I'm still not sure what to make of satelite radio.
I mean cable TV caught on, and it has ads, but...
I have this thing for paying for radio in my car that costs $40/month or whatever it is and still getting the ads. I mean, seriously, is it that much more expensive to broadcast the signals from one satalite than from 1000 radio towers all over the country that they need guaranteed recurring revenue in addition to ads and margin on hardware licencing fees?
I just keep seeing the commercials that proclaim over 100 channels, 20+ with no ads... and I think why don't they just not have ads on the non syndicated programming, i.e. everything but the talk stations and big music stations (DC101 etc).
They have also fallen victim to another great Tolkien blunder:
The Two Towers are Orthanc and Minas Morgul.
The Two Towers are NOT (as they appear to have been noted in the "bootleg" trailer) Orthanc and Barad-dur. Gandalf says "There is a union now between the two towers: Orthanc and Barad-dur."
Tolkien named the 2nd volume of his 6 book tale "The Two Towers" because the events which take place in that volume deal largely with Orthanc and Minas Morgul.
The fact that tolkien was pissed that it was split into three volumes and subsequently called a trilogy is another story.
OEMs like Hpaq, IBM, DELL and Gateway should begin to offer PCs sans OS as an alternative.
You're missing 2 things:
1.) Windows does not cost us the same per licence as it does HP or Dell. They get it at a discount.
2.) In accordance with their agreement with Microsoft, they get a discount IF and ONLY IF they put Windows on EVERY MACHINE THEY SELL. Hence why if you buy a comptuer from dell, you get windows. Now, if you buy a server from dell, you can get no OS or RedHat or one of several options, but that's a seperate agreement.
So, In order for the big guys to sell computers sans OS, they lose all discounts on other copies of windows they get, something that would cost them more in the long run.
I am trying to find a reference, but I seem to remember that when I bought baldur's gate, it had a little slip of paper in it that said, in essence,
If you want a DVD for this game, send $10 and all 5 CD's to our address, and we'll send you the DVD.
This sticks out in my mind because i seem to remember the slip of paper saying that they would accept the CD's scratched, in pieces, as long as they were all there.
That's why the XP SP1 will merely disable future updates and won't shut down the OS itself - they can't afford to lose the numbers of users who have pirated XP.
My friend had a revelation about Microsoft and Piracy the other day. Fact 1.) They rarely go after individual users with pirated copies of M$ o$'s. They've never come after me, or anyone I know. Fact 2.) The DO however go after businesses who buy one licence for 506 computers.
Conclusion: Microsoft encourages small scale piracy because the people who download, rip, burn, crack, and otherwise bastardize their O$'s are by nature more technical than the average person. These poeple aren't necessacarially SUPER technical, but they could install windows 98 and a network card. Therefore: Software pirates are Microsoft's free tech support. When my parents have a problem with windows, they call me. When my roommates have a problem with windows, they call me. When my girlfriend has a problem with windows, she calls me. How much money is Microsoft saving by not paying for tech support for the 4,000 issues *YOU'VE* resolved for your friends/family?
ARRR Matey! You're workin' for the man, now!
~Will
P.S. the only M$ O$ that I haven't owned a legit copy of since win95 is win2000, before you even flame me. Before win95, I used a Mac. So I guess they've screwed me twice - free tech support and purchasing of OS's. Ah well, I stuck it to them, I ran windows 2000 for 2 years.
In case it didn't sink in, I listen to punk. Let's take what's on my Winamp Playlist right now: Band called ALL, album name Problematic. This CD has 18 songs on it, of wich 15 at least are brilliant, and the other 3 are listenable. But, I wouldn't pay $18 for the CD, not when I can buy it off of some guy at a show for $10.
Or the Vandals. Or Rancid. Or the Impossibles. Or Less than Jake.
