Like say, Starcraft II. Sure you can play on private servers, but you greatly limit yourself in who you play on numbers alone.
Or say, Counter-Strike. Once again, sure you could play on private servers with your mates...but if you want to start doing wars, comps, and all the fun stuff, you need a proper steam account.
Or WoW. You seem happy playing on a Pirated Server. Now I don't play WoW, but many of my mates do. And they all claim they started on pirated servers,but started playing on Frostmourn eventually...and apparently it's *way* better.
As a general rule I will never pay for anything if I can get it pirated. Because of assholes like me, well, they need to do stuff like this - requiring an internet connection for everything and trying to make games more multiplayer focused. Don't really blame them.
The article is 2 years old, but seems to fit with some of the strange nuances of the events we've seen over the last few days. It claims Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 due to liver failure. An interesting read, and a lot more believable than a lot of the other conspiracy theories going around regarding 9/11 and related events.
Some of the points they bring up are: - Osama Bin Laden while applauding the 9/11 attacks, claimed he was not involved in them at all. Until 'after' this article claimed he died, then the USA received the 'video tapes' claiming responsibility. - Experts have claimed there's differences in the Osama's talking in the tapes, and the real one. Such as wearing a ring (which apparently goes against Wahhabi tradition), facial structure differences, language, writing with his non-preferred hand, etc.
To some extent though, maybe advertisement in the future will become more well relevant?
Rather than being blasted with dating websites all the time, you may find ads for various computer parts popping up at the same time that you're actually looking to build a new computer.
Or getting local businesses popping up web ads instead of businesses that only ship to US.
I know in a way the "invasion of privacy" is generally seen as something bad, but I can also see how it could be useful.
These kind of agreements usually are done at senior management or R&D level. And isn't always that bad. I mean, like my parents both work as senior management consultants, and one of the deals they sign is if they ever leave the company, they are not allowed to do any work for any of the clients they had under their company for 1 year.
Makes sense, otherwise they could use their companies branding to form client relationships, then just steal them all and make a new company.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion, I guess. I just can't see how a "good person" could fondle people in an airport without puking.
And I suppose you'll also claim "I don't know how surgeons can cut people open without puking" or "I don't know how people can sit in front of the computer all day without falling asleep."
There are people who do jobs they probably don't like if they have to, and people often do it for what they believe is better for society as a whole. I'm sure cops don't enjoy going to shadier, more dangerous areas to investigate crimes, or enjoy having to try to subdue criminals, or investigate gory crime scenes...
While I'm not completely disagreeing with you, to some extent, as the nation in the world that pretty much every other Western nation in the world looks to for military protection, they do to some extent, have to "prepare for the worst", as unlikely as it is that the "worst" is gonna happen.
Niche market? In the last 10 years Apple have seen their share price rise ~3200%, in the last quarter they were the 3rd biggest company in the world by market capitalization according to the FORBES 500 beaten only by ExxonMobil and PetroChina.
They brought science fiction style gadgets people dreamed of in the 90s to become the 'norm' to the point where you're almost expected to have an iPhone and an iPod. People are surprised when you don't have one. Apple entered a market that *was* niche to nerds and a few executives and made it 'cool' and mainstream, to the point where everyone got into it.
Because it's the internet obviously. And we're the 4chan generation. Nothing is sacred and people have got to stop being sensitive if it's obviously meant in good fun and humor. I imagine he was just making it clear that his purpose was one of pure humor.
Well the Wii was aimed more at the casual gaming audience. And the thing with casual gamers is they'll play a game for a bit, then dump it. And once they've played enough games that are similar to each other, they'll stop playing it altogether.
You're not gonna get the same kinda crowd as XBox360 gamers who will probably keep gaming daily, pay for DLC, and buy the latest games as they come out.
How about since 99% of the people out there regularly use Twitter and Facebook in their regular daily activities?
Netscape threw commercial shit no one cared about in your face, Firefox is obviously trying to cater for 99% of their customers giving them the features they all want. Well, all except for the Slashdot crowd.
