Someone else in this thread has pointed out that many pr0n makers are unencumbered by such expensive trivia as plot and acting, and make their films in an afternoon in a random hotel room--such people won't be inclined to invest in rendering farms and take months to churn out what they toss off in a day.
So...until it gets so cheap that the computer you buy Junior at Wal-Mart has sufficient cycles to burn that it can render the pr0n in an afternoon given an easy-to-generate description of the film, there will have to be other advantages...and there are:
1. No humans involved--hence no STDs. Producers could've used that during the recent brouhaha.
2. No real objects or people involved--hence ye can change the laws o' physics (sorry, Scotty), e.g. various and sundry physical constraints on size, speed, balance, and endurance, or body structure. Use your imagination.
3. Ironically, acting might improve, as people have themselves digitized in their prime and continue to make movies long past the time they otherwise could and thus can take advantage of long experience. (For that matter, non-actors could sell or rent the rights to their image, so that you could have a 89-year-old multi-Oscar-winning actress controlling the image of an 21-year-old fitness instructor who doesn't want to take the time to learn to act but who can rake in the royalties for letting her image be used in movies.)
The anti-aging technology, if ever completed will stop the evolution of the species.
We've been messing with natural selection ever since the beginning of medicine; it's a bit late to object now.
Furthermore, this will probably only benefit the richest, not the fittest...
Maybe at first, but there was a time when only the rich, or only governments, could afford computers. In the US today, poor people have TVs that the wealthy could only dream of in the 50s. Anti-aging technology will start out expensive, but it won't stay that way--and besides, doesn't the idea of the wealthy being the beta testers appeal to your little class-warfare soul?
What I think is hilarious about that Day After Tomorrow movie is how the studio advertises it as "from the director of Independence Day." That's not a big recommendation in my book.
Consider that their alternative was to advertise it as being based on a book by a two guys, one of whom ran a late night talk show featuring crackpots and conspiracy theorists and the other of whom claims to have been abducted by aliens.
I know it is as simple as a fraction. No company that controls less than 10% is any sort of monopoly. You know it. and you are the one dancing around it.
No, you are the one heavily spinning by implying that all radio stations are equivalent, when they obviously aren't. You're effectively arguing that it doesn't matter if a band can't be promoted on 50 kW stations, because there's a 1 kW station willing to do so.
I'm reminded of the joke about the fellow who made horse and rabbit sandwiches who, asked how he made them, said that he used equal parts each kind of meat--one horse, one rabbit.
"The once small company has quickly grown to over 1200 stations"
Which is a small percentage of the 20,000 stations out there. Next...
At best not necessarily relevant, at worst intentionally deceitful use of statistics. How many of those 20,000 stations are 1 kW stations out in the middle of nowhere? If you look at Infinity's web site, they emphasize the number of their stations that are in major markets, and I dare say that Clear Channel is similarly concentrated.
"Within individual markets, such as Denver, Clear Channel controls every station broadcasting certain popular formats"
That is rather poorly worded. Hard to understand what you are saying.
It didn't seem that unclear to me. How about a first-order predicate calculus version? "There exist markets m and formats f such that for all radio stations s, if s in in market m and has format f, Clear Channel owns s, and Denver is one such market."
It doesn't matter that there are 20,000 radio stations if all those that are (1) in the area that you want to perform and (2) have a format that features the kind of music you play are all owned by Clear Channel.
See http://www.cybercollege.com/frtv/frtv022b.htm for a breakdown of US stations by format: according to that page, there's 11% oldies, 11% religious, 11% news/talk, 12% country--if you're a current, non-country performer, that's about half the stations in the US that are irrelevant when it comes to publicity or airplay.
True freedom from fossil fuels will not come quickly or cheaply, but I believe that if we pressure our leaders to help fund these alternative sources and lower their total cost of implementation, we can speed up the process.
