Universal gives fuckall about small shops that simply carry their product. A friend of mine owns a small record shop (which will remain nameless) in southeast Michigan. He's been told numerous times that until he is reporting to Soundscan they will not support him in any way with posters, promos, anything that will help him sell music. It seems that Universal is simply interested in creating market share, not selling music, and they will use any little store to do so.
You also need to remember that the difference between a large store like Virgin and a small store is the owner. A small store where the owner puts in 12 hour days 7 days a week doesn't have the same interest that the VCs starting up a place like Virgin do. The Virgin folks are (above all) interested in making money via their buisness, which happens to be a retail music enterprise. Most small shops are owned and run by owners who love the music enough to try and make a life out of it, whatever they can make. Most small stores don't turn a profit for two to three years, if they are even around that long. Reasons like those are why you should look favorably on independant buisnesses standing up to the corporate machine, even if they do have to sell some of their product to survive. It's turning the machine against itself.
-Steve
ASIO drivers on the Audigy are a big first for Creative. Back with the Live! there are various hacks for making drivers from other EMU10K devices work with the Live!, but things didn't always work perfectly. In case you're wondering what ASIO support would do for you, go download a copy of Native Instruments Reaktor (or another soft synth) and try to make instruments that work with almost zero latency. Not going to happen using standard Windows drivers. But throw an ASIO-complient sound card in there and your PC is suddenly a very powerful instrument, too.
-Steve
Russia Supposedly Did This...
on
Lunar Lasers
·
· Score: 1
Take a look here: http://www.afpc.org/rrm/rrm272.htm. A few years back, a Navy officer and a Canadian pilot were supposedly blinded by a laser shined on them from a Russian ship that they were observing.
Since most people here have another box somewhere on the network, the answer is simple. A hard drive. Set up an old machine as a linux box and backup over the network. Even schedule it. Some motherboards will power on at a certain time of day so schedule the thing to power on in the middle of the night, suck your data over, then turn itself back off. Perfect off-line storage, nice and quick, nice and automatic. Or, find an old DLT drive or something. Used tapes, while often still good, are especially cheap. Use the same system... Automated remote backups. You'll just have to go tape switching every time you do a full.
I think this was their only one. There wasn't any line and they sales guy didn't want people queueing up because there'd just be a bunch of pissed off people beind the first one come midnight.
I remember when I had Iron Tank for the NES. There's one point where if you take the route to the left the game will ALWAYS lock hard as soon as you drive your tank over a specific point. Not Nintendo's fault of course, but irritating none the less. Especially with no way to patch it.
Last night I went to a local K-Mart to do some shopping. Turns out that although the sales guy said that they had piles (I think his exact words were "tons") of Gamecubes in the back, they only had one single XBox for sale. Some guys who came in right after I did were extremely relieved that I had no interest in the XBox. I guess I should have said that for $50 I'd leave and let them have it. Oh well.
Bit of a clarification. Half-life wasn't out before Team Fortres. TF was an old classic mod for the original Quake. Back when people with a 33.6 were LPB's to those of us trying to get into QuakeWorld with a 14.4. When 640x480 and hardware 3D was considered a godsend. And a huge advantage.
I was eating lunch near a GameStop (or something like that) today and when I went in to pre-order Tony Hawk 3, there was an XBOX demo. I *had* to stop and see just how big it is. About the size of a smallish VCR, I'd say. First thing I do is hit the reset button so I can watch it boot. Nothing. The screen cleared and nothing more came up. I'd call that a crash, but it kinda sounds like a hardware issue. The salesguy there said every time someone resets the thing he has to either power it off or play with the reset switch until it comes back. Maybe it's just a problem with the enclosures? A few other stores near by had XBOX displays that reset just fine... I have to say that the controller doesn't seem bad, though. A few sharp edges, but it otherwise fits adult hands nicely. I don't know about kids, though. They might have a problem with it.
I really hope @Home doesnt start "cracking-down" on people who use VPNs over thier network.