These chips will be used in commercial boards and PCBs. How long do you think it'd take the company who is selling these commercial products to redesign their boards for the new chips, go through the various stages of the product life cycle and then finally start selling them?
In that time I'm sure Japan's chip industry will be up and running again.
People go there for lack of anonymity. You go there to make and keep contact with your friends, family and acquaintances. Pretty sure a clear identity is required for that to work. You use Facebook because everyone uses their real name, and you can thus easily track down people you may want to find.
From the US Government's point of view they're well within their right to try to persecute Manning. Ultimately, a soldier is there to follow orders. If you're in a life and death situation and your soldier does his own shit, based on his own intuition, you're gonna have chaos and more potential deaths on your side. Absolute obedience and nondisclosure isn't an unreasonable expectation for a military. Neither is doing everything in your power to protect your state.
It makes perfect sense for the army to shut him down. It's a very logical thing to do. You have someone who is putting your operations at risk. He's an obstacle to the job of the military - protecting American interests and control (through whatever means they can get away with). Shut him down and make an example of him.
Of course, with that in mind, I applaud the efforts of Manning to bring issues to light. Since it *is* a democracy, obviously people should be given a level of disclosure. But then...is he really doing it due to moral issues? Or simply for some spotlight and fame for himself? I wonder. And how much disclosure is an appropriate level of disclosure?
I do think people on this site are way too anti-government though. Of course they're going to shut them down, and if any of you were in their position, you'd try to get him shut down as well.
Maybe instead of whining about how your business model got destroyed, you should either come up with a new business model or enter a new industry?
Sure, you say that customers are the ones who are ultimately victimized...but once customers get used to paying a certain low price for something, then when it gets jacked up they will feel they are being cheated. And this will create alternative avenues for competitors, competing industries and whatnot to have a chance. People don't like paying more for something today that they paid yesterday for less.
In the end, by setting the oil prices so low, the RIAA OIl Company's "predatory policies" would really, just set a new standard for everything in the future. Just like now, everyone is used to free porn. Who the hell is gonna pay for it now? The big companies will either die off, or they'll have to find a new way to make money using the newer business model.
Back in the 60s, 70s, 80s those in entertainment were those with big industry backing. Sure, more globalization means more international exposure, but the internet also means smaller performing groups, indie movie studios, etc can become popular in their niches and slowly gain global exposure.
I'd also like to add that I highly doubt Will.I.Am is going to be replacing someone proper. His title may be Director, but I doubt he's gonna be doing everything a Director of Intel actually does. So it's not like he's stealing a spot from everyone else.
Oh, and stop being a pussy. Maybe the reason why *you* haven't gone anywhere is because you keep whining about all the 'winners' keep taking your spots. Maybe you need to start acting like a winner to get anywhere...
That's like saying, it wasn't Lenin that was the great revolutionary, it was all the little Bolshevik soldiers and members who rose up and struck down Kerensky's provisional government.
Yes, those people who did the actual leaks are significant figures, but you need someone to start it. That's what Assange did - he created a medium to release leaks, encouraged more and more whistleblowers and released in the information in a way to gain maximum publicity and exposure. There's a level of leadership involved in that - and to some extent, it's those figureheads that are needed in any sort of revolutionary movement.
Half the time people get on lower salaries, and don't get bonuses simply because they *don't ask*. They expect it all to come to them.
If you push for it, often you will get it. If you don't get it, move jobs - that's another way to keep going up. I know people who move jobs every 3-4 years, and their income jumps every single time. It's all about how well you push. People don't like to say "No", and will often give you what you want if you just demand it.
Even if you don't have a finished HDR product, being able to edit in HDR is amazing. Yes, it would be great to have HDR displays, but even without them, say...trying to much with brightness in a pic. You want say, a bright sunny day, that's resulting in washed out colours to look better. You can mess with the colour curves, but depending on your video, this can look horrible.
With HDR, just grab the brightness slider and pull it down. It'll look great.
I've used 32bpc before, but in a really round about way. Duplicate a video track, bring out purely the highlights, delete any highlights that aren't actually bright, then add them to the original track in 32bpc space. It gives nice motion blurs (the 'lights' have stronger blurs than the shadows) and all that.
