Reading that I’m left thinking that you’re a bit jaded on the subject (forgive me if I’m wrong).
If the parent poster is like me, it's more like "Been there, done that, I don't need to go through that shit anymore." I've found more recent offerings by reputable dealers to be overall high quality, well tested, and even more stable. I don't have to worry about whether Chipset X PCI card isn't fully compatible with Vendor Y motherboard, I don't pay extra for the privilege of building my own, and so forth.
One thing I will do and will always do if I'm running windows: replace the stock OS install with one of my own. I'd much rather run the base OS with not vendor crap added on.
Damn right, the poor should pay for the mistakes of the rich, right?
No, but I do have a SERIOUS problem with, in the US, over 45% of the populace not paying any Federal Income tax, due to deductions, etc.
I've seen article that households making up near $48K/yr actually pay no net Federal Income tax.
I'm sorry...everyone in the US should have at least a little skin in the game, you know?
I don't care if the minimum is 0.5 - 1%....something.
Well they do pay taxes. Most notably sales taxes, gas taxes.. and that's far more of a burden on the guy making $25,000 a year than that + income tax is for the guy making $250,000/yr.
So you agree that there is a niche for live streaming of DRM:ed content
Oh, absolutely. I just streamed the panels of BlizzCon the other weekend. Worked decently. I'm assuming it's DRMed, though I never bothered to check it for sure.
Even with streming you could just buffer the whole move or whatever (that is the same as downloading).
Theoretically, yes, but does any service actually work that way? Hold the entire movie in cache? That has to be a pretty big cache, but then again, movie streams are generally of low quality, even at high bitrate. Plus, I'll settle down for a movie... start the stream, wait for it to download, then watch? Sure, I could start the download the night before, but then I wouldn't be able to watch anything else in the meantime because again, every streaming service I've ever seen discards the stream when you switch to something else. The model where your machine downloads and stores movies ahead of time (like Tivo with live TV) does not seem to be the trend that streaming was going towards.
I thought DRM was already a thing of the past. Who is still doing that?
Anything having to do with major movie studios. Not 100% sure about TV shows, but I think it's the same. The music companies have mostly given up on DRM, but no one else did.
Maybe part of the point is that you shouldn't need a general-purpose applet platform just to create a distribution method for DRMed video? Like maybe you could create a more specialized DRM-video-player plugin that didn't have so many problems and security risks?
I think part of the problem is Flash Video needed Flash. It shouldn't be hard to make a video player, but Flash Video developed within the world of Flash, which could do far more than just playing videos.
Wouldn't the opposite of streaing be downloading and offline watching? That feels awkward. Especially for live events (the main use of SL it seems) where you suggest I download the game after it is finished?
Downloading and offline watching is the holy grail for me, with the single exception of live events. I hate streaming movies -- the bitrate is usually low so that it's possible to stream without buffering, frequently you'll get some snag in the network that will involve some pausing of the stream and rebuffering. Especially if you seek to a specific section. Poor quality + buffering + saturation of network so you can't do much else with it at the same time is a deal-breaker for me. That's why I get annoyed with Netflix whenever they try pushing me from my DVD/Blu-Ray plan to do more streaming instead every few months.
Don't get me started on how the extras that come with DVDs and Blu-Rays aren't usually available for streaming either.
In this case that would be a step in the right direction. Flash is much more widely available than Silverlight is at present.
Much as i don't like flash at least flash sites are accessible from Linux. I have been told that a few Silverlight sites work with moonlight but have not found any myself
I had heard that too, but the last time I tried Moonlight was a bit too alpha or beta quality, but that extends to most of mono too. It feels like how wine did five years ago.
Tell me wrong, but if google is full with EXCEPTIONAL developers, why there is not even a single product made entirely by them? Please, even one is enough (and don't say: Google) Anyway, my point is that these mehods are good enough for finding anything, but good developers, which is maybe their aim in the first place.
A good developer doesn't have so much of an ego that he falls victim to the "not invented here" syndrome. The great aim of software development was code reuse -- why rewrite a library that works fine and is available? Just to be able to say that you came up with it?
I was hired well after the fires started burning. Why keep a programmer on staff when you can hire them for a few months at a time after your development team has completely fucked up?
That sounds like a nightmare job -- cleaning up after someone else's poorly-designed projects.
Then again, although I wouldn't consider myself a programmer, I thought I was a lot better at finding out what section of the code was causing some bug and fixing it than I was designing and implementing a project from scratch.