Now THAT would cause problems. I really like being able to connect into work via VPN at 2:30 in the morning (from wherever I'm sleeping that night) when the Problem Management Room pages me wanting access to my experimental IDS to see if any more Code Red II machines have popped up. Imagine doing that on a normal modem to some corporate modem pool? Uggh. What if I'm someplace without a POTS line? I don't even want to think about it...
I don't have a problem with this at all. Code Red II has been a SERIOUS problem around here (want to see 40MB of logs of random arp requests from Saturday night while I was sleeping?). Most people who can afford cable should also be able to afford the $15/mo or so for decent hosting services. If you need to do anything more custom than a reasonably priced host can offer then you are probebly capable of running your site on a non-standard port. (Remember finding all sorts of:8080,:8008, etc servers way back when?) Sure, I'd like it if they (@Home) eventually turns back on all ports, but it's not really that big of a deal. I don't want to host off of my cable modem anyway, it's 128k upstream. When someone else on a nice connection starts hitting me everything slows here.
Maybe @Home will try some sort of filtering on their transparent proxies to stop any worm-related strings as they are sent to keep @Home users from sending the worm to outside networks? You'll still have the problem of internal machines infecting each other, but judiciously monitoring logs and turning off the port of infected machines should take care of that.
I agree. I've got both a Compaq Armada M700 and Armada 7800 (Pentium III 700 and Pentium II 300, respectively) and thus far I haven't had a problem getting anything linux-related to work perfectly on them. How can this not-completely-functional Apple be considered the perfect Linux laptop when there are plenty of completely-supported x86 notebooks / laptops out there? I don't understand...
Sure, but this will also cause large corporations (groups that actually read the EULA) not to adopt this product because they won't be able to develop cross-platform applications for internal use, per what you say.
Does anyone not remember that Windows NEVER came with a high quality MP3 codec? They had a rather restricted codec (56kbps, I believe) which was licensed from FhG included with Media Player 7 (I believe). Big deal... Just install your licensed codec and things are back to normal. I highly doubt that anyone at Microsoft would be ignorant enough to limit the types of codecs which can be installed, as this would eliminate the possiblity that XP be used for Audio / Video production.
I disagree... Besides DAT there has been no new uncompressed format. CD and CD-R is great because the audio isn't compressed like it is with MD, MP3, etc. Judging from what I see on Dataplay's site it looks like raw audio on their discs will also be compressed. Now unless it's lossless compression (which MD and MP3 are not) this will most likely never gain wide acceptance. I, for one, don't want all my music to be subject to artificating and all the other problems associated with compressed audio.
What I'd really like to see is some sub-pixel rendering. Then we could start to see what LCD displays (and other displays with very precise pixel placement) can do.
-Steve
Arcade 2000 (Jeff Kemper) has been running into a number of problems fulfilling orders, staying in touch with his customers, returning money, etc. If you take a look at the Build Your Own Arcade Controls FAQ at http://www.arcadecontrols.com and ask around the forums you'll find a number of people who have been ripped off or screwed over by Arcade 2000. If you take a look around there are plenty of other reputable solutions such as Hanho Games, Inc. known for their excellant HotRod Joystick and their ArcadePC arcade game cabinet.
If you're more interested in building your own cabinet check out the BYOAC FAQ or my friend Sithspawn's page about his cabinet. We both built MAME cabinets over the summer. Took a few months, but it's worth it. There's nothing quite like scrolling through a menu of 2000-some arcade, NES, SNES, SMS, etc games and playing with nice classic-feeling controls.
I wish people would quit equaiting all retail CD purchases with the RIAA. There are many high-quality artists out there who do not like nor support major labels and the RIAA. Not buying CDs as a whole simply because of the whole Napster fiasco is as much of a knee-jerk reaction as the lawsuits purported to in this Slashdot article. Start thinking about what you buy. Read the back of the album to find out what label it is on. Support non-RIAA artists but don't boycott the industry as a whole if you want to stand up for Napster. The music industry isn't all major labels and big name mainstream bands (like the Bare Naked Ladies are).
The store has as much of a right to make a profit than you do to listen to the music. If an individual (or group of individuals) wishes to produce a work of art and limit it's distribution, that is their right. The original reason why we have copyright laws is to protect the rights of creators.