How can our leaders lower the cost of anything? They can impose price controls, but that will dry up the supply. They can give tax breaks, but that doesn't lower the cost, it just coerces someone else to pay part of the cost.
(If government could really lower the cost of things, surely poverty/health care/fill in the blank would no longer be a problem...)
No, you'll hear from people wanting to save whatever location people propose to put the Sonora Desert-sized pool of green slime. (Whoa, that brings back memories of Count Gregore being visited by the Green Slime Girls on Nightmare back when Green Slime came out. Catchy theme song...Sorry.)
Seriously, some of the advocacy groups would rather we not solve the energy problem--or, they'd rather we solve it by means other than finding even a clean, abundant energy source.
Seriously though... why else would you want a clean digital version unless it's to record to another medium?
Yes, and only guilty people would assert their rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, right? People have taped radio broadcasts as long as there have been tape recorders (for that matter, I bet there are wire recordings of radio broadcasts out there somewhere). You've nicely avoided answering the question of what makes recording analog broadcasts no big thing (actually, I think the RIAA has tried to object to radio stations broadcasting entire albums at one shot, but I'm not aware of anything having come of it), but recording digital broadcasts is somehow evil.
Bragging rights? The ability to persuade PHBs or PHDs (pointy-haired deans) that they can save money if the MSCEs that administer their secretary's computer can administer the Physics department's machine?
I wonder if spammers could derive any advantage from taking over a cluster on Internet2...
In looking around at various web sites concerning Michael Moore, I found this interesting account. If you follow it, you'll note that the author is very definitely of the left-wing "progressive" persuasion, and the tone is "more in sorrow than in anger."
Why should I think that Mr. Moore's films are any more accurate than his version of the events that the web page's author recounts?
Do yourself a favor and read up on what was thought to be "the militia" at the time the second amendment was written. (Hint: all able-bodied men within a certain age range.) Then perhaps you actually will understand the second amendment.
Well, apparently x86 is crappy. It's "70's technology". If it's so damn crappy, why aren't any of the "better" CPU's wiping the floor with x86? I'm not talking about popularity here, I'm talking about performance.
For some time, better CPUs did wipe the floor with the x86 family CPUs of their time, but didn't have the advantage of the Wintel monopoly. As for now... if you gave Intel's R&D budget to Motorola to spend on developing the PowerPC, I bet it would improve considerably.
The ColdFire is a 680x0 with the instruction set constrained in some ways (the number of instruction extensions is limited so that not all the combinations of addressing modes one is used to on the 680x0 are available for all instructions, arithmetic operations are all 32-bit rather than having 8-bit and 16-bit flavors as well) and extended in others (to compensate for the restrictions on arithmetic operations, there are load with sign extend and load with zero extend). Also, the ColdFire will trap on unaligned moves, unlike the 680x0 (68020 and above will cheerfully do unaligned moves, and even the 68000 only insists on 2-byte alignment for 4-byte moves).
The result of all this is to make the CPU more "RISC-like" and allow more efficient operation, but it also means that moving from 680x0 to ColdFire is a serious port--you definitely won't be able to just move 680x0 code over and run it.
Or, rather than profit motive or monopoly propagation, it could be option #3: Microsoft may just not want a repeat of the Eolas debacle where they get sued for something seemingly public domain 5 years down the road.
s/just/also/ and I think you'd be closer to the truth.
If you like gamer-oriented content, then I guess you don't need to bitch and moan. I personally couldn't care less about gamer-oriented content, and IMHO anybody who goes on as they did about catering to "the gamer lifestyle" is probably a marketroid who couldn't come up with a good show to save his or her life. Also, combining the two into one network probably means that the good stuff will be crowded out by the "gamer-oriented content," and that it will be that much less likely that we'll see a TechTV program specifically about, say, FOSS?
Advancing technology takes not just know-how, but inspiration as well. Gibson's work describes a vision of how humans might one day intereact with technology, one that many would say is quite ahead of his time.