Why on earth would anyone want... to think... and learn
Indeed.
If we all had infinite time and infinite patience, then maybe that would be a good point. But like most computer users these days, I would rather be spending my time thinking and learning about more productive things.
>don't upgrade your OS to the version that locks you out
Yeah, it's not like they'd exclusively bundle super-essential security updates in with that "you're all now our bitches" update.
We saw how that works with the Playstation 3.
"Hey, want to boot linux? Don't install the new firmware, and you're golden."
Except once it's installed there's no way to go back. And you can't sign into PSN anymore, which many games are now tied into. And things like the Netflix app won't work anymore. Along with many new Blu-Ray discs.
Oh well, the PS3 Linux sucked anyway due to the restrictions placed on it.:-)
I said Flat Earth, not SpaceCube. Or was that RoundCube ? Come on, keep an illusion of seriousness in your memes.
Clearly, you are referring to the TimeCube, the absolute proof of school retardation. It sounds like you are a believer in the single-day 24-hour deception.
Standard/. car analogy #1 : I reject the concept of fuel injectors on religious grounds, therefore my roadster has an ancient 70s era carburetor, and I lose all the races because I'm slow, but I know god loves me.
Standard/. car analogy #2 : I R an expurt car mekanic and I will now tune up yer (fuel injected) car using dis hear can o carb cleaner spray. Umm wheres da choke linkage? Well anyway, tune in next time when I install philips head screws using my hammer, and diagnose my cd player skipping problem by sniffing the muffler exhaust.
Old post! Replying to an old post, whee!
I don't think they are all that separate, when you give the following: - The growing wave of anti-intellectualism and anti-science that seemingly rejects science outright on certain issues - Or the growing wave of pseudo-science that undercuts science by adopting the trappings of science but none of its procedures?
I think situation two enables situation one. Situation two erodes general society's trust and sets up 'alternatives' as being a reasonable choice. That lets people disregard science wholeheartedly with excuses like "Oh, well, this came from Company X, so it's probably BS" and "This research came from radical group Y, so it's BS." Shoot the messenger is now a perfectly acceptable argument against a study.
Didn't she have Carly Fiorina stinking things up for her, and making the "issues" of the campaign about Meg Whitman's hairstyle? If I'm Meg Whitman, I have been gunning for this job just to show up Carly.
Mmmmm, they weren't running for the same office. Unless Carly went waaay out of her way to mess things up for Meg. >_>
His co-author says he's full of it, and the results do not match the headlines.
His co-author explicitly claims that she said no such thing, and that her big objection was Muller hopping to the press before allowing it to go to peer review like it should.
No problem, just embed wire under the roads and run the things off of induction then you would only need a smaller set of batteries to get you down into your subdivision and into your driveway. The'd sure as hell be lighter AND it is to clean up a few big power plants that billions of little ICE power plants.
Wow. That is a LOT of roadway to tear up and revamp, and worse, makes the roads very expensive to maintain. It's difficult for municipalities to find the money to resurface regular asphalt.
I think they do or something from first year Chemistry 101 book says CF is BS. Just wait until I build my 1TW antimatter plant. All I have to do is find a few pounds of the stuff and I can produce way more energy that any future fusion plant can produce.
Ha! And if we thought electricity storage in electric cars was a problem...
Actually, at exactly the speed of light, the formula explodes into "undefined." We simply don't know what it means
But what we do know is what it takes to approach near-light speed, and there is no known mechanism yet to instantly achieve a speed without accelerating. Each m/s of acceleration requires more energy than the m/s before it. So while v = c is technically undefined, but v = c - 1m/s is not, and the energy level required is staggering.
Some of that is where I don't think the engineers could think outside of the box to even conceive of a car that could work without gasoline
Maybe a useful car absolutely has to be able to work with gasoline -- until our infrastructure is as well-developed around electric cars as ours currently is around gas-powered cars.
Slashdot Mirror
Reading that I’m left thinking that you’re a bit jaded on the subject (forgive me if I’m wrong).
If the parent poster is like me, it's more like "Been there, done that, I don't need to go through that shit anymore." I've found more recent offerings by reputable dealers to be overall high quality, well tested, and even more stable. I don't have to worry about whether Chipset X PCI card isn't fully compatible with Vendor Y motherboard, I don't pay extra for the privilege of building my own, and so forth.