I personally don't see any difference between copying a music cd or the latest version of Quake for a friend. Remember, this is on a small scale, between friends, fair use. I don't see anything wrong with that. Here are my problems with sharing music with Napster. When you physically copy somthing for a friend you generally know that person. Napster is not too far off from (if you could afford this) making CD-R copies of audio discs and mailing them to anyone who asks for one. Large scale distribution.
Many people justify using Napster for previewing of songs and buying (or disliking and not buying) albums. I've done that before... Great use. I think record labels themselves should make it possible for you to listen to ALL their music on their sites to see if you like it. Or to find out-of-print rare titles? Fair use there too, the pieces can't be purchased new anymore. But what about the people who grab entire new (or readily available) albums via Napster and not pay for them? That's not right. It's not fair to the artists nor any of the channels which the artists authorized (directly or indirectly) to profit from the work.
Yes, one day there might not be a need for the corner record store anymore, but that will be the choice of the industry: distributors, retailers, and most importantly the artist.
It's easy to think that people using Napster to fetch the latest Brittany Spears aren't really hurting anyone when you think of Best Buy, FYE, Media Play, etc as the corporate music retailers. Remember the small stores, though. A good friend of mine owns a small independant music store in south east Michigan. Time and time again people (generally 15 - 25 year old) will come in bragging about how they aren't going to buy album X because they just got it off of Napster. Sure, that's good and all for them, but that's a good $3 - $4 straight out of the pocket of the store.
I personally don't see anything wrong with trading music on the internet if it is going to promote the sales of CDs, but remember that more than half of a small store's revenue is generated by the sale of the Billboard top 100 albums. When you look at it this way, it's stupid for them not to sell such mainstream titles in order to help stay in buisness. These are the very same stores where you go to find the independant artists that we all love.
And what about small artists who are involuntarily traided on Napster? They still deserve to get paid. No matter how much an artist loves making music they still have to recoup at least the cost of manufacturing and distributing their albums, which they usually cover themselves. Napster helps keep people from taking the time to order the album from the artist or a smaller distributor because they already have the music. It's often only collectors who will take the time then. And no, mp3.com isn't always a viable alternative. Yes, it's nice and convient because mp3.com allows almost anyone to get their work out there, but face it, MOST groups on mp3.com aren't very good. There are many good groups on mp3.com, but the time it takes to sort through the absolute crap almost makes it feel worthless.
I'm sitting here at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Cheerios, catching up on news using my first-generation I-Opener and here's this post. Last night at about 3am I finished squeezing a hard drive and CPU fan into my I-Opener and installing Windows 98 on it for my sister to use as her normal machine. (She mostly does web browsing and online chat type stuff) It works suprisingly well, I just need to find a 64MB SODIMM somewhere to make it work a little better. I might go the Linux or *BSD route, but with all the wierd plugins that my sister likes to run, I have to stick with Windows 98 for now...
IIRC there was an article in (the new defunct) PC Accelerator magazine a few months back about games that are soon going to be shipping in keep cases. I personally think that this is a great idea. There is plenty of room on the outside of the case for any artwork and info, and more than enough room inside for the disc, manual, warranty registration card, whatever. If anyone knows where to find more info about this, please post it. www.pcxl.com just feeds you over to dailyradar now.
Is it common for a coloc service to require your root password if you are having them host a *nix box? A friend of a friend's company is insisting on having root in case they notice any suspecious activity on their network. I guess I can see both sides of the coin here. I can see how they would want to be sure their network is secure, but I also want to be sure my machine cannot be messed with by anyone. What do you think?
Remember back in the early 90's when Circuit City, Best Buy, and other such stores had CDs solely as loss leaders? They would sell disks for prices sometimes as low as $10 just to get customers in the door. When the cost price of a disc (from distributors) is usually $10.50 - $11.50, small, independant stores just cannot compete. What we need to do is start shopping smaller outlets. Don't blindly concern yourself with price alone, else before you know it we all will only be able to buy what Mr. Corporate Music Outlet deems to be our favorate song this week.
