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Slashback: Quakery, Lifespans, Barcodes
Just stick around and collect on this bet. mindriot writes "The German climatic researcher Manfred Stock has rejected Stephen Hawking's theory which states that man would not exist on earth for another 1,000 years. To him this seems rather unlikely. Stock expects that, in 50 years, mankind will have switched to alternative power resources. Read the german article here." Oder, wenn Sie nicht Deutsch kann, bitte Babelfish benutzen. It's a much more optimistic view of things, but hardly the words of a Pollyanna.
CD-Rs are cheap, cheap, cheap. David Hume writes: "Fox News is reporting that '[a] three-judge panel decided to allow the popular service to continue allowing users to share music files over the Internet, pending further deliberations.' ... "The judges seemed to need more information from the recording industry and were more antagonistic to the RIAA," said copyright expert Leonard Rubin, who observed the proceedings."'
Overall, it sounds like Napster is taking neither the "shoo-in" or "dropped anchor" tacks that many people predicted. The article points out (and presumably the judge knows) that peer-to-peer file transfers have long since left the gate.
Well, they are the guys who make it, after all! You might remember the stink raised by the release of the Q3 1.25 patch. Now Bob Mintern writes: "iD Software, in hue of their current Point Release for Quake 3 1.25, has released a FAQ highlighting sevral issues of the 1.25 patch and what it breaks. The FAQ can be located here. I wonder when the "offical" patch will work and everything will be normal again..."
After this I'll try to shut up for a while about it, OK? There's been so much about the CueCat that perhaps you (and / or digital convergence) are sick of hearing about it. I pledge not to mention it for at least a week, on penalty of an early bedtime or perhaps more vacation days. But today, you must deal a few I thought were neat ;) First, bk1e asks the musical question: "Why :de:claw your :Cue:Cat when you can get it :spayed in about two minutes with a soldering iron? Simply solder on one jumper and it acts like any other barcode scanner." Heh.
Or, even without doing that, hangel points to this "A CueCat decoder for Zope by stevea," which includes source. Specifically, this one will let you scan in a book's bar code and look it up on Amazon.
Finally, photon317 writes: "There's a make-fun-of-DC site at www.digitaldivergence.org." This I leave to your own judgement, but as R. Crumb might say, not everything is for everybody. Think iBrator.
or rather, their engineers and coders. After 5 years of getting paid for no work, they release a product and their bosses find out that its encryption can be broken by anyone with half a brain, and the hardware can be hacked not one, but TWO ways. Oh well, I guess five years of loafing around on the job must be good enough.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
The Climate Research Unit has an interesting piece of reading at http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/causecc/ regarding the causes and expected climate changes over the next few (hundred) years. We (and Big Brother) can always regulate the use and buring of our fossil fuels, but who'd have thought we are threatened by something noone can regulate -- Sun Spots.
Its an interesting reading that details some of possible causes of the ice age and problems that sun spots could cause to our own climate -- very disturbing.
Leave Timothy alone. At least he doesn't stand around street corners, wearing green tights, green elfen shoes, a Santa Clause belt, a green robin hood hat and a live rat as a nose piercing. Furthermore, he doesn't eat oatmeal and raisin cookies from a ceramic cookie jar while dressed in such attire.
Do Germans? Probably. I think that is their biggest problem there. But, what else is one to do in a rat-infested population with a booming cookie industry. It's not like it can be helped.
DAMN THE WALL!
i like german girls. and nannies.
Informative, but does not mention fixing the bug that keeps my husband up playing Rocket Arena every night until 3:00.
Can I bum a sig?
No we will not run out of "fossil fuels" because fossil fuels may not have came from fossils.
Read the wired article about it. But I do agree we should find an alternative soon so we do not have to be dependent on only that type of fuels.
Okay, I'm probably one of those (lucky/stupid as hell?) few folks who have had a CDR for more than 5 years. I bought my Sony 920S Spressa drive a while ago, and even for its now slow 2x burning speeds, the thing continues to perform. (knock on wood)
Back when I first got the thing, I was lucky enough to even find blank CDR's in stores, much worse... they usually came at a price of about $9.99 to $14.99 each.