If I could get the entire CD for $10, and it was in the "Very high quality" VBR OGG format, I'd consider going for it. But even then I probably wouldn't. Why? 2 reasons. If I only want one song, I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $0.99 for a 28 second song, or even a 1.5 minute song. On the new Rancid album, for instance, I think there are 3 out of 20 something songs longer than 2.5 minutes. And: I'd rather go to shows and support the bands with my money for the ticket, my fist in the air, and by buying a CD from the guy behind the table. Most bands I see would be content if they make enough money to get them through between tours so that they can record another album. But a lot of record deals don't even give them that. There are not that many millionaire musicians, at least not that became millionaires as a result of their music and not by endorsements. So, while your comment generator had a valid point, I still wouldn't buy music from the major record labels, not because it's too expensive, but because they fuck the artists. I'd gladly pay $20 for good, indie punk, where I knew the artist would actually see a significant part of the money. Even so. If you support a band, go see them live, rather than buying their record. You get the music, and the record company doesn't get in your shorts to steel your greens. And try to buy the tickets at the door, because there's less a chance of getting stuck with the ticketmaster rape-me-with-a-bat "shipping and handling" and "venue and parking" charges.
When compared to the "best in field" from any OTHER profession, excluding perhaps pro sports, compare the top salaries of execs to the top salaries of engineers, journalists, policemen, teachers, etc.
Two points: Number one is that if a CEO is growing his company and seeing them through difficult economic times, and the shareholders are making money, he deserves to make a hefty salary. However, (and i'm talking to the parent post) If a CEO, like the one in the story, is making $82 million per year, and his shareholders are only barely beating the SnP index value, that is wasteful, gluttonous. What we're preaching against is the "heads i win, tails i win" in the article. Number two: I hate it when people bitch about professional athletes. Take Kobe Bryant. How much does he get paid? Holy crap. But the thing is: how many people in the world could play basketball like that guy? Not many, and most of them are in the NBA. These people are THE TOP in their field, as in it doesn't get better than this. For that kind of excellence, I can see them getting paid what they do. I think of it as "the more people capable of doing your job, the less you make".
I stumbled across this webpage a while back. It has a listing of book "in-jokes" - jokes designed to be caught by the people that read the book all the way through.
For example: In the Thomas and Finny CALCULUS book (we've all seen this one - big, blue, dangerous), it says: The index includes an entry for whales, pointing to pages 365 ff. These pages include no mention of whales (they deal with applications of integrals); but there are several graphs there that look remarkably like whales.
The Java Specification book includes index entires on page 788: Fibonacci numbers, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34,55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610 self-referential: index entries, 788
not, see Russell's paradox
I can't believe this isn't modded +5 yet (1AM est). Usually people that bust out equations on slashdot get modded up instantly. In fact, if i had moderator points, i'd probably glance at it, say "I don't understand that", and mod it up, because anyone that writes something that I don't understand is Insightful, right?
This all looks legit, from the 5 times I attended my Engineering Fundamentals class before switching majors, i recognize some of this.
But honestly, you could be bullshitting the entire thing, and about 4 people on slashdot would know it.
I didn't know there were this many audiophiles that read slashdot.
On a side note, i used to sell stereo equipment at best buy, and i was always skeptical of the "high end thick" cables (monster cable). I wondered how good it could really be if we paid mabey a buck more for it, but charged 35 bucks more for the RCA cables than the generic RCA cables, wondered where the extra quality was comming from if it was that profitable. Then one day, an electrical engineer came in and flat out proved to me with numbers, resistanace, etc, that you don't need anything more than 16 gauge wire for anything any amp we sold at best buy could put out into any pair of speakers we sold.
And it should be noted that this won't improve the sound quality of your 112Kbps MP3's.
Also, i want to know about digital capabilities. Does the board have a breakout box, or optical out / in? Plus when you plug a minijack into the back, you're getting a low level out (passive), and it gets sent to your Klipsch pro medias to be amplified, which are decidedly solid state. Isn't that going to degrade the sound.
Don't get me wrong, i WANT this board, but i need to know more about it first, and the first link is down.
... They can only do this with the non-GPL parts of the OS, i.e. BSD type so-called free software.