Slashdot Mirror
Universal gives fuckall about small shops that simply carry their product. A friend of mine owns a small record shop (which will remain nameless) in southeast Michigan. He's been told numerous times that until he is reporting to Soundscan they will not support him in any way with posters, promos, anything that will help him sell music. It seems that Universal is simply interested in creating market share, not selling music, and they will use any little store to do so. You also need to remember that the difference between a large store like Virgin and a small store is the owner. A small store where the owner puts in 12 hour days 7 days a week doesn't have the same interest that the VCs starting up a place like Virgin do. The Virgin folks are (above all) interested in making money via their buisness, which happens to be a retail music enterprise. Most small shops are owned and run by owners who love the music enough to try and make a life out of it, whatever they can make. Most small stores don't turn a profit for two to three years, if they are even around that long. Reasons like those are why you should look favorably on independant buisnesses standing up to the corporate machine, even if they do have to sell some of their product to survive. It's turning the machine against itself. -Steve
ASIO drivers on the Audigy are a big first for Creative. Back with the Live! there are various hacks for making drivers from other EMU10K devices work with the Live!, but things didn't always work perfectly. In case you're wondering what ASIO support would do for you, go download a copy of Native Instruments Reaktor (or another soft synth) and try to make instruments that work with almost zero latency. Not going to happen using standard Windows drivers. But throw an ASIO-complient sound card in there and your PC is suddenly a very powerful instrument, too.
-Steve
Take a look here: http://www.afpc.org/rrm/rrm272.htm. A few years back, a Navy officer and a Canadian pilot were supposedly blinded by a laser shined on them from a Russian ship that they were observing.
-Steve
Since most people here have another box somewhere on the network, the answer is simple. A hard drive. Set up an old machine as a linux box and backup over the network. Even schedule it. Some motherboards will power on at a certain time of day so schedule the thing to power on in the middle of the night, suck your data over, then turn itself back off. Perfect off-line storage, nice and quick, nice and automatic. Or, find an old DLT drive or something. Used tapes, while often still good, are especially cheap. Use the same system... Automated remote backups. You'll just have to go tape switching every time you do a full.
-Steve
I think this was their only one. There wasn't any line and they sales guy didn't want people queueing up because there'd just be a bunch of pissed off people beind the first one come midnight.
-Steve
I remember when I had Iron Tank for the NES. There's one point where if you take the route to the left the game will ALWAYS lock hard as soon as you drive your tank over a specific point. Not Nintendo's fault of course, but irritating none the less. Especially with no way to patch it.
-Steve
Last night I went to a local K-Mart to do some shopping. Turns out that although the sales guy said that they had piles (I think his exact words were "tons") of Gamecubes in the back, they only had one single XBox for sale. Some guys who came in right after I did were extremely relieved that I had no interest in the XBox. I guess I should have said that for $50 I'd leave and let them have it. Oh well.
-Steve
Bit of a clarification. Half-life wasn't out before Team Fortres. TF was an old classic mod for the original Quake. Back when people with a 33.6 were LPB's to those of us trying to get into QuakeWorld with a 14.4. When 640x480 and hardware 3D was considered a godsend. And a huge advantage.
-Steve
I was eating lunch near a GameStop (or something like that) today and when I went in to pre-order Tony Hawk 3, there was an XBOX demo. I *had* to stop and see just how big it is. About the size of a smallish VCR, I'd say. First thing I do is hit the reset button so I can watch it boot. Nothing. The screen cleared and nothing more came up. I'd call that a crash, but it kinda sounds like a hardware issue. The salesguy there said every time someone resets the thing he has to either power it off or play with the reset switch until it comes back. Maybe it's just a problem with the enclosures? A few other stores near by had XBOX displays that reset just fine... I have to say that the controller doesn't seem bad, though. A few sharp edges, but it otherwise fits adult hands nicely. I don't know about kids, though. They might have a problem with it.
I really hope @Home doesnt start "cracking-down" on people who use VPNs over thier network.
