac pro had an big upchange for very l (Score 1) 91

the last mac pro had an big up-change for very little over the studio.
While not the best studio + TB pci-e boxes costs way less. The pro had X16 slots but the cpu really did not have pci-e lanes to fully feed them.

The m5 studio needs some kind of of EXT pci-e port (more then just TB)

Even more than the PCI-lanes, there wasn't hardware to justify it. With Apple Silicon, the GPU is built in and you can't fill the case with cards from NVidia to make it a CUDA-monster or handle graphics beyond the (impressive) abilities of the combined CPU/GPU.

If adding 3rd party GPUs was possible, the use case for actually buying a tower might have led to a huge increase in sales - relative to its existing sales level, of course.

Comment Re:Cisco vs. TP-Link (Score 1) 180

One of the lessons we've had as the Federal, multi-branch nature of the US governmennt has frustrated Trump is that the government may be fucking us over, but it's not doing it in *unison*. It's doing it piecemiel, on the initiative of many interests working against each other, just as the framers intended. The motto on the Great Seal notwithstanding, there are myriad roadblocks to consolidating power in the hands of a single individual. It takes time and repeated failures. This is why the second Trump Adminsitration is worse than the first; they've figured out ways around things like Congressional power of the purse, put more of their henchmen in the judiciary, and normalized Congress lying down and letting the president walk all over them. It's a serious situation, although fortunately Trump isn't long for this world.

Comment Re:Not so difficult to locate (Score 5, Insightful) 86

And what assets does current foe have that are capable of tracking an aircraft carrier on such journey in real time, and what is their current resource subscription situation for those assets?

The main foe at the moment is Russia, and they surely know where the carrier is. If Iran is interested at all, they get the information from their allies in Russia.

Comment Re:Are they not old enough to remember...? (Score 1) 65

While that's true, a responsible generation aims to boost the next generation to a *higher* level than the education they received. The world has become more complex and faster-paced, and even if that weren't true, the consequenes of aiming high and falling short are better than the consequences of aiming for the status quo and falling short.

So while I'm 100% onboard with skepticism that technology will magically make education better, I think the argument that "the education I got worked for me should be good for them" isn't a strong argument. What we need is a better ecducation that would have been a better education fifty years ago: stronger math, science, and language skills, general knowledge, and, I think critical thinking and media literacy. Possibly emotional intelligence -- it's kind of pointless to teach people critcial thinking skills if they are carried away by emotions.

Comment Re: "helping" yeah so good of them to "help" (Score 4, Insightful) 151

There are no economic or security reasons to blockade Cuba, so that leaves *political*.

It used to be believed that bullies were low status individuals who are lashing out out of frustration. But research has shown that bullying is an effective strategy for achieving and maintaining social status. In other words it's a political winner. So the focus of research has shifted from the bully to the people around him who enable the bullying. The inner circle are the henchmen -- people without the charisma and daring to initiate the bullying, but join in when the bully gets things started. Around them are the audience, the people who wouldn't risk participating but enjoy the bullying vicariously. And around them are the much larger group of bystanders, who don't approve but are waiting for someone else to stop the bullying. Then off to the side are the defenders, who stand up to the bully.

Perhaps the least appreciated supporting factor in the phenomenon of the high-status bully is the silence of the bystanders, which is dependent upon the perception of widespread approval. Since you can't visibly see the the line between the approving audience and the apalled bystanders, the silence of the bytstanders is absolutely essential in sustaining the bullying.

Lot's of Americans are apalled at the idea of using military force to inflict suffering on the Cuban people. But that's only politically advantageous *because* of *them*. Tney are indistinguishable from the relatively small number of people who are thrilled when Trump announced he can do anything he wants wtih Cuba. The gap between actual approval and *perceived* approval is absolutely critical in establishign and maintaining any kind of authoritarianism. This is why would be authoritarian leaders are so focused on punishing and marginalizing any kind of expression of disapproval.

Comment Re: Anyone can sue... (Score 1) 137

Contracts, or portions of contracts that license existing IP for government use do not typically gain any rights whatsoever to the products beyond those normally granted by law or license. The case you reference has little, if anything, to do with the typical weapon system acquisition process.

I work in this area. It would help you if you actually read the FAR that you're citing, since it says the exact opposite of what you claim.

The standard license rights that a licensor grants to the Government are unlimited rights, government purpose rights, or limited rights. Those rights are defined in the clause at 252.227-7013 , Rights in Technical Dataâ"Other Than Commercial Products and Commercial Services. In unusual situations, the standard rights may not satisfy the Government's needs or the Government may be willing to accept lesser rights in data in return for other consideration. In those cases, a special license may be negotiated. However, the licensor is not obligated to provide the Government greater rights and the contracting officer is not required to accept lesser rights than the rights provided in the standard grant of license. The situations under which a particular grant of license applies are enumerated in paragraphs (a) through (d) of this section.

A license is a right to exploit (make, have made, sell, offer to sell, import, reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute, publicly display and/or perform, and/or generally use, depending upon the IP and the transaction).

What it is not is an assignment of ownership of the IP. The private entity developing the IP retains ownership of the IP and can exploit it itself for commercial purposes, excepting ITAR issues and other technology restrictions that would apply to similar technologies generally.

The original claim was "the government owns most it (sic) not all of its IP in its supply chain." That's false. It has a license to it, and rarely anything more.

Comment Re:I hope (Score 3, Insightful) 144

In 1790, the US population was 94.9% rural. There is no country. in the world today that rural -- Burundi, which looks like blanks spot in the world at night satellite picturs, is 88% rural.

The largest city at the time was New York, with a population of 33,000. Northern Manhattan was near-wilderness, mid-town was farms and country houses.

In 1790 the US was. country you could "police" with sheriffs and volunteer posses, largely to keep the peace. If you got robbed, you hired a private thief catcher. This works in a 95% rural country with just 3.4 million inhabitants. It would be chaos in a country 87x larger.

Comment Re:Apple Chromebook (Score 1) 226

It's actually more like an iPhone 16 Pro runing MacOS in a laptop form factor. Apple basically rummaged through their parts box and pulled out a mobile CPU that'll deliver 50% more single core performance than what's in a high-end Chromebook with only 80% of the power draw. And Apple's got *massive* economies of scale on those parts, so they can afford to deliver a lot of bang for the buck.

The only place the Neo appears to falls short is in RAM, but this is *not* a power user machine, it's for basic office tasks and multimedia consumption. Realistically 8GB is plenty for many users.

In any case, the desktop isn't the center of most users's universe anymore; the switchboard of their life is their smartphone. This is a gateway drug to MacOS IOS integration, and eventually onto the upgrade treadmill. Users will switch seamlewssly between their iPhones and Neos all day long, with data on iCloud and iMusic etc., and when it comes time to upgrade their phone or their laptop, they won't be *stuck* exactly, but if they leave the reservation they lose a lot. But they certainly could upgrade to a *much nicer* Macbook....

It's no wonder the other laptop makers are sitting up and taking notice. Apple has set up a one way conversion ratchet for people tempted by a really nice and perfectly adequate entry level machine at an entry level price.Nobody else has the vertical integration -- chip foundries to device manufacturing, to software platform -- spanning desktop and phones that's needed to do this.

Slashdot Top Deals

"It ain't over until it's over." -- Casey Stengel

Working...