In fact, you look at most mainstream albums and they're merely compilations of songs, in which case a model where they can choose which songs to buy makes sense.
Of course, there are many albums where half of the artist's effort went into making the album as more than a compilation - but an overall piece of art (A concept album - the most extreme example I can think of is Pink Floyd's "The Wall" - you simply can't listen to most of those songs by themselves =P). These are very popular in certain genres - it'd be good if Apple started offering "buying full albums" kinda stuff - unless it already exists and I fail?
~Jarik
Now, most people YOU know would probably know how to get warez for free. Most people I know know how to get warez for free, but most PEOPLE don't. Well, in my experience, adults certainly don't. Kids might not know exactly how to use bittorrent and all that...but there's enough who do - they then go around burning it to all their friends.
You know how it goes - the computer literate guy goes on bittorrent trackers, getting a whole bunch of software, burns it for his mates, who burn it for their mates. Eventually you get a couple who come and say "Where do you get this from?" - or rather, more of a "wer do u get dis from?" - in either case, more people get it.
My point is, I haven't met anyone for a long time who goes around *buying* pirated software from shady stores. I mean sure, on their holiday to China, they come back with heaps, but while in Australia, they tend to prefer getting their mates to get it for them.
`Jarik
There will still be gatekeepers, but the new gatekeepers will be bloggers and other online communities that promote music they've heard and appreciate. I think a good example is the trance DJ, Armin Van Buuren. He mixes the weekly 2-hour trance mixes called "A State of Trance" which has tens of thousands, more likely even hundreds of thousands of downloads.
It's played on proper radio stations, but is also available free online from many, many places at around 192kbps. He becomes the 'gatekeeper' almost - putting together good selections of recent music that the audience can be exposed to - some of it is obscure, some of it are big trance releases, but in either case, it's one source where the public can filter through all the crap and freely be given a good choice of music.
Could this be a potentially good model for other things as well? Podcasts and radio shows becoming the next big thing - played both on real radio and available online? A State of Trance is a model that really, really works well - I wonder if things like this can be expanded to other genres...though, obviously certain genres and types of music - like post-rock concept albums, or really unique Progressive Metal bands, might suffer from the inability to be juxtaposed with other music.
Let's not forget that if, hypothetically, religion *did* exist, and those followers did feel a very *real* spiritual connection to their God, well, that spiritual connection could be argued as some proof - just like seeing, hearing, smelling or feeling something.
And to those who *did* claim to have this spiritual sense, those who wanted 'hard scientific facts' would be people who merely were ignoring that spiritual 'feeling' and the evidence that existed in a different sort of way.
The only thing with all of this, is it's assuming our predictions and theories at the moment are, in fact, correct. We don't even have a unified theory that works for all Physics. I'm sure for a long time, everyone agreed time was constant, until Einstein's relativity.
So while, at the moment, we are 'sure' the MBH are all going to dissipate, with the holes and in our 'theories', we can't know this for a fact.
That being said...I'm not against using this experiment. Risks have to be taken...and if all implode into a mini black hole, well, we're not going to be complaining are we?
And wouldn't time dilation make that falling into the black hole feel very long anyway?
[quote]Yes! With our new robotic workers, which we call "Cylons," we will usher in a new era of peaceful space exploration and colonization.[/quote]
Will they create their own [very hot] humanoid models too? In which case, I shotgun the Number 6 product line! Hell, I'll be the ambassador that goes to that space station every yeah...=P
in all likelihood Spirit will be put in "hibernation mode," Well, I hope then that they enabled and installed the right drivers for ACPI before they sent it up. =P
They're two very different experiences. I've got mates who mainly play computer games (Sticking mostly to stuff like MMOs, FPSs, RTSs, etc) and people who mainly play consoles (Sports, Racing, Adventure, Puzzle, Fighting, etc), as well as people who have both and play different genres on different things.
They're very different. Imagine playing Super Smash Bros. Melee on computer? Or an RTS on Console?
Plus, unless you're having a LAN party, it's more fun to gather 'round a TV to play on a console than a computer.
My Firefox is an unstable bitch and I'm too lazeh to fix it until I do my annual nuke. But really, you know there's a problem when I use IE7 when I need to quickly access the internet and don't have time to put up with giving Firefox a minute to load up (Granted, I use Session Manager, and yeah...that takes ages to get running).
Pah. The first (and last) time I watched one of these "battle bots" programmes, I was left thinking "where are the robots". All I saw was (somewhat dangerous) remote controlled toys.
When your battle bot can battle even somewhat autonomously, then I'll watch. You worry too much about semantics too much.
