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The Twelves Days of Goatse by Anonymous Coward · 2001-12-15 22:01 · Score: -1, Troll · on Smalltime Wireless ISPs

The Twelves Days of Goatse by Anonymous Coward · 2001-12-15 22:01 · Score: -1, Troll · on Smalltime Wireless ISPs

The Twelves Days of Goatse by Anonymous Coward · 2001-12-15 22:01 · Score: -1, Troll · on Smalltime Wireless ISPs

Re:Very "clever"... by Len · 2001-11-13 08:02 · Score: 2, Insightful · on Gamecube Hits US Early

Yeah, right. Microsoft will put those other tiny companies right out of business. Which would be bad because, you know, Sony would never try to be a huge control-freak media monopoly.

By the way, where did you hear that Microsoft isn't getting royalties from third-party Xbox games? Or is that just your own conspiracy theory?

Re:nerves by kaxman · 2001-10-14 04:04 · Score: 1 · on What Sounds Better, MP3 or Ogg?

no silly. 44.1 kHz is a sampling rate. it is a measure of how many "dots" make up the curve of the music. in essence, the sampling rate will tell you how rough the apporixmation of a true waveform the audio will be. take a look at sony's SACD and you will learn much. it uses a sampling rate that is so ridiculously high you can barely see a difference between it and a true analog source.

happy trails.

-kaxman

Re:Micheal Jackson... Like I care... by Anonymous Coward · 2001-09-22 12:01 · Score: 0 · on Michael Jackson Releases Uncopyable CD

Yeah I care about him.

He is the best music and performance artist the world has known. He currently holds the record for the best selling record in all time (to date), has over 300 individual awards for his music (including numerous presidential awards). He sponsors more charities than any other celebrity in history (over 35 actively). He has written more than half of his own songs. In his upcoming album Invincible he plays guitar, drums, keyboard, synth and other instraments in the majority of the tracks.

What has NIN ever done? Shout into a microphone out of tune? Yep, real talent required there.

Don't forget that the CD anti-copying protection is a Sony Music issue. Not a Michael Jackson issue.

A few links... by DeeKayWon · 2000-10-14 11:32 · Score: 3 · on Sony Super CD: More Bits, More Bucks, Mo' Betta?

http://www.mpeglabs.com/dvd/dvdaud io/ sacd.htm

http://www.sonymusic.com/sacd/

http://www.superaudio-cd.com/

Something that doesn't gush like a press release

Another more objective link

It appears they're using a dual layer method for backwards compatibility. The details about copy protection methods are vague, but they do mention visible and invisible watermarks aimed against both pirates and counterfeiters. But I can't seem to find a decent explanation of how the encoding DSD encoding scheme works.

Snow Crash was Supposed to be a Video Game by The+Cunctator · 2000-03-22 12:12 · Score: 4 · on Concept Artwork For Snowcrash?

When Stephenson began working on Snow Crash, he intended it to be a video game (super-interactive novel). Unfortunately, we're only getting to the point where that would be a plausibility. Or is that fortunately? If Ion Storm can succeed at Deus Ex, someone can succeed at Snow Crash...though Juanita's avatar tech is still a ways away (see Pixar's advances in this realm!)

Speaking of Pixar, it's always easier to fake tech in a movie; you get to pre-render everything. Snow Crash would make a great movie without too much trouble, because of its many high-octane visual elements. Also: the political/social satire that runs rampant is surprisingly easy to do visually: just show the Uncle Nunzio Pizza billboard and you're done.

Of course the movie would be radically different from the book, but it wouldn't be an insane adaptation like LotR--you just cut out the boring stuff, and you've got a whole bunch of cool action sequences. Stephenson's namshub mumbo-jumbo barely makes sense anyway (though it _nearly_ fits together quite neatly); the book could do with the bit of narrative tightening a movie would provide.

Snow Crash is hobbled by the importance of Juanita to the outcome of the book, and her near-complete absence from the book. A rewrite that dealt with the narrative problems caused by her would be welcome. My suspicion is the whole rewrite issue is what's killing this project: the book, while amazingly cool and smart and readable and one of my all-time favorite books, is seriously flawed by its tenuously connected plot threads.

Visually, the movie would be great in so many ways: the avatar world could be done anime-style, the Sumerian backstory (if it even entered) could be covered in a killer animation sequence like that from Todd McFarlane's Do the Evolution video, etc.

Stephenson deliberately drew on pop-culture ideas and imagery for the book, and took a lot from movies. Snow Crash could make a very good movie.

It probably would make a better computer game, but I'm not convinced we really have the tech for it.

MD album selection.. by nido · 2000-03-21 12:32 · Score: 1 · on Cool Japanese Gadgets You Can't Have

You can buy Albums on MD. Just go to Best Buy, they have an album MD section.