Then many would be unaware of Vernor Vinge's "True Names," which, if memory serves, Robert Barton, head of the team at Burroughs which designed the B5000 (a computer with an OS programmed in a high-level language the better part of a decade before Unix), cited as the future of user interfaces.
Is there any way I can get both 3D acceleration and support for the TV tuner on my AIW Radeon? My Gentoo box is limping along with ati-gatos and an xfree build (xfree-4.3.0-r6) that makes Mozilla and other browsers crash at the drop of a hat.
OTOH, wait, maybe I don't want the 3D... when I used those drivers for ATI cards, I'd randomly wake up in the morning to find my or my wife's computer crashed hard in the midst of running one of the spiffy acceleratophilic screensavers.
Can anyone out there recommend a graphics card with decent performance and Open Source drivers?
The merged network will be the nation's premier 24/7 television network all about video games, technology and the gamer lifestyle.
I'm awfully glad I read the phrase "gamer lifestyle" on an empty stomach. It suggests large amounts of cheesy ads for clothing, beverages, and all sorts of things having nothing to do with games--not that I really give a flying Wallenda about gaming, and the hosts of the TechTV gaming show are irritating twerps anyway.
So...thanks, Comcast, for getting rid of most of the interesting stuff on TechTV. Thanks a lot.
I wish I had a link, but...recent articles on/. and elsewhere assert that a Windows XP box as it typically comes from the store will be 0wn3d by the time the online registration is finished, and give links to a site with instructions of the form
1. Boot up, and tell it you'll register later. 2. Turn off. 3. _Then_ register.
(If someone does have a link, please follow up; I'd like to refer Windows-running friends to it (along with offering them a Knoppix CD...)
Slashdot Mirror
Someone else in this thread has pointed out that many pr0n makers are unencumbered by such expensive trivia as plot and acting, and make their films in an afternoon in a random hotel room--such people won't be inclined to invest in rendering farms and take months to churn out what they toss off in a day.
So...until it gets so cheap that the computer you buy Junior at Wal-Mart has sufficient cycles to burn that it can render the pr0n in an afternoon given an easy-to-generate description of the film, there will have to be other advantages...and there are:
1. No humans involved--hence no STDs. Producers could've used that during the recent brouhaha.
2. No real objects or people involved--hence ye can change the laws o' physics (sorry, Scotty), e.g. various and sundry physical constraints on size, speed, balance, and endurance, or body structure. Use your imagination.
3. Ironically, acting might improve, as people have themselves digitized in their prime and continue to make movies long past the time they otherwise could and thus can take advantage of long experience. (For that matter, non-actors could sell or rent the rights to their image, so that you could have a 89-year-old multi-Oscar-winning actress controlling the image of an 21-year-old fitness instructor who doesn't want to take the time to learn to act but who can rake in the royalties for letting her image be used in movies.)
The anti-aging technology, if ever completed will stop the evolution of the species.
We've been messing with natural selection ever since the beginning of medicine; it's a bit late to object now.
Furthermore, this will probably only benefit the richest, not the fittest...
Maybe at first, but there was a time when only the rich, or only governments, could afford computers. In the US today, poor people have TVs that the wealthy could only dream of in the 50s. Anti-aging technology will start out expensive, but it won't stay that way--and besides, doesn't the idea of the wealthy being the beta testers appeal to your little class-warfare soul?
What I think is hilarious about that Day After Tomorrow movie is how the studio advertises it as "from the director of Independence Day." That's not a big recommendation in my book.
Consider that their alternative was to advertise it as being based on a book by a two guys, one of whom ran a late night talk show featuring crackpots and conspiracy theorists and the other of whom claims to have been abducted by aliens.
I know it is as simple as a fraction. No company that controls less than 10% is any sort of monopoly. You know it. and you are the one dancing around it.
No, you are the one heavily spinning by implying that all radio stations are equivalent, when they obviously aren't. You're effectively arguing that it doesn't matter if a band can't be promoted on 50 kW stations, because there's a 1 kW station willing to do so.