Sure, they're not technically robots, but it's still fun watching remote controlled things destroying each other. =P
Why would a tech-savvy human being be any more useful or valid as a politician than an education-savvy human being? Or a law-savvy human being? Or an entertainment-industry human being? Or a war-savvy human being? Or a bureaucracy-savvy human being? Or a classical literature-savvy human being? Or a propaganda-savvy human being? Or a violent revolution-savvy human being? Well, I'd say it means we've finally got a guy with technical knowledge in power. It means there's more of a balance in opinions and more technical knowledge happening at the top. Aren't you sick of politicians who know nothing about half the laws they're passing (in regards to technical stuff)?
This way, you've got a voice up there who knows some of what is going on. Not only that, but a completely different *mindset* to the others. I'm not saying we should have a government full of aseembly-programmers (God forbid...), but this at least shows a variety up top.
If you could get the whole "force field" thing going...well, I reckon it would be one of the most useful.
Imagine being able to have lightweight space-craft/space-station without the fear of being hit my small asteroids, or cosmic radiation. Or hell, you'd be able to travel down to the bottom of the ocean without being crushed by pressure. Hell, maybe even do something like "the core" movie, and get yourself deep into the center of the Earth.
You could have it on cars, so that a collision just has everything sorta bouncing around each other. The military applications would be obvious...and it'd really give an unfair advantage to the technologically superior countries, but hell, chuck one on the Israel border and you don't have to worry about conventional RPGs being fired over.
I reckon if someone could make a force-field as a convenient, cheap and viable technology, it'd really be a way of pushing through many things that are currently in the way of our technological advancement.
But honestly speaking, without a human on board, what's the chance of abuse for this? Like, a bunch of guys drunk at a party, call over RoboCab...then decide to trash it since there's no one to tell 'em off.
If you just 'use' your computer at its basics - install a couple of games, have music, and some documents, you will never use up even 160GB. Most of my heavy gamer friends don't use that much either.
Of course, when you get into media...I have 1.7TB, and it's all full. My anime spans 600GB, with the rest of my...*cough* movies and TV shows *cough*...taking up a large portion of the rest. My music is around 50GB. The drive for temporary video editing is usually around 300GB full at any one time (for obvious reasons)...
And then, my C: System partition is a total of 40GB and is rarely even half full.
If you store a lot of (video) media you're gonna need shitloads of space, if you're the kinda guy to 'watch and delete', 'watch and burn' or not watch at all, then in comparison, you'll need *nothing*.
It's interesting how the market is split like that...with people like me looking at 2TB and my friends probably never needing more than 160GB.
In response to this, Japan has secretly begun construction of 5 super-robots, known as "Gundams", which in a surprising turn of events will be sent up from Earth *to* Space to combat this new threat.
Random, trivial things is part of what MAKES Wikipedia.
If it's some Science concept or an in depth description into the universe of a piece of fiction or a random, popular YouTube video, wikipedia has description on it. That's what sets it apart from everything else.
The Japanese have an irrational acceptance of authority and conformism. As well as a very hierarchy-based culture, where those 'above' you deserve the utmost respect. Something which comes from their past, which was also very 'proper' and caste-based. You can add in other things from their past which translates into current day attitudes...like the way people are always seen as part of groups, organisations or whatnot, and less like individuals.
I don't mean this necessarily in a critical or negative way, as I'm sure Japanese people look towards us and raise an eyebrow at some of our attitudes...our (Australian) complete lack of formality and almost obscene 'friendliness' to an almost 'disrespectful' level to anyone we meet.
But hell, take the Japanese language...there are many forms of every word for every level of formality. Granted, people say "Domo Arigatou Gozaimasu" translates into "Thank you very much" while "Domo" is more of a "Thanks", but in most Western cultures, if you said "Thanks" to your boss, he'd be fine with it, while saying "Domo" to your boss in Japan could be taken very offensively.
The same way Japan doesn't have a culture that's obsessed with avoiding repression and based on freedom like America. The change in their culture was not due to a revolution by the people, but rather American influence post-WWII. Hence, there is no negative feelings to their caste-based, feudal and clanist culture.
Don't forget to mention some kinda overall consistency. Doesn't matter if half your network is as impenetrable as your high school crush when the other half is as easy as her slutty best friend.
I dunno how it is in America, but I know in Australia the issue isn't just a short-term "Let's inject money into the teachers budget and hire more!" but rather the fact that most teachers are people who did crappily in Year 12 and have nothing left to go into.