I think what the parent was getting at is...what exactly are they going to put on the internet that is going to harm us? "Bomb the US" sites? And who is going to look at them?
At least with radical Islamic terrorist groups, they have potential similarly minded extremists all over the globe who may look up these sites and follow them. But how many North Koreans living in other countries who probably escaped as refugees are going to look up North Korean websites and have their actions influenced by that?
I mean, h264 would not have been possible 10 years ago since processors wouldn't be able to decode the data in real time. So when we have crazy 1000 core processors in our computers, I'm sure they'll be some crazy complex algorithms made to encode stuff even smaller - and make use of parallel processing in the CPU to decode it in real time or something.
I'll leave it to the Computer Scientists to discuss what that algorithm would be. =)
I believe that MySpace was a gimmick to people. Teenagers suddenly had the ability to make their own web spaces online without needing to know how to code up HTML or whatever. Once that novelty of doing that finished, people got bored.
Facebook has one major selling point - everyone uses their real names. And everyone has it. You meet someone at a party, work or another function - you don't ask "What's your email?", "What's your MySpace name?" - you go home, you search their name. Not even their full name - just their first name and see what comes up through your own friends' lists. Sure the gimmick of constantly posting up pointless status updates like "I went to the shop today. lulz." people get over, but using it to make a contact book of people is still very useful. No longer do you need to ask for numbers, emails or whatnot. I've only tried to search for 3 people in my life to find that they didn't have Facebook.
And that's why I think Facebook will survive a long time. Because currently, there's no real alternative that everyone else is using.
Slashdot Mirror
See I disagree.
Like say, Starcraft II. Sure you can play on private servers, but you greatly limit yourself in who you play on numbers alone.
Or say, Counter-Strike. Once again, sure you could play on private servers with your mates...but if you want to start doing wars, comps, and all the fun stuff, you need a proper steam account.
Or WoW. You seem happy playing on a Pirated Server. Now I don't play WoW, but many of my mates do. And they all claim they started on pirated servers ,but started playing on Frostmourn eventually...and apparently it's *way* better.
As a general rule I will never pay for anything if I can get it pirated. Because of assholes like me, well, they need to do stuff like this - requiring an internet connection for everything and trying to make games more multiplayer focused. Don't really blame them.
A friend linked me to this article last night.
The article is 2 years old, but seems to fit with some of the strange nuances of the events we've seen over the last few days. It claims Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 due to liver failure. An interesting read, and a lot more believable than a lot of the other conspiracy theories going around regarding 9/11 and related events.
Some of the points they bring up are:
- Osama Bin Laden while applauding the 9/11 attacks, claimed he was not involved in them at all. Until 'after' this article claimed he died, then the USA received the 'video tapes' claiming responsibility.
- Experts have claimed there's differences in the Osama's talking in the tapes, and the real one. Such as wearing a ring (which apparently goes against Wahhabi tradition), facial structure differences, language, writing with his non-preferred hand, etc.
To some extent though, maybe advertisement in the future will become more well relevant?
Rather than being blasted with dating websites all the time, you may find ads for various computer parts popping up at the same time that you're actually looking to build a new computer.
Or getting local businesses popping up web ads instead of businesses that only ship to US.
I know in a way the "invasion of privacy" is generally seen as something bad, but I can also see how it could be useful.
These kind of agreements usually are done at senior management or R&D level. And isn't always that bad. I mean, like my parents both work as senior management consultants, and one of the deals they sign is if they ever leave the company, they are not allowed to do any work for any of the clients they had under their company for 1 year.
Makes sense, otherwise they could use their companies branding to form client relationships, then just steal them all and make a new company.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion, I guess. I just can't see how a "good person" could fondle people in an airport without puking.
And I suppose you'll also claim "I don't know how surgeons can cut people open without puking" or "I don't know how people can sit in front of the computer all day without falling asleep."