I'm reminded of the joke about the fellow who made horse and rabbit sandwiches who, asked how he made them, said that he used equal parts each kind of meat--one horse, one rabbit.
"The once small company has quickly grown to over 1200 stations"
Which is a small percentage of the 20,000 stations out there. Next...
At best not necessarily relevant, at worst intentionally deceitful use of statistics. How many of those 20,000 stations are 1 kW stations out in the middle of nowhere? If you look at Infinity's web site, they emphasize the number of their stations that are in major markets, and I dare say that Clear Channel is similarly concentrated.
"Within individual markets, such as Denver, Clear Channel controls every station broadcasting certain popular formats"
That is rather poorly worded. Hard to understand what you are saying.
It didn't seem that unclear to me. How about a first-order predicate calculus version? "There exist markets m and formats f such that for all radio stations s, if s in in market m and has format f, Clear Channel owns s, and Denver is one such market."
It doesn't matter that there are 20,000 radio stations if all those that are (1) in the area that you want to perform and (2) have a format that features the kind of music you play are all owned by Clear Channel.
See http://www.cybercollege.com/frtv/frtv022b.htm for a breakdown of US stations by format: according to that page, there's 11% oldies, 11% religious, 11% news/talk, 12% country--if you're a current, non-country performer, that's about half the stations in the US that are irrelevant when it comes to publicity or airplay.
True freedom from fossil fuels will not come quickly or cheaply, but I believe that if we pressure our leaders to help fund these alternative sources and lower their total cost of implementation, we can speed up the process.
How can our leaders lower the cost of anything? They can impose price controls, but that will dry up the supply. They can give tax breaks, but that doesn't lower the cost, it just coerces someone else to pay part of the cost.
(If government could really lower the cost of things, surely poverty/health care/fill in the blank would no longer be a problem...)
No, you'll hear from people wanting to save whatever location people propose to put the Sonora Desert-sized pool of green slime. (Whoa, that brings back memories of Count Gregore being visited by the Green Slime Girls on Nightmare back when Green Slime came out. Catchy theme song...Sorry.)
Seriously, some of the advocacy groups would rather we not solve the energy problem--or, they'd rather we solve it by means other than finding even a clean, abundant energy source.
On a Japanese show you'd think Jo would have offered a daikon.
Seriously though... why else would you want a clean digital version unless it's to record to another medium?
Yes, and only guilty people would assert their rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, right? People have taped radio broadcasts as long as there have been tape recorders (for that matter, I bet there are wire recordings of radio broadcasts out there somewhere). You've nicely avoided answering the question of what makes recording analog broadcasts no big thing (actually, I think the RIAA has tried to object to radio stations broadcasting entire albums at one shot, but I'm not aware of anything having come of it), but recording digital broadcasts is somehow evil.
Bragging rights? The ability to persuade PHBs or PHDs (pointy-haired deans) that they can save money if the MSCEs that administer their secretary's computer can administer the Physics department's machine?
I wonder if spammers could derive any advantage from taking over a cluster on Internet2...
For my money, I'd like to see Linux development conform to ISO-9000.
Who would volunteer to be the official Linux Stupid Label Guy?
In looking around at various web sites concerning Michael Moore, I found this interesting account. If you follow it, you'll note that the author is very definitely of the left-wing "progressive" persuasion, and the tone is "more in sorrow than in anger."
Why should I think that Mr. Moore's films are any more accurate than his version of the events that the web page's author recounts?
Do yourself a favor and read up on what was thought to be "the militia" at the time the second amendment was written. (Hint: all able-bodied men within a certain age range.) Then perhaps you actually will understand the second amendment.
From what I read (http://www.moorewatch.com/, http://www.bowlingfortruth.com/, etc.), Michael Moore is utterly unencumbered by honesty or ethics.
