I suppose you were against the DOJ case againse Microsoft? Price-fixing is an abuse of a monopoly just the same as it is for Microsoft to leverage one monopoly (OS) to stifle competition in another market (browsers).
making a profit is what drives
new "toys" and great new "things"
Under a monopoly there is no need to create new 'toys' and great new 'things'.. Much like Microsoft can casually wait five years to release a new version of its OS because there's no competitor breathing down its neck, what 'new toys' has the recording industry brought us in the last 20 years? Has there been a new digital format introduced by the music companies that has revolutionized the music-listening experience? No. The music industry sat on its ass for twenty years and the market leapfrogged it with new music formats and distribution technology. Could the same be happening to Microsoft? Hell, yes. Is George W. Bush on the side of Microsoft and the Recording Industry, or would he champion consumers if elected as president? He's pro-microsoft / RIAA. No question about it.
..the kind of people that burn down ski lodges in order to protect "scenic mountain beauty" and the people that vandalize laboratories where mice are being used to do medical tests?
are precisely the fear of privacy advocates like myself. Because I subscribe to a mailing list read by people who might burn down a ski lodge doesn't mean that I advocate that person's actions. I also would prefer that my participation in the mailing list would not cause the FBI to categorize me as a Timothy McVeigh and monitor my every communique.
While we're at it, let's do a little profiling of the Timothy McVeigh demograph...
Timothy McVeigh Profile:
1. Ex-military. 2. Lives in farmhouse with two other men. 3. Does not own a computer. 4. Drinks jack and coke. 5. No bank account. 6. Owns multiple unregistered firearms. 7. ~ 100. Other inane character traits.
So we've established the character-type that makes a bomber. Monitoring the 20 or 30 million people who fit this description is likely to rope in a bunch of people who are never going to blow up a building. On top of that, do we really want to spend tax money spying on 20 or 30 americans? Considering the scale of the undertaking, it's probable that such a system capable of monitoring this large a group would be equally effective at monitoring the entire populace. Oh. I guess I answered my own question. That's what carnivore is about in the first place.
I think that it is a shame that software companies get all pissed off about people trading software titles that they don't even publish anymore.
Publishers have very good reason to want to protect these games even though they're not currently available for sale. As the fervent interest in emulators and roms indicates, there is currently a demand for these 'classic' games to be played. There have already been numerous shrinkwrapped emulator packages sold with a limited number of games (Microsoft Arcade, Activision whatever-it-was, Namco Museum -Playstation release only, etc). Games publishers have a potential to tap into this demand, but they won't be able to so long as these ROMS are being pirated over the net for free. Imagine this meeting of marketing execs:
Exec #1: "Seems like a lot of people still love to play Wizard of Wor. Hundreds of thousands of people are passing the roms around to play on their computers."
Exec #2: "Sounds like an opportunity to make some money!"
Exec #1: "Maybe we should license the Wizard of War rom to some company so they can bundle it with their emulator?"
Exec #1: "Great idea! All those hundreds of thousands of people currently playing wizard of wor for free would gladly pay $49.95 for an emulator bundled with it and a few other games. This is giving me the same tingles I felt when we came up with DIVX!"
does this mean that i can now send emails to pepole? Heck yeah, and be sure to invitate them to visit. She can stay your house.
does ths mean i can start doing e commerce and b-to-b stuff? I recommend you set up a tasteful photography site featuring all the pictures you've shot of nice nude models and animals. That's where the real money is at.
That certainly sounds like something a high school student would pull off.
Actually, I was a little surprised to see so little discussion of Java regarding this topic. With Sun's goal of putting Java everywhere (VCR's, Settop boxes, refrigerators, etc), the possibilities for distributed computing become huge. HUGE, I tell you. If there really were a JavaOS (which I think has qualified as vaporware since about 1997), networking all these inane machines into a distrubuted system could provide a computational superstructure the likes of which hasn't been seen outside the confines of the NSA.
But that's where I think it has to reside.. inane machines. It's easy to think, "Wow. I could plug all my obsolete equipment (Old nubus powermacs, pentiums, 486s, etc) into this network and make cash through some sort of a leased-processor-cycle distributed computing system. Not so fast. The micropayments you should expect in such a system would not even be enough to cover your electricity costs to run the machines 24/7. If the payments were more than the cost of the electricity to run these computers, then the cost of using the system for number-crunching would be prohibitive.
OTOH, if the nodes in such a system were really going to be consuming juice anyway (i.e. burglar alarm system, cellphone, VCR, home stereo), then you'd look at those micropayments as a sort of mini-rebate on your electric bill.
Perhaps the other problem with this system would be that the cost of building in extra, unnecessary processing power in these devices would make them more prone to failure and more expensive for the consumer.
So what's the moral to the story? Maybe there isn't one. Maybe it's just a bunch of stuff that happened...