There are people who do jobs they probably don't like if they have to, and people often do it for what they believe is better for society as a whole. I'm sure cops don't enjoy going to shadier, more dangerous areas to investigate crimes, or enjoy having to try to subdue criminals, or investigate gory crime scenes...
While I'm not completely disagreeing with you, to some extent, as the nation in the world that pretty much every other Western nation in the world looks to for military protection, they do to some extent, have to "prepare for the worst", as unlikely as it is that the "worst" is gonna happen.
Where the fuck are you living?
Niche market? In the last 10 years Apple have seen their share price rise ~3200%, in the last quarter they were the 3rd biggest company in the world by market capitalization according to the FORBES 500 beaten only by ExxonMobil and PetroChina.
They brought science fiction style gadgets people dreamed of in the 90s to become the 'norm' to the point where you're almost expected to have an iPhone and an iPod. People are surprised when you don't have one. Apple entered a market that *was* niche to nerds and a few executives and made it 'cool' and mainstream, to the point where everyone got into it.
I'm kinda amazed at this. I thought Slashdot wouldn't have so many trolls and intolerant people.
Then again, it's probably all the same guy spamming shit out in an attempt to make himself feel important. Anonymously of course.
Because it's the internet obviously. And we're the 4chan generation. Nothing is sacred and people have got to stop being sensitive if it's obviously meant in good fun and humor. I imagine he was just making it clear that his purpose was one of pure humor.
That's Chinese alright!
Well the Wii was aimed more at the casual gaming audience. And the thing with casual gamers is they'll play a game for a bit, then dump it. And once they've played enough games that are similar to each other, they'll stop playing it altogether.
You're not gonna get the same kinda crowd as XBox360 gamers who will probably keep gaming daily, pay for DLC, and buy the latest games as they come out.
I wonder which business model works better?
How about since 99% of the people out there regularly use Twitter and Facebook in their regular daily activities?
Netscape threw commercial shit no one cared about in your face, Firefox is obviously trying to cater for 99% of their customers giving them the features they all want. Well, all except for the Slashdot crowd.
These chips will be used in commercial boards and PCBs. How long do you think it'd take the company who is selling these commercial products to redesign their boards for the new chips, go through the various stages of the product life cycle and then finally start selling them?
In that time I'm sure Japan's chip industry will be up and running again.
Poole completely misses the point of Facebook.
People go there for lack of anonymity. You go there to make and keep contact with your friends, family and acquaintances. Pretty sure a clear identity is required for that to work. You use Facebook because everyone uses their real name, and you can thus easily track down people you may want to find.
It has nothing to do with stupidity at all.
From the US Government's point of view they're well within their right to try to persecute Manning. Ultimately, a soldier is there to follow orders. If you're in a life and death situation and your soldier does his own shit, based on his own intuition, you're gonna have chaos and more potential deaths on your side. Absolute obedience and nondisclosure isn't an unreasonable expectation for a military. Neither is doing everything in your power to protect your state.
It makes perfect sense for the army to shut him down. It's a very logical thing to do. You have someone who is putting your operations at risk. He's an obstacle to the job of the military - protecting American interests and control (through whatever means they can get away with). Shut him down and make an example of him.
Of course, with that in mind, I applaud the efforts of Manning to bring issues to light. Since it *is* a democracy, obviously people should be given a level of disclosure. But then...is he really doing it due to moral issues? Or simply for some spotlight and fame for himself? I wonder. And how much disclosure is an appropriate level of disclosure?
I do think people on this site are way too anti-government though. Of course they're going to shut them down, and if any of you were in their position, you'd try to get him shut down as well.
Maybe that's not really a problem?
Maybe instead of whining about how your business model got destroyed, you should either come up with a new business model or enter a new industry?
Sure, you say that customers are the ones who are ultimately victimized...but once customers get used to paying a certain low price for something, then when it gets jacked up they will feel they are being cheated. And this will create alternative avenues for competitors, competing industries and whatnot to have a chance. People don't like paying more for something today that they paid yesterday for less.
In the end, by setting the oil prices so low, the RIAA OIl Company's "predatory policies" would really, just set a new standard for everything in the future. Just like now, everyone is used to free porn. Who the hell is gonna pay for it now? The big companies will either die off, or they'll have to find a new way to make money using the newer business model.