Now THAT would cause problems. I really like being able to connect into work via VPN at 2:30 in the morning (from wherever I'm sleeping that night) when the Problem Management Room pages me wanting access to my experimental IDS to see if any more Code Red II machines have popped up. Imagine doing that on a normal modem to some corporate modem pool? Uggh. What if I'm someplace without a POTS line? I don't even want to think about it...
-Steve
I don't have a problem with this at all. Code Red II has been a SERIOUS problem around here (want to see 40MB of logs of random arp requests from Saturday night while I was sleeping?). Most people who can afford cable should also be able to afford the $15/mo or so for decent hosting services. If you need to do anything more custom than a reasonably priced host can offer then you are probebly capable of running your site on a non-standard port. (Remember finding all sorts of :8080, :8008, etc servers way back when?) Sure, I'd like it if they (@Home) eventually turns back on all ports, but it's not really that big of a deal. I don't want to host off of my cable modem anyway, it's 128k upstream. When someone else on a nice connection starts hitting me everything slows here.
Maybe @Home will try some sort of filtering on their transparent proxies to stop any worm-related strings as they are sent to keep @Home users from sending the worm to outside networks? You'll still have the problem of internal machines infecting each other, but judiciously monitoring logs and turning off the port of infected machines should take care of that.
I agree. I've got both a Compaq Armada M700 and Armada 7800 (Pentium III 700 and Pentium II 300, respectively) and thus far I haven't had a problem getting anything linux-related to work perfectly on them. How can this not-completely-functional Apple be considered the perfect Linux laptop when there are plenty of completely-supported x86 notebooks / laptops out there? I don't understand...
-Steve
Sure, but this will also cause large corporations (groups that actually read the EULA) not to adopt this product because they won't be able to develop cross-platform applications for internal use, per what you say.
-Steve
Does anyone not remember that Windows NEVER came with a high quality MP3 codec? They had a rather restricted codec (56kbps, I believe) which was licensed from FhG included with Media Player 7 (I believe). Big deal... Just install your licensed codec and things are back to normal. I highly doubt that anyone at Microsoft would be ignorant enough to limit the types of codecs which can be installed, as this would eliminate the possiblity that XP be used for Audio / Video production.
-Steve
I disagree... Besides DAT there has been no new uncompressed format. CD and CD-R is great because the audio isn't compressed like it is with MD, MP3, etc. Judging from what I see on Dataplay's site it looks like raw audio on their discs will also be compressed. Now unless it's lossless compression (which MD and MP3 are not) this will most likely never gain wide acceptance. I, for one, don't want all my music to be subject to artificating and all the other problems associated with compressed audio.
What I'd really like to see is some sub-pixel rendering. Then we could start to see what LCD displays (and other displays with very precise pixel placement) can do. -Steve
Here is the link to Sithspawn's arcade.
Arcade 2000 (Jeff Kemper) has been running into a number of problems fulfilling orders, staying in touch with his customers, returning money, etc. If you take a look at the Build Your Own Arcade Controls FAQ at http://www.arcadecontrols.com and ask around the forums you'll find a number of people who have been ripped off or screwed over by Arcade 2000. If you take a look around there are plenty of other reputable solutions such as Hanho Games, Inc. known for their excellant HotRod Joystick and their ArcadePC arcade game cabinet.
If you're more interested in building your own cabinet check out the BYOAC FAQ or my friend Sithspawn's page about his cabinet. We both built MAME cabinets over the summer. Took a few months, but it's worth it. There's nothing quite like scrolling through a menu of 2000-some arcade, NES, SNES, SMS, etc games and playing with nice classic-feeling controls.
I wish people would quit equaiting all retail CD purchases with the RIAA. There are many high-quality artists out there who do not like nor support major labels and the RIAA. Not buying CDs as a whole simply because of the whole Napster fiasco is as much of a knee-jerk reaction as the lawsuits purported to in this Slashdot article. Start thinking about what you buy. Read the back of the album to find out what label it is on. Support non-RIAA artists but don't boycott the industry as a whole if you want to stand up for Napster. The music industry isn't all major labels and big name mainstream bands (like the Bare Naked Ladies are).
The store has as much of a right to make a profit than you do to listen to the music. If an individual (or group of individuals) wishes to produce a work of art and limit it's distribution, that is their right. The original reason why we have copyright laws is to protect the rights of creators.
I personally don't see any difference between copying a music cd or the latest version of Quake for a friend. Remember, this is on a small scale, between friends, fair use. I don't see anything wrong with that. Here are my problems with sharing music with Napster. When you physically copy somthing for a friend you generally know that person. Napster is not too far off from (if you could afford this) making CD-R copies of audio discs and mailing them to anyone who asks for one. Large scale distribution.
Many people justify using Napster for previewing of songs and buying (or disliking and not buying) albums. I've done that before... Great use. I think record labels themselves should make it possible for you to listen to ALL their music on their sites to see if you like it. Or to find out-of-print rare titles? Fair use there too, the pieces can't be purchased new anymore. But what about the people who grab entire new (or readily available) albums via Napster and not pay for them? That's not right. It's not fair to the artists nor any of the channels which the artists authorized (directly or indirectly) to profit from the work.
Yes, one day there might not be a need for the corner record store anymore, but that will be the choice of the industry: distributors, retailers, and most importantly the artist.
It's easy to think that people using Napster to fetch the latest Brittany Spears aren't really hurting anyone when you think of Best Buy, FYE, Media Play, etc as the corporate music retailers. Remember the small stores, though. A good friend of mine owns a small independant music store in south east Michigan. Time and time again people (generally 15 - 25 year old) will come in bragging about how they aren't going to buy album X because they just got it off of Napster. Sure, that's good and all for them, but that's a good $3 - $4 straight out of the pocket of the store.
I personally don't see anything wrong with trading music on the internet if it is going to promote the sales of CDs, but remember that more than half of a small store's revenue is generated by the sale of the Billboard top 100 albums. When you look at it this way, it's stupid for them not to sell such mainstream titles in order to help stay in buisness. These are the very same stores where you go to find the independant artists that we all love.
And what about small artists who are involuntarily traided on Napster? They still deserve to get paid. No matter how much an artist loves making music they still have to recoup at least the cost of manufacturing and distributing their albums, which they usually cover themselves. Napster helps keep people from taking the time to order the album from the artist or a smaller distributor because they already have the music. It's often only collectors who will take the time then. And no, mp3.com isn't always a viable alternative. Yes, it's nice and convient because mp3.com allows almost anyone to get their work out there, but face it, MOST groups on mp3.com aren't very good. There are many good groups on mp3.com, but the time it takes to sort through the absolute crap almost makes it feel worthless.
I'm sitting here at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Cheerios, catching up on news using my first-generation I-Opener and here's this post. Last night at about 3am I finished squeezing a hard drive and CPU fan into my I-Opener and installing Windows 98 on it for my sister to use as her normal machine. (She mostly does web browsing and online chat type stuff) It works suprisingly well, I just need to find a 64MB SODIMM somewhere to make it work a little better. I might go the Linux or *BSD route, but with all the wierd plugins that my sister likes to run, I have to stick with Windows 98 for now...
IIRC there was an article in (the new defunct) PC Accelerator magazine a few months back about games that are soon going to be shipping in keep cases. I personally think that this is a great idea. There is plenty of room on the outside of the case for any artwork and info, and more than enough room inside for the disc, manual, warranty registration card, whatever. If anyone knows where to find more info about this, please post it. www.pcxl.com just feeds you over to dailyradar now.
Is it common for a coloc service to require your root password if you are having them host a *nix box? A friend of a friend's company is insisting on having root in case they notice any suspecious activity on their network. I guess I can see both sides of the coin here. I can see how they would want to be sure their network is secure, but I also want to be sure my machine cannot be messed with by anyone. What do you think?
Remember back in the early 90's when Circuit City, Best Buy, and other such stores had CDs solely as loss leaders? They would sell disks for prices sometimes as low as $10 just to get customers in the door. When the cost price of a disc (from distributors) is usually $10.50 - $11.50, small, independant stores just cannot compete. What we need to do is start shopping smaller outlets. Don't blindly concern yourself with price alone, else before you know it we all will only be able to buy what Mr. Corporate Music Outlet deems to be our favorate song this week.