One thing I will do and will always do if I'm running windows: replace the stock OS install with one of my own. I'd much rather run the base OS with not vendor crap added on.
No, but I do have a SERIOUS problem with, in the US, over 45% of the populace not paying any Federal Income tax, due to deductions, etc.
I've seen article that households making up near $48K/yr actually pay no net Federal Income tax.
I'm sorry...everyone in the US should have at least a little skin in the game, you know?
I don't care if the minimum is 0.5 - 1%....something.
Well they do pay taxes. Most notably sales taxes, gas taxes.. and that's far more of a burden on the guy making $25,000 a year than that + income tax is for the guy making $250,000/yr.
So you agree that there is a niche for live streaming of DRM:ed content
Oh, absolutely. I just streamed the panels of BlizzCon the other weekend. Worked decently. I'm assuming it's DRMed, though I never bothered to check it for sure.
Even with streming you could just buffer the whole move or whatever (that is the same as downloading).
Theoretically, yes, but does any service actually work that way? Hold the entire movie in cache? That has to be a pretty big cache, but then again, movie streams are generally of low quality, even at high bitrate. Plus, I'll settle down for a movie... start the stream, wait for it to download, then watch? Sure, I could start the download the night before, but then I wouldn't be able to watch anything else in the meantime because again, every streaming service I've ever seen discards the stream when you switch to something else. The model where your machine downloads and stores movies ahead of time (like Tivo with live TV) does not seem to be the trend that streaming was going towards.
Mmmm, Mono died long before Silverlight did.
Goodyear and Firestone must piss you off.
That's more an implementation than an invention!
I thought DRM was already a thing of the past. Who is still doing that?
Anything having to do with major movie studios.
Not 100% sure about TV shows, but I think it's the same.
The music companies have mostly given up on DRM, but no one else did.
Maybe part of the point is that you shouldn't need a general-purpose applet platform just to create a distribution method for DRMed video? Like maybe you could create a more specialized DRM-video-player plugin that didn't have so many problems and security risks?
I think part of the problem is Flash Video needed Flash. It shouldn't be hard to make a video player, but Flash Video developed within the world of Flash, which could do far more than just playing videos.
Wouldn't the opposite of streaing be downloading and offline watching? That feels awkward. Especially for live events (the main use of SL it seems) where you suggest I download the game after it is finished?
Downloading and offline watching is the holy grail for me, with the single exception of live events. I hate streaming movies -- the bitrate is usually low so that it's possible to stream without buffering, frequently you'll get some snag in the network that will involve some pausing of the stream and rebuffering. Especially if you seek to a specific section. Poor quality + buffering + saturation of network so you can't do much else with it at the same time is a deal-breaker for me. That's why I get annoyed with Netflix whenever they try pushing me from my DVD/Blu-Ray plan to do more streaming instead every few months.
Don't get me started on how the extras that come with DVDs and Blu-Rays aren't usually available for streaming either.
In this case that would be a step in the right direction. Flash is much more widely available than Silverlight is at present.
Much as i don't like flash at least flash sites are accessible from Linux. I have been told that a few Silverlight sites work with moonlight but have not found any myself
I had heard that too, but the last time I tried Moonlight was a bit too alpha or beta quality, but that extends to most of mono too. It feels like how wine did five years ago.
I lock them in my basement, then Christopher Walken and I prank them.
Oh, like he 'pranked' Dennis Hopper?
Tell me wrong, but if google is full with EXCEPTIONAL developers, why there is not even a single product made entirely by them? Please, even one is enough (and don't say: Google)
Anyway, my point is that these mehods are good enough for finding anything, but good developers, which is maybe their aim in the first place.
A good developer doesn't have so much of an ego that he falls victim to the "not invented here" syndrome.
The great aim of software development was code reuse -- why rewrite a library that works fine and is available? Just to be able to say that you came up with it?
I was hired well after the fires started burning. Why keep a programmer on staff when you can hire them for a few months at a time after your development team has completely fucked up?
That sounds like a nightmare job -- cleaning up after someone else's poorly-designed projects.
Then again, although I wouldn't consider myself a programmer, I thought I was a lot better at finding out what section of the code was causing some bug and fixing it than I was designing and implementing a project from scratch.
um..."Microsoft tends to follow Apple's lead these days"? When they have ever *not* followed Apple's lead?
Mid to late 1990s.
That's about it, though.