Arnold was killed in the first movie by a big crushing machine. They sent a second arnold robot back in the second movie. That's why he's a different model between movies.
What I don't get, though, is if the Robert Patrick robot isn't T-2000, then why did they call the movie, T2: Judgement Day?
Hmmm... That smelled of poo. Did you happen to just pull that out of your ass?
purefizz friend #1:"Hey, we're short on time AND hardware. What are we going to do?"
purefizz friend #2:"Heck, instead of ordering more computers from SGI's overstocked warehouse of intel hardware, why don't we spend a few thousand hours porting our rendering app to the DreamCast along with adding distributed processing hooks to the WinCE OS?"
purefizz friend #1:"Considering that the graphics hardware pumps out 320 X 240, it will look absolutely spectacular when the film is projected onto a 70 ft. wide screen! Audiences will be mesmerized."
purefizz friend #2: "Probably the best part of this plan is that we're going to get less resolution, but the same number of polygons as any off-the-shelf PC graphics card. It just feels so right."
purefizz friend #1: "Think we should send a press release to Wired or something? It might help attract attention to our movie."
purefizz friend #2:Naw, just call purfizz. He'll post something on SlashDot about it, get modded up to the top, and Sega will be calling us in no time with job offers."
Ok. So I'm a guy with a big, flashy car, fur coats, funny high heeled shoes, and a huge wad of money in my pocket. Women come to the window of my car and hand me additional wads of cash. When they don't, I yell at them, calling them names like 'bitch' and sometimes even hit them in the face. These women perform sexual acts on men for this money, which they are to give me almost all of. Most of them are single mothers. I sometimes have sex with these women, myself. I put some of their kids in private schools... makes me feel good about myself. But more importantly, it makes the local community stop calling the fuzz on my ass all the time. They know that if I go to jail, half the neighborood kids will get yanked out of school.
Ok. So these things are sweeping across desks around the world scanning the documents that might be scattered on the tops of those desks and sending the images to Redmond. Microsoft's quick embrace of USB makes a whole lot more sense now... it provides the throughput they needed to build the biggest industrial espianage network known to humankind.
And to think people were upset over the whole privacy violation of that doubleclick thing....
More power to you. The Mona Lisa is in the public domain now. Feel free to make as many copies as you like and distribute them.. hell, sell 'em for a profit.
The RIAA is caught in a stranglehold. One arm around the throat belongs to the software pirates. The other arm is the legacy hardware standards (dumb cd players) that every release of music must support. So long as Britney's next album has to be released on CD so it can sell a bazillion copies, a certain amount of revenue will be lost to piracy. For the frightening future described by michael to become a reality, it's not going to be a slow evolution. Someone at some point is going to have to say, "Our next album will only be released in XYZ encrypted, proprietary format that can only be played on one of six proprietary microsoft music devices." And the musician that makes this bold step is sure to make nowhere near the profit a standard CD release would have generated. Metallica seems pretty foolhardy. Maybe they should give it a whirl.
The doubleclick controversy is a little over... The last I remember of it was that you could opt out of their system and then under criticism they vowed to abandon their plans to maintain cross-website tracking data.
Whether this is true or not, it's a little silly to include the doubleclick warning on just this reference while perhaps 80% of the links on slashdot are pointing at external sites using doubleclick.
I'm imagining this as more of a stereo component than a computer. It will probably (as I rub my crystal ball):
1. Offer remote control
2. Provide a direct connection via RCA cables to the stereo receiver.
Feature number one is a REALLY nice feature that mainstream consumers will relish. I'd like it, too, because I don't want to have to make my own remote control IR program and try to script it against my mp3 software playing on my computer. So, I guess I'm more of a 'mainstream consumer' than an adventurous hacker.
Feature number 2 is nice because it avoids having to locate the home stereo and computer right next to one another. It may also avoid having to run cabling between the two devices if they have a wireless networking connection, but for this price point, I doubt they will.
This product isn't going to fare well, though, as more consumers are getting CDROM recorders and more electronics manufactures are adding mp3 support to their standard CD / DVD players.
I am not out to criticize Courtney. I'm just going to give this speech a little more context than most people are recognizing it has.
This was obviously written by a speech writer. The person was given the goal of writing a speech that would woo the digilliterates and also announce that she is leaving the traditional music distribution model with her future work. What is the evidence? She pledges allegiance to Lars while also declaring free net and Gnutella 'technically superior'. The compliments to free net and Gnutella were intentionally put in there to give the impression that she was well-versed in the subject. This is precisely the type of thing that a speech writer gets paid to lace a speech with while sticking to the themes laid out by the speech-giver. She admits to not being up to speed with the issues, but says that she really respects Lars for what he's doing. If she even had an actual clue as to what free net and Gnutella are, she'd also be able to recognize how wrongheaded the metallica v. napster suit is.