I can't agree more, but what i also want to point out is that you can go to far either direction. The BSD licence is somewhat restrictive (and I don't have to like it, but that's their right, and that's cool), but what people also have to remember is: The GPL is viral. The arguement can also be made too far in the other direction.
The other side of the arguement is "I built this really nifty [insert software app], and I'd like to sell it, because I spent a fifth of my life writing it. But I can't, because I linked it against GPL'd libraries when I built it, and therefore would have to release my source code as well. Oh, I suppose I could still sell it and charge for the labor and the CD media, but who would buy it when I have to distribute my source code for free?"
As far as I understand it, the LGPL seems the best way to go. You can link against LGPL'd code, but you don't have to open your source, as long as you don't actually include LGPL'd code. I.e. I wrote this entire program, from begin to end, and I linked to LGPL'd libraries when i built it, but i didn't include any LGPL'd code, so I can still release a binary w/ no source.
I was in same boat - go to school as engineer, fail because it's so fucking hard, and i had so much freedom to... not go...
I look back now and realize several things:
1.) the time i spent hanging out with the girl, ensuring that the girl stayed with me, i should have spent studying, and as a result, i would have done better, stayed in school, and still been with her. I realize now, had I not failed out, we'd still be together. (read on)
2.) The time that i took off of school, i thought at first was permanant. I was workin 40 a week for the man and i hated my life. I finally realized that in order to do something i was going to have to go to college. So i went back.
3.) Also in the time i took off, i realized something: I would rather do something that i love with my life than something that everyone thinks i should do because i'm "the computer nerd". I switched from engineering to history, and i'm going to be a high school history teacher. For right now i'm a network admin, but it's not what i want to do for the rest of my life.
4.) If i hadn't failed out, i would have never lost the girl and found THE GIRL. THE GIRL (for she deserves all caps status) is awesome. She likes beer, sex, football, computer games, and dinner. She's 6 feet tall, so i don't have to bend over to kiss her. She's pretty much perfect, and she loves me. Don't count on the fact that you missed THE GIRL, you could have only missed the girl.
For reference, when you do things like this, put them on MP3.com a couple of days before they go through so that they appear on MP3.com (it takes a few days to validate). Then you can stream the mp3 (low or hi bandwidth), and bandwidth becomes their problem, not yours.
When the NSA goes on 60 Minutes and says "we're friggin way behind," that speaks volumes.
I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but I seem to remember something pointing to official reports about what development year the CIA was in computer hardware / software. We (the world outside of the US govt) are in something like development year 35, roughly, or were at the time of this report. Basically that means that we have had the equivalant of 35 years worth of development on computers since they became redily available to the public. This doesn't mean it was 35 years ago or something, computer development has supposedly progressed more development years than real years. That said, the CIA released at some point they were in development year 87.
I agree. While I won't concede that musicians are stupid, when my band recorded our CD (by ourselves, which we then proceeded to burn and give away 500 copies of for free), we used Cool Edit Pro. That was complicated enough, setting levels so as not to peak, mixing this and that, cutting tracks (we recorded one track at a time due to lack of decent microphones - we had about 3). After getting over the learning curve for that piece of software, we were all convinced that it did everything we ever needed to do. How would you convince us to change OS's, much less programs? It would have to be significantly easier as well as offer more features. I don't say this out of a greedy standpoint, just out of a time necessity.
Also, I'd like to see not just an audio distribution, but an entire Multimedia Linux distro. One with a focus on audio and video tools. That's something else that I think Linux is missing - an easy to use set of video capture and compression tools, complete with (dare I say it outloud) a non-command line DVD rip program (shhhhh!). Seriously, high quality vid compression and easy to use capture programs, with support for the later cards like the GeForce 2's with video cap features would be really cool.
Of course, this is comming from the guy who currently doesn't have speakers hooked up to his linux box...
~Will
P.S. If you're really a sadist, and feel the need to know what this music is that was recorded dirt cheap and given away freely with encouragement to pass around to your friends, you can check it out at mp3.com. Be warned, for a self recording it's not bad, but it's not studio. It's also rock pop with very little distortion.