Over the past 5 or so years... i've watched the prices of CDR's plummet. Yesterday at Staples, I bought a 50 pack spindle of 80 minute blanks for $14.98. My heart sank into my gut when I saw this. All I had to do was wait about a half decade for everything to literally be a fraction of what it cost me to begin with.
The point I wanted to bring up is that... now that CDR Drives and blanks are essentially dirt cheap, and the software is dumbed-down enough for just about anybody to use it... Why did they get so cheap? The big concern, I thought, was the fact that people could easily make digitally perfect copies for little to no cost.
Compare this to DVD writer blanks and recorders. They've existed for a little while now... In the first two years after I bought my CDR, the prices at least went down by half... To the point to where it was actually cost effective (gasp!) to burn copies.
At this point, the cost of DVD blanks are still high enough to reenforce the argument that DeCSS (while it can be used as a tool for such) wasn't made for piracy... after all, the equipment costs too much and blanks are still higher than the cost of buying the actual DVD release itself.
My question is... with so much concern about MP3's, duplicating CD's, why did the CDR media get so insanely cheap... and why is the DVD media continuing to be so expensive? By now, I expected DVD duplicating media to get cheaper.
At this point, it looks like nobody really cares about what we do with CD's. Even after the advent of MPEG4/DivX;-) compressing DVD films at reasonable quality small enough to fit on a single CDR. What the hell is going on here?
I can't really buy the argument that it costs more to make DVD blanks over CDR blanks. To manufacture DVD's is barely more expensive that CD's... and the scary thing is that I can typically find DVD movies on sale for LESS than music CD's on sale.
Okay, I've rambled on enough. Any other thoughts, folks?
Whee.
Hey, I've been doing my part all evening to spam investment boards about the upcoming Digital Convergence IPO. The more the merrier, though! Bust in! Here's a sample:
Digital Convergence (DGTL) recently filed plans for an IPO. This company gives out free barcode scanners (called "CutCat") and accompanying software. The idea is that you can scan things and their software will pull up an appropriate web page in your browser. On the side, they can collect demographic data. For example, they could determine which gender and age group most often scans a certain type of product.
I think this is a horrible company, a must avoid stock for the following reasons:
These are just my opinions, of course. I did my best to get the facts straight, but I'm not perfect. Additional comments on this corporate disaster slouching toward NASDAQ are available at:
I tried following the spaying direction about 2 hours ago with a cuecat I got 3 days ago. No dice. The insides don't match the pics close enough for me to feel comfortable messing with it. All the pieces are there, but they look like they've been moved around. Someone'll have to post new directions for the new board rev.
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
If I ever release a new technology (i.e. CueCat), remind me to not choose a name that opens myself up to so many metaphors...
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Anybody heard of nanotechnology? Another good link is the Foresight Institute. I can see this becoming a reality within my lifetime (ie. much less than 1000 years). If you don't know what I'm talking about, read Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation or Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.
Once we get nanotech, this will all be moot. We'll either wipe ourselves out or become something much more than human. Either way, it should be interesting...
Yeah, wish I could give you a better estimate. It all depends on whether energy usage keeps growing in developed countries, what percentage of remaining fossil fuel reserves have been discovered, and how fast the majority of the world becomes fully industrial. The "damage" done by then may be a few degrees global warming; it may not. That's another hazy area, and one I'm even less capable of answering. It seems to me that the greatest damage done by fossil fuel burning may be the addiction it gives society to high energy consumption. Don't get me wrong; I'm uber-addicted, having sucked up 1800 kW-hr last month between myself and two roommates. Yes, that bill hurts. But I don't know if society as a whole can support that kind of power consumption with renewable resources. Nuclear power (with fuel from breeder reactors) is probably our best bet, but that's only going to buy us another century or two, and at greater expense. Basically, we've got around half a milennium in which to invent fusion, ring the planet with solar power satellites, or learn the true meaning of "conservation".
I know some of you will think this is off-topic, but I think it was the most significant event of the week.
Signal 11 left slashdot.
He provided many insightful comments in addition to his humorous comments, and occasional trolls. We lost a great member of the Slashdot community, and I feel it should be noted.
You can read his farewell speech HERE.