I completely disagree.
Back in the 60s, 70s, 80s those in entertainment were those with big industry backing. Sure, more globalization means more international exposure, but the internet also means smaller performing groups, indie movie studios, etc can become popular in their niches and slowly gain global exposure.
I'd also like to add that I highly doubt Will.I.Am is going to be replacing someone proper. His title may be Director, but I doubt he's gonna be doing everything a Director of Intel actually does. So it's not like he's stealing a spot from everyone else.
Oh, and stop being a pussy. Maybe the reason why *you* haven't gone anywhere is because you keep whining about all the 'winners' keep taking your spots. Maybe you need to start acting like a winner to get anywhere...
That's like saying, it wasn't Lenin that was the great revolutionary, it was all the little Bolshevik soldiers and members who rose up and struck down Kerensky's provisional government.
Yes, those people who did the actual leaks are significant figures, but you need someone to start it. That's what Assange did - he created a medium to release leaks, encouraged more and more whistleblowers and released in the information in a way to gain maximum publicity and exposure. There's a level of leadership involved in that - and to some extent, it's those figureheads that are needed in any sort of revolutionary movement.
I don't think crashes occur while going straight on a 'motorway'. So I don't think this system will make a difference at all.
Most crashes occur at intersections, changing lanes, while turning, etc.
All this would help is the occasional drunk driver who can't stay in his own lane, or a sleepy driver on a long journey.
People let themselves be screwed.
Half the time people get on lower salaries, and don't get bonuses simply because they *don't ask*. They expect it all to come to them.
If you push for it, often you will get it. If you don't get it, move jobs - that's another way to keep going up. I know people who move jobs every 3-4 years, and their income jumps every single time. It's all about how well you push. People don't like to say "No", and will often give you what you want if you just demand it.
Even if you don't have a finished HDR product, being able to edit in HDR is amazing. Yes, it would be great to have HDR displays, but even without them, say...trying to much with brightness in a pic. You want say, a bright sunny day, that's resulting in washed out colours to look better. You can mess with the colour curves, but depending on your video, this can look horrible.
With HDR, just grab the brightness slider and pull it down. It'll look great.
I've used 32bpc before, but in a really round about way. Duplicate a video track, bring out purely the highlights, delete any highlights that aren't actually bright, then add them to the original track in 32bpc space. It gives nice motion blurs (the 'lights' have stronger blurs than the shadows) and all that.
I think what the parent was getting at is...what exactly are they going to put on the internet that is going to harm us? "Bomb the US" sites? And who is going to look at them?
At least with radical Islamic terrorist groups, they have potential similarly minded extremists all over the globe who may look up these sites and follow them. But how many North Koreans living in other countries who probably escaped as refugees are going to look up North Korean websites and have their actions influenced by that?
Processing power is a big thing too.
I mean, h264 would not have been possible 10 years ago since processors wouldn't be able to decode the data in real time. So when we have crazy 1000 core processors in our computers, I'm sure they'll be some crazy complex algorithms made to encode stuff even smaller - and make use of parallel processing in the CPU to decode it in real time or something.
I'll leave it to the Computer Scientists to discuss what that algorithm would be. =)
I believe that MySpace was a gimmick to people. Teenagers suddenly had the ability to make their own web spaces online without needing to know how to code up HTML or whatever. Once that novelty of doing that finished, people got bored.
Facebook has one major selling point - everyone uses their real names. And everyone has it. You meet someone at a party, work or another function - you don't ask "What's your email?", "What's your MySpace name?" - you go home, you search their name. Not even their full name - just their first name and see what comes up through your own friends' lists. Sure the gimmick of constantly posting up pointless status updates like "I went to the shop today. lulz." people get over, but using it to make a contact book of people is still very useful. No longer do you need to ask for numbers, emails or whatnot. I've only tried to search for 3 people in my life to find that they didn't have Facebook.
And that's why I think Facebook will survive a long time. Because currently, there's no real alternative that everyone else is using.