Why on earth would anyone want ... to think ... and learn
Indeed.
If we all had infinite time and infinite patience, then maybe that would be a good point. But like most computer users these days, I would rather be spending my time thinking and learning about more productive things.
>don't upgrade your OS to the version that locks you out
Yeah, it's not like they'd exclusively bundle super-essential security updates in with that "you're all now our bitches" update.
We saw how that works with the Playstation 3.
"Hey, want to boot linux? Don't install the new firmware, and you're golden."
Except once it's installed there's no way to go back. And you can't sign into PSN anymore, which many games are now tied into. And things like the Netflix app won't work anymore. Along with many new Blu-Ray discs.
Oh well, the PS3 Linux sucked anyway due to the restrictions placed on it. :-)
I said Flat Earth, not SpaceCube. Or was that RoundCube ? Come on, keep an illusion of seriousness in your memes.
Clearly, you are referring to the TimeCube, the absolute proof of school retardation. It sounds like you are a believer in the single-day 24-hour deception.
What makes you think the two are unrelated?
Different mindset. eccentric vs incompetent.
Standard /. car analogy #1 : I reject the concept of fuel injectors on religious grounds, therefore my roadster has an ancient 70s era carburetor, and I lose all the races because I'm slow, but I know god loves me.
Standard /. car analogy #2 : I R an expurt car mekanic and I will now tune up yer (fuel injected) car using dis hear can o carb cleaner spray. Umm wheres da choke linkage? Well anyway, tune in next time when I install philips head screws using my hammer, and diagnose my cd player skipping problem by sniffing the muffler exhaust.
Old post! Replying to an old post, whee!
I don't think they are all that separate, when you give the following:
- The growing wave of anti-intellectualism and anti-science that seemingly rejects science outright on certain issues
- Or the growing wave of pseudo-science that undercuts science by adopting the trappings of science but none of its procedures?
I think situation two enables situation one. Situation two erodes general society's trust and sets up 'alternatives' as being a reasonable choice. That lets people disregard science wholeheartedly with excuses like "Oh, well, this came from Company X, so it's probably BS" and "This research came from radical group Y, so it's BS." Shoot the messenger is now a perfectly acceptable argument against a study.
Didn't she have Carly Fiorina stinking things up for her, and making the "issues" of the campaign about Meg Whitman's hairstyle? If I'm Meg Whitman, I have been gunning for this job just to show up Carly.
Mmmmm, they weren't running for the same office.
Unless Carly went waaay out of her way to mess things up for Meg. >_>
You lose all credibility the instant you link to the Daily Mail.
Or, you could actually listen to what people have to say instead of dismissing them for your own arbitrary reasons.
Unfortunately given the Daily Mail's record even on just this very story, you can't assume that what you read there is in any way accurate.
His co-author says he's full of it, and the results do not match the headlines.
His co-author explicitly claims that she said no such thing, and that her big objection was Muller hopping to the press before allowing it to go to peer review like it should.
Doesn't rising sea level equate to an increase in marine habitat?
I believe there would be a change in the marine salinity as well, which would adversely impact current species.
No problem, just embed wire under the roads and run the things off of induction then you would only need a smaller set of batteries to get you down into your subdivision and into your driveway. The'd sure as hell be lighter AND it is to clean up a few big power plants that billions of little ICE power plants.
Wow. That is a LOT of roadway to tear up and revamp, and worse, makes the roads very expensive to maintain. It's difficult for municipalities to find the money to resurface regular asphalt.
Cold fusion is a joke.
It's a wonderful dream, but just that.
I think they do or something from first year Chemistry 101 book says CF is BS. Just wait until I build my 1TW antimatter plant. All I have to do is find a few pounds of the stuff and I can produce way more energy that any future fusion plant can produce.
Ha! And if we thought electricity storage in electric cars was a problem...
Actually, at exactly the speed of light, the formula explodes into "undefined." We simply don't know what it means
But what we do know is what it takes to approach near-light speed, and there is no known mechanism yet to instantly achieve a speed without accelerating. Each m/s of acceleration requires more energy than the m/s before it. So while v = c is technically undefined, but v = c - 1m/s is not, and the energy level required is staggering.
Some of that is where I don't think the engineers could think outside of the box to even conceive of a car that could work without gasoline
Maybe a useful car absolutely has to be able to work with gasoline -- until our infrastructure is as well-developed around electric cars as ours currently is around gas-powered cars.