And one other thing... It's not such a dramatic decision for her to try freeing herself from her major label obligations. After the lackluster sales of her last album, it's unlikely her next one will do any better, and accoding to the numbers she presented, it wouldn't make much sense to even try to create a new record if it's only going to net her such a small amount of money. Especially challenging will be trying to write a whole album of songs without Billy Corgan or her deceased husband's assistance.
When the PSX hits the market, it's already going to have the killer app on the shelves.... Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. The first game has sold extraordinarily well and has a lot of anticipation built up around the release of the sequel. I am betting that the PS2 version of the sequel is going to be absolutely astonishing. And I don't think it's going to be released on Dreamcast
Seth
there are other dual-boot options...
on
Macs In Space!
·
· Score: 1
Could be MacOS X, Yellow Dog Linux or LinuxPPC. These all perform marvelously on the G4 architecture.
Speaking of the Linksys router, I just bought the same one you have, but without the 4-ports (I already have a hub). Supports the same features and is just $103 at
buy.com. There should be a a $20 coupon available on orders of $100 or more for first-time and returning customers, which drops the price down to $83.
Sure, a linux router is a fun solution, but if you don't have the hardware to spare, this router does a great job.
Perhaps with the exception of the Napster analogy, this post is dead-on what I meant with my original post. Interesting to hear from someone with actual real-world experience in trademark issues. Not to say the other posts weren't also well thought out...
IF the owners of the Iron Chef franchise don't police the usage of their logos, graphics, etc. by third-parties, then they'll lose control over the Iron Chef trademark. This is not a case where a company is supressing its growing fan base. It's only doing what's necessary to prevent other people from profiting from the Iron Chef trademarks. Even though these particular sites aren't for profit, if the Iron Chef people don't step in here, then it sets a precedent for other people (probably operating with profit in mind) to be able to use the logos, name, etc.
The brilliant thing about Sealand's location is that it's still within British territorial waters. It should be safe from hostile gunships and aircraft to the extent that if anything were approaching Sealand, they could notify the British defense forces to alert them about the 'foreign invasion' of England. Sealand is still susceptible to a smaller-scale terrorist hit, though.
Of all the people I know who are serious about video games, I don't think any of them have all of the current generation consoles. Among my circles of friends, there are dreamcast owners and playstation (one) owners. Not both.
I think that's how it's been throughout the history of console games... It was either Intellivision or Atari 2600. Not both.
It was either Genesis or Super Nintendo. Not both.
To purchase all the current consoles makes it a lot more difficult to focus time on particular games and get really good at them. Had I been faced with owning a DreamCast and a PlayStation, I wouldn't have gotten as good at Tony Hawk Pro Skater because I'd have split my gaming time between it and SoulCaliber on the DreamCast.
All I'm saying is that I think there's a benefit to sticking with one console platform. Not only do you get better at the smaller selection of games available, but your loyalty also retains competition in the marketplace for the console developers to improve their products. If you purchase all of the consoles, then you're going to end up with marketing departments ruling the console industry with simple exclusive contracts over which titles can be released for which platforms. I think we all know how much that sucks.
Slashdot Mirror
Seth
Seth
Seth
I think that it is a shame that software companies get all pissed off about people trading software titles that they don't even publish anymore.
Publishers have very good reason to want to protect these games even though they're not currently available for sale. As the fervent interest in emulators and roms indicates, there is currently a demand for these 'classic' games to be played. There have already been numerous shrinkwrapped emulator packages sold with a limited number of games (Microsoft Arcade, Activision whatever-it-was, Namco Museum -Playstation release only, etc). Games publishers have a potential to tap into this demand, but they won't be able to so long as these ROMS are being pirated over the net for free. Imagine this meeting of marketing execs:
Exec #1: "Seems like a lot of people still love to play Wizard of Wor. Hundreds of thousands of people are passing the roms around to play on their computers."
Exec #2: "Sounds like an opportunity to make some money!"
Exec #1: "Maybe we should license the Wizard of War rom to some company so they can bundle it with their emulator?"
Exec #1: "Great idea! All those hundreds of thousands of people currently playing wizard of wor for free would gladly pay $49.95 for an emulator bundled with it and a few other games. This is giving me the same tingles I felt when we came up with DIVX!"
Exec #2: "We're so smart."
Seth
does this mean that i can now send emails to pepole?
Heck yeah, and be sure to invitate them to visit. She can stay your house.
does ths mean i can start doing e commerce and b-to-b stuff?
I recommend you set up a tasteful photography site featuring all the pictures you've shot of nice nude models and animals. That's where the real money is at.
Seth
Seth
Arnold was killed in the first movie by a big crushing machine. They sent a second arnold robot back in the second movie. That's why he's a different model between movies.
What I don't get, though, is if the Robert Patrick robot isn't T-2000, then why did they call the movie, T2: Judgement Day?
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth
Seth