Well, apparently x86 is crappy. It's "70's technology". If it's so damn crappy, why aren't any of the "better" CPU's wiping the floor with x86? I'm not talking about popularity here, I'm talking about performance.
For some time, better CPUs did wipe the floor with the x86 family CPUs of their time, but didn't have the advantage of the Wintel monopoly. As for now... if you gave Intel's R&D budget to Motorola to spend on developing the PowerPC, I bet it would improve considerably.
...I presume that the descendants of Billy DeBeck, creator of Barney Google, will sue them both.
The ColdFire is a 680x0 with the instruction set constrained in some ways (the number of instruction extensions is limited so that not all the combinations of addressing modes one is used to on the 680x0 are available for all instructions, arithmetic operations are all 32-bit rather than having 8-bit and 16-bit flavors as well) and extended in others (to compensate for the restrictions on arithmetic operations, there are load with sign extend and load with zero extend). Also, the ColdFire will trap on unaligned moves, unlike the 680x0 (68020 and above will cheerfully do unaligned moves, and even the 68000 only insists on 2-byte alignment for 4-byte moves).
The result of all this is to make the CPU more "RISC-like" and allow more efficient operation, but it also means that moving from 680x0 to ColdFire is a serious port--you definitely won't be able to just move 680x0 code over and run it.
You got moxie kid!
Ewwww, poor kid. Moxie tastes AWFUL!
Or, rather than profit motive or monopoly propagation, it could be option #3: Microsoft may just not want a repeat of the Eolas debacle where they get sued for something seemingly public domain 5 years down the road.
s/just/also/ and I think you'd be closer to the truth.
If you like gamer-oriented content, then I guess you don't need to bitch and moan. I personally couldn't care less about gamer-oriented content, and IMHO anybody who goes on as they did about catering to "the gamer lifestyle" is probably a marketroid who couldn't come up with a good show to save his or her life. Also, combining the two into one network probably means that the good stuff will be crowded out by the "gamer-oriented content," and that it will be that much less likely that we'll see a TechTV program specifically about, say, FOSS?
Advancing technology takes not just know-how, but inspiration as well. Gibson's work describes a vision of how humans might one day intereact with technology, one that many would say is quite ahead of his time.
Then many would be unaware of Vernor Vinge's "True Names," which, if memory serves, Robert Barton, head of the team at Burroughs which designed the B5000 (a computer with an OS programmed in a high-level language the better part of a decade before Unix), cited as the future of user interfaces.
Is there any way I can get both 3D acceleration and support for the TV tuner on my AIW Radeon? My Gentoo box is limping along with ati-gatos and an xfree build (xfree-4.3.0-r6) that makes Mozilla and other browsers crash at the drop of a hat.
OTOH, wait, maybe I don't want the 3D... when I used those drivers for ATI cards, I'd randomly wake up in the morning to find my or my wife's computer crashed hard in the midst of running one of the spiffy acceleratophilic screensavers.
Can anyone out there recommend a graphics card with decent performance and Open Source drivers?
I seem to recall "OS/2 for Windows" or some such product.
If memory serves, that was a version for people who already had Windows 3.1.
The merged network will be the nation's premier 24/7 television network all about video games, technology and the gamer lifestyle.
I'm awfully glad I read the phrase "gamer lifestyle" on an empty stomach. It suggests large amounts of cheesy ads for clothing, beverages, and all sorts of things having nothing to do with games--not that I really give a flying Wallenda about gaming, and the hosts of the TechTV gaming show are irritating twerps anyway.
So...thanks, Comcast, for getting rid of most of the interesting stuff on TechTV. Thanks a lot.
I wish I had a link, but...recent articles on /. and elsewhere assert that a Windows XP box as it typically comes from the store will be 0wn3d by the time the online registration is finished, and give links to a site with instructions of the form
.
1. Boot up, and tell it you'll register later.
2. Turn off
3. _Then_ register.
(If someone does have a link, please follow up; I'd like to refer Windows-running friends to it (along with offering them a Knoppix CD...)