Fair enough, there are some who are really passionate about their work and end up going to the large abundance of private schools we have down here in Melbourne (I went to one and had some great teachers), but I talk to people who went to some crap public school who have YEAR 12 TEACHERS who marked someone wrong for spelling 'weather' in the right context, claiming it should have been 'whether', not conceding until proven wrong in the dictionary.
Simply trying to 'hire more teachers' isn't gonna work - you first need to convince people that going into a teaching career is a prestigious thing, and try to get the SMART kids to go into education courses...
NASA: USSR, please give us Plutonium for our experiments and ongoing research! USSR: No way we'd share plutonium! NASA: Yes, but in Soviet Russia, plutonium shares you! USSR:...alright then...
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, you look at most mainstream albums and they're merely compilations of songs, in which case a model where they can choose which songs to buy makes sense. Of course, there are many albums where half of the artist's effort went into making the album as more than a compilation - but an overall piece of art (A concept album - the most extreme example I can think of is Pink Floyd's "The Wall" - you simply can't listen to most of those songs by themselves =P). These are very popular in certain genres - it'd be good if Apple started offering "buying full albums" kinda stuff - unless it already exists and I fail? ~Jarik
It's played on proper radio stations, but is also available free online from many, many places at around 192kbps. He becomes the 'gatekeeper' almost - putting together good selections of recent music that the audience can be exposed to - some of it is obscure, some of it are big trance releases, but in either case, it's one source where the public can filter through all the crap and freely be given a good choice of music.
Could this be a potentially good model for other things as well? Podcasts and radio shows becoming the next big thing - played both on real radio and available online? A State of Trance is a model that really, really works well - I wonder if things like this can be expanded to other genres...though, obviously certain genres and types of music - like post-rock concept albums, or really unique Progressive Metal bands, might suffer from the inability to be juxtaposed with other music.
~Jarik
[quote]"I mean, would you want to lose in Smash Bros? TO A GIRL?"
If I got laid afterwards, YES.[/quote]
No pride at all...and you call yourself a man. *shakes head*
~Jarik
Let's not forget that if, hypothetically, religion *did* exist, and those followers did feel a very *real* spiritual connection to their God, well, that spiritual connection could be argued as some proof - just like seeing, hearing, smelling or feeling something.
And to those who *did* claim to have this spiritual sense, those who wanted 'hard scientific facts' would be people who merely were ignoring that spiritual 'feeling' and the evidence that existed in a different sort of way.
~Jarik
The only thing with all of this, is it's assuming our predictions and theories at the moment are, in fact, correct. We don't even have a unified theory that works for all Physics. I'm sure for a long time, everyone agreed time was constant, until Einstein's relativity.
So while, at the moment, we are 'sure' the MBH are all going to dissipate, with the holes and in our 'theories', we can't know this for a fact.
That being said...I'm not against using this experiment. Risks have to be taken...and if all implode into a mini black hole, well, we're not going to be complaining are we?
And wouldn't time dilation make that falling into the black hole feel very long anyway?
~Jarik
[quote]Yes! With our new robotic workers, which we call "Cylons," we will usher in a new era of peaceful space exploration and colonization.[/quote]
Will they create their own [very hot] humanoid models too? In which case, I shotgun the Number 6 product line! Hell, I'll be the ambassador that goes to that space station every yeah...=P
~Jarik
~Jarik
At least they're letting you know such a feature exists. To the curious China, he'll probably look up *why* and eventually realize it's being blocked.
~Jarik
They're two very different experiences. I've got mates who mainly play computer games (Sticking mostly to stuff like MMOs, FPSs, RTSs, etc) and people who mainly play consoles (Sports, Racing, Adventure, Puzzle, Fighting, etc), as well as people who have both and play different genres on different things.
They're very different. Imagine playing Super Smash Bros. Melee on computer? Or an RTS on Console?
Plus, unless you're having a LAN party, it's more fun to gather 'round a TV to play on a console than a computer.
~Jarik
Agreed.
My Firefox is an unstable bitch and I'm too lazeh to fix it until I do my annual nuke. But really, you know there's a problem when I use IE7 when I need to quickly access the internet and don't have time to put up with giving Firefox a minute to load up (Granted, I use Session Manager, and yeah...that takes ages to get running).
`Jarik
When your battle bot can battle even somewhat autonomously, then I'll watch. You worry too much about semantics too much.
Sure, they're not technically robots, but it's still fun watching remote controlled things destroying each other. =P
~Jarik
This way, you've got a voice up there who knows some of what is going on. Not only that, but a completely different *mindset* to the others. I'm not saying we should have a government full of aseembly-programmers (God forbid...), but this at least shows a variety up top.
~Jarik
If you could get the whole "force field" thing going...well, I reckon it would be one of the most useful.