If you're looking for a copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller or The New Kids on the Block's most recent release, Best Buy is the place to go (based on my experience in Phoenix Arizona). If you want something released in the late 90's, the only place i've found is Sony's Online Store. I haven't looked that hard, though, so there are probably one or two other places to get pre-recorded discs..

Daily Radar: a Bad Substitute for Wall St Journal by dave_aiello · 2000-01-04 11:40 · Score: 3 · on Sony Bets Its Future On PlayStation II Console?

The article in Daily Radar is quite comical, actually. I am sure the analysts from Wall Street brokerage houses that browse Slashdot got a laugh out of reading this article because it makes so many, how should I put it, questionable conclusions.

Let me begin by pointing you to the Fundam entals page for Sony on CBS Marketwatch. Sony is currently valued by the market at around $110 billion -- this is the market capitalization. There are, according to this page, 411 million shares outstanding. Over the last 200 trading days, an average of 205,100 shares have been traded each day, or 4/100ths of 1 percent of the shares.

I compared this stock to General Electric, which is another extremely large, established company. In spite of the fact that General Electric is worth about 4 times as much as Sony (comparing market caps), 3 times as many shares in GE as a percentage of its total number of shares outstanding trade each day.

This means that GE is much more liquid (easy to trade) than Sony. That is potentially a good reason to split Sony stock, because the easier it is to buy or sell a stock, the less wildly the price tends to swing. Liquidity is considered a good thing by institutional investors and people who trade stocks for a living. By contrast, lack of liquidity is the reason that Internet companies move up and down fairly violently on a daily basis.

The reason that some stock market newcomers think stock splits are indicators that the company is moving boldly is that recently, many companies that have announced splits have seen their stock prices soar immediately afterward. This initially happened with Internet-related companies like Amazo n.com, but it has gotten really out of hand lately, with companies like Qualc omm.

Stock splits are really market neutral events. If a stock is at 100 the day before the split, and it splits 2-for-1, it's value at the open should be 50. I say "should be" because a stock often does not open at exactly the same price as it closes, so if there is a 2-for-1 split, the stock should open at around half the price of the close the previous day.

This brings us to another fallacy in the article. It says that a stock split is a "financial maneuver that is a risky move". The stock that traded for 100 per share yesterday was not issued by the company yesterday -- it was issued at some time in the past. The trade at 100 that took place yesterday was between two participants in the stock market who (probably) had no relationship to the company.

So, when the stock opens at 50 on the next day, after splitting two for one, not only did the people who traded the stock not lose anything (since they automatically have 2x the number of shares), but the company did not lose anything since they did not own the stock that was traded yesterday. Of course, any stock that the company is holding on its balance sheet (generally called treasury shares) did not increase or decrease in value, since the number of shares doubled while the price was cut in half.

I could go on with this analysis all night, but let me jump to the end of the Daily Radar article. The author makes the statement:

The company is building its entire product line around the PlayStation2. If the console fails, Sony's entire market plan will be lost.

All I can say about this is that he must mean that the company is building its entire video game console product line around PlayStation2. Sony does a lot more than produce game consoles. In addition to its video game console business, it owns 11 different recording labels, a TV and movie production business which produces such insignificant products as the TV series Dawson's Creek, and Sony Electronics which makes everything from chips to Jumbotrons.

That's why the company is worth over $110 billion, and that's just a few reasons why this article is so humorous to people who enjoy analyzing businesses and buying small pieces of them.

--

Dave Aiello

They signed the fscking contract didn't they? by crispy · 1999-09-15 03:30 · Score: 1 · on Sony claims of Artist's Name URL For Life

Sony is a business and they are out to make a buck. If the bands don't like it they can go to another label. There are lots of labels that don't try to fsck over the bands that they sign. (esp. the electronic music labels) You probably haven't heard about them because they make good music that just doesn't get radio play. Go to Sony Music and browse through the list of bands that they have signed. I think you will notice many of the worst bands in existance. You know the ones (Bill Hicks talks about them all the time. Who is Bill Hicks? Only the wisest man to ever live.) that really suck! They make trite soundbites and pass them off as music. Anyways, back to the point before I get moderated down... A lot of these bands suck. They know it so they take any contract they can get. The good artists go elsewhere. Most of them will be at coachella. (That concert will have the best bands ever! Buy your ticket quick.)

So my point is this: what do we care? Let them get screwed over. These bands will do anything for their 5 minutes of fame. I for one will keep the radio off and the CD player blaring lots of music that does not contain the word "sony" anywhere on the disk. (Except for all my Pink Floyd CD's but they signed with sony a long time ago.)

<SIG>
I think I lost my work ethic while surfing the web. If you find it, please email it to crispy@crotch.caltech.edu.
</SIG>

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