It seems that this is conceptually similar to what they are trying with Windows Product Activation and the.NET subscription.
They want you to get on the service and pay a fee per month. This way you are subscribed and you don't own the product. You are only "licensed to use it."
While this may be true in this case, you really have to think: There are lots of online gaming arenas that are free (battle.net), but they are completely within their right mind to charge a monthly fee for it. The monthly fee goes to cover the cost of the equipment, which is already sunk, plus the cost of bandwidth, plus probably to subsidize the connection thingie that you have to buy to get it to work.
As far as I see it, the recurring income isn't a cause for M$ conspiracy theory, the question just remains that if sony can do it for free, how much better does M$'s have to be in order to convince people to pay for it. Plus they're going to have to sell a LOT of subscriptions in order to make money, and the making money will only be down the road (note there's no monthly fee until after the first year). Plus if this does push XBox sales, is that really a good thing? Is the XBox still being sold under cost?
Now, per the slashdot usual, I have to point out that M$ doesn't NEED the money, blah blah, $40 billion dollars blah blah. Still, I don't see a problem with asking people to pay every month for a quality service that costs them money every month, in addition to having a large sunk cost.
Slashdot Mirror
and have only
Two wordsper
~Will
I'm still not sure what to make of satelite radio.
I mean cable TV caught on, and it has ads, but...
I have this thing for paying for radio in my car that costs $40/month or whatever it is and still getting the ads. I mean, seriously, is it that much more expensive to broadcast the signals from one satalite than from 1000 radio towers all over the country that they need guaranteed recurring revenue in addition to ads and margin on hardware licencing fees?
I just keep seeing the commercials that proclaim over 100 channels, 20+ with no ads... and I think why don't they just not have ads on the non syndicated programming, i.e. everything but the talk stations and big music stations (DC101 etc).
~Will
They have also fallen victim to another great Tolkien blunder:
The Two Towers are Orthanc and Minas Morgul.
The Two Towers are NOT (as they appear to have been noted in the "bootleg" trailer) Orthanc and Barad-dur. Gandalf says "There is a union now between the two towers: Orthanc and Barad-dur."
Tolkien named the 2nd volume of his 6 book tale "The Two Towers" because the events which take place in that volume deal largely with Orthanc and Minas Morgul.
The fact that tolkien was pissed that it was split into three volumes and subsequently called a trilogy is another story.
~Will
The suggested retail price for Ms XP is $200.
That is a stiff item at the low end.
OEMs like Hpaq, IBM, DELL and Gateway should begin to offer PCs sans OS as an alternative.
You're missing 2 things:
1.) Windows does not cost us the same per licence as it does HP or Dell. They get it at a discount.
2.) In accordance with their agreement with Microsoft, they get a discount IF and ONLY IF they put Windows on EVERY MACHINE THEY SELL. Hence why if you buy a comptuer from dell, you get windows. Now, if you buy a server from dell, you can get no OS or RedHat or one of several options, but that's a seperate agreement.
So, In order for the big guys to sell computers sans OS, they lose all discounts on other copies of windows they get, something that would cost them more in the long run.
Regards,
Will
I am trying to find a reference, but I seem to remember that when I bought baldur's gate, it had a little slip of paper in it that said, in essence,
If you want a DVD for this game, send $10 and all 5 CD's to our address, and we'll send you the DVD.
This sticks out in my mind because i seem to remember the slip of paper saying that they would accept the CD's scratched, in pieces, as long as they were all there.
~Will
That's why the XP SP1 will merely disable future updates and won't shut down the OS itself - they can't afford to lose the numbers of users who have pirated XP.
My friend had a revelation about Microsoft and Piracy the other day.
Fact 1.) They rarely go after individual users with pirated copies of M$ o$'s. They've never come after me, or anyone I know.
Fact 2.) The DO however go after businesses who buy one licence for 506 computers.
Conclusion:
Microsoft encourages small scale piracy because the people who download, rip, burn, crack, and otherwise bastardize their O$'s are by nature more technical than the average person. These poeple aren't necessacarially SUPER technical, but they could install windows 98 and a network card.
Therefore:
Software pirates are Microsoft's free tech support. When my parents have a problem with windows, they call me. When my roommates have a problem with windows, they call me. When my girlfriend has a problem with windows, she calls me. How much money is Microsoft saving by not paying for tech support for the 4,000 issues *YOU'VE* resolved for your friends/family?
ARRR Matey! You're workin' for the man, now!
~Will
P.S. the only M$ O$ that I haven't owned a legit copy of since win95 is win2000, before you even flame me. Before win95, I used a Mac. So I guess they've screwed me twice - free tech support and purchasing of OS's. Ah well, I stuck it to them, I ran windows 2000 for 2 years.
If the Sun was yellow then clouds and snow would look yellow, because they are very close to being perfect neutral light scatterers.
I don't know how, but somehow you've managed to fit a "yellow snow" joke into this conversation.
Do not eat.
~Will
I listen to punk.
In case it didn't sink in, I listen to punk.
Let's take what's on my Winamp Playlist right now:
Band called ALL, album name Problematic. This CD has 18 songs on it, of wich 15 at least are brilliant, and the other 3 are listenable. But, I wouldn't pay $18 for the CD, not when I can buy it off of some guy at a show for $10.
Or the Vandals. Or Rancid. Or the Impossibles. Or Less than Jake.
If I could get the entire CD for $10, and it was in the "Very high quality" VBR OGG format, I'd consider going for it. But even then I probably wouldn't. Why? 2 reasons. If I only want one song, I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $0.99 for a 28 second song, or even a 1.5 minute song. On the new Rancid album, for instance, I think there are 3 out of 20 something songs longer than 2.5 minutes. And: I'd rather go to shows and support the bands with my money for the ticket, my fist in the air, and by buying a CD from the guy behind the table.
Most bands I see would be content if they make enough money to get them through between tours so that they can record another album. But a lot of record deals don't even give them that. There are not that many millionaire musicians, at least not that became millionaires as a result of their music and not by endorsements. So, while your comment generator had a valid point, I still wouldn't buy music from the major record labels, not because it's too expensive, but because they fuck the artists. I'd gladly pay $20 for good, indie punk, where I knew the artist would actually see a significant part of the money.
Even so. If you support a band, go see them live, rather than buying their record. You get the music, and the record company doesn't get in your shorts to steel your greens. And try to buy the tickets at the door, because there's less a chance of getting stuck with the ticketmaster rape-me-with-a-bat "shipping and handling" and "venue and parking" charges.
Stick it to the man, and all that hardcore crap.
~Will
When compared to the "best in field" from any OTHER profession, excluding perhaps pro sports, compare the top salaries of execs to the top salaries of engineers, journalists, policemen, teachers, etc.
Two points:
Number one is that if a CEO is growing his company and seeing them through difficult economic times, and the shareholders are making money, he deserves to make a hefty salary. However, (and i'm talking to the parent post) If a CEO, like the one in the story, is making $82 million per year, and his shareholders are only barely beating the SnP index value, that is wasteful, gluttonous. What we're preaching against is the "heads i win, tails i win" in the article.
Number two: I hate it when people bitch about professional athletes. Take Kobe Bryant. How much does he get paid? Holy crap. But the thing is: how many people in the world could play basketball like that guy? Not many, and most of them are in the NBA. These people are THE TOP in their field, as in it doesn't get better than this. For that kind of excellence, I can see them getting paid what they do. I think of it as "the more people capable of doing your job, the less you make".
~Will
Chapter 11 is NOT going out of business.
Chapter 11 is filing for protection from creditors during restructuring.
Doesn't mean it's not headed that way, just that it's not there yet.
~Will
Also: In my Learning Perl book by Larry Wall, the introduction starts out:
WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT?
Among other things, this book is about 260 pages. [...]
~Will
I stumbled across this webpage a while back. It has a listing of book "in-jokes" - jokes designed to be caught by the people that read the book all the way through.
For example: In the Thomas and Finny CALCULUS book (we've all seen this one - big, blue, dangerous), it says: The index includes an entry for whales, pointing to pages 365 ff. These pages include no mention of whales (they deal with applications of integrals); but there are several graphs there that look remarkably like whales.
The Java Specification book includes index entires on page 788:
Fibonacci numbers, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34,55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610
self-referential: index entries, 788
not, see Russell's paradox
I can't believe this isn't modded +5 yet (1AM est). Usually people that bust out equations on slashdot get modded up instantly. In fact, if i had moderator points, i'd probably glance at it, say "I don't understand that", and mod it up, because anyone that writes something that I don't understand is Insightful, right?
This all looks legit, from the 5 times I attended my Engineering Fundamentals class before switching majors, i recognize some of this.
But honestly, you could be bullshitting the entire thing, and about 4 people on slashdot would know it.
I didn't know there were this many audiophiles that read slashdot.
On a side note, i used to sell stereo equipment at best buy, and i was always skeptical of the "high end thick" cables (monster cable). I wondered how good it could really be if we paid mabey a buck more for it, but charged 35 bucks more for the RCA cables than the generic RCA cables, wondered where the extra quality was comming from if it was that profitable.
Then one day, an electrical engineer came in and flat out proved to me with numbers, resistanace, etc, that you don't need anything more than 16 gauge wire for anything any amp we sold at best buy could put out into any pair of speakers we sold.
~Will
And it should be noted that this won't improve the sound quality of your 112Kbps MP3's.
Also, i want to know about digital capabilities. Does the board have a breakout box, or optical out / in? Plus when you plug a minijack into the back, you're getting a low level out (passive), and it gets sent to your Klipsch pro medias to be amplified, which are decidedly solid state. Isn't that going to degrade the sound.
Don't get me wrong, i WANT this board, but i need to know more about it first, and the first link is down.
~Will
... They can only do this with the non-GPL parts of the OS, i.e. BSD type so-called free software.
I can't agree more, but what i also want to point out is that you can go to far either direction. The BSD licence is somewhat restrictive (and I don't have to like it, but that's their right, and that's cool), but what people also have to remember is: The GPL is viral. The arguement can also be made too far in the other direction.
The other side of the arguement is "I built this really nifty [insert software app], and I'd like to sell it, because I spent a fifth of my life writing it. But I can't, because I linked it against GPL'd libraries when I built it, and therefore would have to release my source code as well. Oh, I suppose I could still sell it and charge for the labor and the CD media, but who would buy it when I have to distribute my source code for free?"
As far as I understand it, the LGPL seems the best way to go. You can link against LGPL'd code, but you don't have to open your source, as long as you don't actually include LGPL'd code. I.e. I wrote this entire program, from begin to end, and I linked to LGPL'd libraries when i built it, but i didn't include any LGPL'd code, so I can still release a binary w/ no source.
~Will
THEGIRLaim: btw tell that guy on slashdot THE GIRL prefers not to be"perfect" thanks :-)
THEGIRLaim:
names changed to protect the innocent.
~will
Yeah, because it's so annoying to be behind a college student who is buying $50 in groceries with quarters.
1 roll quarters = $10.
Cheap case of beer = $8.99+tax.
Coincidence?
(I am of course talking about natural light. Also known as nattie light, or financial light).
~Will
Dude. Don't worry. It can still work out for you.
I was in same boat - go to school as engineer, fail because it's so fucking hard, and i had so much freedom to... not go...
I look back now and realize several things:
1.) the time i spent hanging out with the girl, ensuring that the girl stayed with me, i should have spent studying, and as a result, i would have done better, stayed in school, and still been with her. I realize now, had I not failed out, we'd still be together. (read on)
2.) The time that i took off of school, i thought at first was permanant. I was workin 40 a week for the man and i hated my life. I finally realized that in order to do something i was going to have to go to college. So i went back.
3.) Also in the time i took off, i realized something: I would rather do something that i love with my life than something that everyone thinks i should do because i'm "the computer nerd". I switched from engineering to history, and i'm going to be a high school history teacher. For right now i'm a network admin, but it's not what i want to do for the rest of my life.
4.) If i hadn't failed out, i would have never lost the girl and found THE GIRL. THE GIRL (for she deserves all caps status) is awesome. She likes beer, sex, football, computer games, and dinner. She's 6 feet tall, so i don't have to bend over to kiss her. She's pretty much perfect, and she loves me. Don't count on the fact that you missed THE GIRL, you could have only missed the girl.
It still can work out.
~Will
For reference, when you do things like this, put them on MP3.com a couple of days before they go through so that they appear on MP3.com (it takes a few days to validate). Then you can stream the mp3 (low or hi bandwidth), and bandwidth becomes their problem, not yours.
~Will
When the NSA goes on 60 Minutes and says "we're friggin way behind," that speaks volumes.
I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but I seem to remember something pointing to official reports about what development year the CIA was in computer hardware / software. We (the world outside of the US govt) are in something like development year 35, roughly, or were at the time of this report. Basically that means that we have had the equivalant of 35 years worth of development on computers since they became redily available to the public. This doesn't mean it was 35 years ago or something, computer development has supposedly progressed more development years than real years.
That said, the CIA released at some point they were in development year 87.
~Will
I agree. While I won't concede that musicians are stupid, when my band recorded our CD (by ourselves, which we then proceeded to burn and give away 500 copies of for free), we used Cool Edit Pro. That was complicated enough, setting levels so as not to peak, mixing this and that, cutting tracks (we recorded one track at a time due to lack of decent microphones - we had about 3). After getting over the learning curve for that piece of software, we were all convinced that it did everything we ever needed to do. How would you convince us to change OS's, much less programs? It would have to be significantly easier as well as offer more features. I don't say this out of a greedy standpoint, just out of a time necessity.
Also, I'd like to see not just an audio distribution, but an entire Multimedia Linux distro. One with a focus on audio and video tools. That's something else that I think Linux is missing - an easy to use set of video capture and compression tools, complete with (dare I say it outloud) a non-command line DVD rip program (shhhhh!). Seriously, high quality vid compression and easy to use capture programs, with support for the later cards like the GeForce 2's with video cap features would be really cool.
Of course, this is comming from the guy who currently doesn't have speakers hooked up to his linux box...
~Will
P.S. If you're really a sadist, and feel the need to know what this music is that was recorded dirt cheap and given away freely with encouragement to pass around to your friends, you can check it out at mp3.com. Be warned, for a self recording it's not bad, but it's not studio. It's also rock pop with very little distortion.
Look at how much of the web is now unusable due to lack of content and nothing but advertising.
*caugh Toms Hardware caugh*
~Wx
How would i delete the themes in linux? and would i want to, or would it use native X widgets (crapwidgets)?
~Will
It seems that this is conceptually similar to what they are trying with Windows Product Activation and the .NET subscription.
They want you to get on the service and pay a fee per month. This way you are subscribed and you don't own the product. You are only "licensed to use it."
While this may be true in this case, you really have to think: There are lots of online gaming arenas that are free (battle.net), but they are completely within their right mind to charge a monthly fee for it. The monthly fee goes to cover the cost of the equipment, which is already sunk, plus the cost of bandwidth, plus probably to subsidize the connection thingie that you have to buy to get it to work.
As far as I see it, the recurring income isn't a cause for M$ conspiracy theory, the question just remains that if sony can do it for free, how much better does M$'s have to be in order to convince people to pay for it. Plus they're going to have to sell a LOT of subscriptions in order to make money, and the making money will only be down the road (note there's no monthly fee until after the first year). Plus if this does push XBox sales, is that really a good thing? Is the XBox still being sold under cost?
Now, per the slashdot usual, I have to point out that M$ doesn't NEED the money, blah blah, $40 billion dollars blah blah. Still, I don't see a problem with asking people to pay every month for a quality service that costs them money every month, in addition to having a large sunk cost.
~Will
God:
Come toward the blue light my son. Yes. Uh huh. No, no, ignore the zero memory reference error.
~Will