Imagine being able to have lightweight space-craft/space-station without the fear of being hit my small asteroids, or cosmic radiation. Or hell, you'd be able to travel down to the bottom of the ocean without being crushed by pressure. Hell, maybe even do something like "the core" movie, and get yourself deep into the center of the Earth.
You could have it on cars, so that a collision just has everything sorta bouncing around each other. The military applications would be obvious...and it'd really give an unfair advantage to the technologically superior countries, but hell, chuck one on the Israel border and you don't have to worry about conventional RPGs being fired over.
I reckon if someone could make a force-field as a convenient, cheap and viable technology, it'd really be a way of pushing through many things that are currently in the way of our technological advancement.
~Jarik
Let's not forget EA almost always seems to release buggy games...and when they release patches, they seem to just cause more problems...
~Jarik
But honestly speaking, without a human on board, what's the chance of abuse for this? Like, a bunch of guys drunk at a party, call over RoboCab...then decide to trash it since there's no one to tell 'em off.
~Jarik
Agreed.
If you just 'use' your computer at its basics - install a couple of games, have music, and some documents, you will never use up even 160GB. Most of my heavy gamer friends don't use that much either.
Of course, when you get into media...I have 1.7TB, and it's all full. My anime spans 600GB, with the rest of my...*cough* movies and TV shows *cough*...taking up a large portion of the rest. My music is around 50GB. The drive for temporary video editing is usually around 300GB full at any one time (for obvious reasons)...
And then, my C: System partition is a total of 40GB and is rarely even half full.
If you store a lot of (video) media you're gonna need shitloads of space, if you're the kinda guy to 'watch and delete', 'watch and burn' or not watch at all, then in comparison, you'll need *nothing*.
It's interesting how the market is split like that...with people like me looking at 2TB and my friends probably never needing more than 160GB.
`Jarik
In response to this, Japan has secretly begun construction of 5 super-robots, known as "Gundams", which in a surprising turn of events will be sent up from Earth *to* Space to combat this new threat.
Random, trivial things is part of what MAKES Wikipedia.
If it's some Science concept or an in depth description into the universe of a piece of fiction or a random, popular YouTube video, wikipedia has description on it. That's what sets it apart from everything else.
`Jarik
I don't mean this necessarily in a critical or negative way, as I'm sure Japanese people look towards us and raise an eyebrow at some of our attitudes...our (Australian) complete lack of formality and almost obscene 'friendliness' to an almost 'disrespectful' level to anyone we meet.
But hell, take the Japanese language...there are many forms of every word for every level of formality. Granted, people say "Domo Arigatou Gozaimasu" translates into "Thank you very much" while "Domo" is more of a "Thanks", but in most Western cultures, if you said "Thanks" to your boss, he'd be fine with it, while saying "Domo" to your boss in Japan could be taken very offensively.
The same way Japan doesn't have a culture that's obsessed with avoiding repression and based on freedom like America. The change in their culture was not due to a revolution by the people, but rather American influence post-WWII. Hence, there is no negative feelings to their caste-based, feudal and clanist culture.
~Jarik
Don't forget to mention some kinda overall consistency. Doesn't matter if half your network is as impenetrable as your high school crush when the other half is as easy as her slutty best friend.
~Jarik
I'm waiting to see what Jack Thompson's reply to this would be...
"DON'T LISTEN TO THESE PSYCHOLOGISTS! THEY ARE GAMERS THEMSELVES!!!" or something.
~Jarik
I dunno how it is in America, but I know in Australia the issue isn't just a short-term "Let's inject money into the teachers budget and hire more!" but rather the fact that most teachers are people who did crappily in Year 12 and have nothing left to go into.
Fair enough, there are some who are really passionate about their work and end up going to the large abundance of private schools we have down here in Melbourne (I went to one and had some great teachers), but I talk to people who went to some crap public school who have YEAR 12 TEACHERS who marked someone wrong for spelling 'weather' in the right context, claiming it should have been 'whether', not conceding until proven wrong in the dictionary.
Simply trying to 'hire more teachers' isn't gonna work - you first need to convince people that going into a teaching career is a prestigious thing, and try to get the SMART kids to go into education courses...
~Jarik
If you saw a robot, coming at you shooting liquid and talking, I'd be shit scared too. Quite seriously.
Additionally, I bet the cameras and stuff can be used as evidence against the drug dealers in the future.
NASA: USSR, please give us Plutonium for our experiments and ongoing research! ...alright then...
USSR: No way we'd share plutonium!
NASA: Yes, but in Soviet Russia, plutonium shares you!
USSR: