I'm excited to see a product which may spur sales (and availability!) of 77mm CD-R media...
...they're so neat!
I'm sorry, but imho, 77mm CD-R media doesn't hold a candle to Minidiscs in coolness factor. 7mm discs are small, shiney and light, but they lack the slight rattle - the sign of quality - in any light geeky item when you shake it. Not to mention that there is both dark plastic, transparent and shiney parts to a minidisc. Plus, they're already widely available. The only problem is getting them into your computer.
I hate to make a trite post, but with a little perl scripting and everybody's friend Mr. Wakeup, one could do an awful lot of damaging mischief with this sort of thing.
Anyways, is Akira available on DVD? I've been keeping an eye out for it for a while, so if anyone can tell me if it is available I'd really appreciate it.
Not in the US (not yet, anyway). If you're really itching for one, though you could always check Ebay. Like this auction, or this one
.
Roger Ebert loved 'Grave of the Fireflies'
on
Essential Anime
·
· Score: 1
Yes, it's a cartoon, and the kids have eyes like saucers, but it belongs on any list of the greatest war films ever made. - Roger Ebert's review of Grave of the Fireflies
Enough said. Rob, don't you dare pass this one up.
Who was it that suggested that members of Public Enemy should be speaking in defense of MP3 and file sharing via Napster? I'm not famaliar with how these hearing typically play out, so I have no clue who's in charge or who to talk to.
What I do know, however, is that I've read a couple of Public Enemy's rants regarding MP3 technology. Call me crazy, but I think at least 1/3 of (non-troll) slashdot posters would be better suited to speak in MP3's defense. When I read the comments here, I see a lot of good, debatable points. Are the decision-makers ever going to see them? Not unless someone prints them out, goes to their little hearing pow-wow and sets them down in the courtroom.
Or is the person running this whole shebang more interested in sensationalism over substance?
Which is the exact key with the username? I keep deleting hte entire registry entry to no avail.
Someone, in another feedback article, in a thread moderated far far higher than the one in which we speak, posted the exact process one goes through in order to work around the ban. Give it a shot - it worked for me.
Once more, for the hopelessly dense - only people that made Metallica songs available for download are on the list.
That's what they say. I know for a fact that I haven't shared any Metallica songs; I don't share any songs! I leech! The only thing I've done on Napster with regards to Metallica as of late was search for them right after I heard about this whole banning issue. Lo and behold, I found people still sharing them. I didn't download any!
I just want to see the proof. Show me the logs that say when I did this, and what song I was sharing! That's all. I'm not signing or filling out any legally binding forms or agreements until I see evidence that I even did something wrong!
Napster user "Neuracnu_Coyote"
No new accounts - and besides, where's the proof?
on
An MP3 Update
·
· Score: 2
I am (Napster username: Neuracnu_Coyote) one of the over 300,000 users who have been banned from Napster's network for supposedly propagating pirated MP3s of Metallica songs. As mentioned in a previous feedback article, Metallica and NetPD claim that the list they have produced is 99% accurate, admitting that they inadvertently included some 3000 innocent users in their list of offenders. I am also one of these 3000 users.
I don't have the bandwidth to handle all the requests I would get from Napster, so I do what most people do - I make my shared directory an empty directory and, when a file gets downloaded, I move it out of there and refresh my file library to make sure there's nothing in there for people to download. I NEVER SERVE FILES.
How, then, can Napster and Metallica claim that I have, and say that they have caught me in the act? Where is this proof? May I see it? Is a federal judge just goint to take NetPD's word for it that I pirated music?
And that reminds me, when exactly did this ban go into effect? I read about it on Slashdot, then immediately started up Napster to see if people were still trading Metallica songs. I was able to log in and found that, yes, they were. I got a good chuckle out of this and shut down the client. Last night, I started the client to find that I had been banned! It also said that I should visit their Counter Notification page (http://infringe.napster.com/metallica.html) in order to protest my ban. I'm having a lawyer friend of mine go over this to make sure that my signing it will not set into motion a whole set of legal shenanigans only to end with me getting spanked with a charge of perjury.
But now, I should get back to the subject of the message. I went into the registry and removed my user information before uninstalling and reinstalling the software. I tried to get it to create a new user, but after going through the signup process, I got the same message that my account, for the new username, had been banned - they must be doing it by IP address as well as usernames.
In the meantime, banned (windows) Napster users can download Napigator, a client that allows you to navigate through official Napster servers as well as OpenNap and other unofficial Napster servers and connect to those without bother from Metallica's musical meddling. Either that, or Gnutella, IRC, ICQ or any of the other genies that have popped out of the bottle.
Great, it's got the looks. But will it jump over cliffs at the drop of a hat? Can you leap out of it, and have a camera do a Matrix-like freeze-pan 90 degrees around the car with you doing a dashing, dynamic pose? Is it equipt with oil slick rigs and hermetically-sealed for when you suddenly find yourself driving off a bridge and into a lake?
And does the trunk have room for an overweight annoying kid and his pet monkey?
It's all about the features, ladies and gentlemen.
And if it WERE divine conception, we would finally have a chance to look at the Son of God's DNA. Would it glow? Adenine, thymine, cytosine, uracil, and THE-NUCLEOTIDE-WHOSE- NAME-CANNOT-BE-SPOKEN.
Right. I can see the string of nucleotides now: A-T-G-C-G-Y-H-W-H-G-A-T-C-T-A...
You bring up some great ideas there, but the only problem that I can foresee is a possible karma gap emerging. With more and more folks browsing comments at +3, what's a lowly guy like me, with (at last count) 8 karma points, who spends most of his time lurking through the comments on/. but occasionally have something interesting to say?
Now, I admit, I would at least be able to post at +1 status, thanks to my status as a registered user for over 6 months (I think). But regardless, there has to be a better way than to hold the tongues of new users for the first three months. And that's what a -1 does to most comments - who here routinely goes through all the -1 messages, looking for the diamonds in the rough? Doubtful that you'll find enough who are willing to pick through the boobies and naked Jackie Chan ASCII.
One could ask/. to instate a kill-file system specific to the whims of each user, but keeping up on it would be a royal pain for it to do any good. I honestly don't know.
First of all, let's first state exactly what we want. There's very little chance of us ever achieving a goal if we never clearly set it, now is there? The goal I see Jon aiming for is the following: a 100% open flameless discussion group, being maintained flameless by the choice of each poster, rather than moderators (may they be few or many).
Let's say a short-minded flamer, whom we'll simply call "FOOL", posts a message on a random slashdot tech piece saying, "That's crap. You're stupid. Natalie Portman sits on my face." This is the sort of thing that I will be considering a flame. The key feature being that it lacks any wit or perceivable intelligence. Extreme opposing rebuttals that are explained and semi-logically worked out need not apply here.
What, exactly, are we, the timid yet ever-important under-appreciated lurkers, supposed to do about it?
it's the responsibility of the single biggest group of online users - the lurkers - to speak up.
Very well, then. Then we, the lurkers, can do three things to make our opinions known or "speak up":
1) We can flame back in mass quantities. However, this sort of thing is completely contrary to the logic of our goals. [Let's flame those who flame to show that flaming people is wrong.] 2) We can use slashdot's nifty moderating system to add or take away a particular user's discussion brownie points. This may be a little off of our goal, but seems like a reasonable enough way of doing things. The problem I see with this system is that one assumes that these moderator points will be used for good and not evil. If you give everyone moderator rights, then you may get malicious users taking away brownie points from good messages simply to be disruptive. You may say, "Oh, your average flamer doesn't have the gall to do such a thing!", but I should direct you to a fellow by the online name of "Random" (sphynx@crl.com, look him up on deja.com if you like). This guy seems to delight in feeding flamewars. I won't say for sure, because I have not read every one of his messages, nor have I never met him or so much as exchanged email with him. But I think, if you'll have a look at his types of posts, it's the folks like him (or how I assume he is) who make discussion forums such nasty places. He appears to have both the time and the energy to devote to making discussions hectic and feeding the flames. 3) For every person that flames, we write an original, articulate rebuttal as to why FOOL shouldn't flame. The problem with this is obvious. It's taken me around 20 minutes to write this post so far. How long and how much mental effort does it take to respond with "HAHA YOU MISSPELLED DISRUPTIVE - YOU ARE DUMB!" Most lurkers are lurkers because they simply don't have the time or the energy to be involved in online discussions. The time that I spend reading slashdot is time that I'm taking away from doing something else; like most people, I don't have time to sit and respond to flames. Not even just one or two. I've got better things to do, and I do resent anyone who would call me lazy or irresponsible with regards to the budding issues of 21st century free speech. (If you're not calling lurkers that, don't worry about it, I still love you.)
So Jon, or anybody else for that matter, tell us what we are supposed to do?
I want radio broadcasts of Hemos doing amazing and awe-inspiring things like juggling external SCSI hard drives and setting up a debian machine with only his tongue.
As a resident of a 3-room cardboard box suite, I am glad to hear that the box-living population is finally getting recognized and represented in the media. Kudos, Slashdot.
Got mirrors for Jedi Academy?
on
Quickie Sunday
·
· Score: 1
The two sure things in life are death (the slashdot effect) and taxes...
So, does anyone out there have some mirrors for the Jedi Academy videos?
Alight kids, you download the thing from Netscape and it saves the file to the disk as a bunch of text, right? Right..
Hmm.. that sure sounds like a famaliar problem. Oh yeah! Some MP3s do the same thing when downloaded by a browser. Some smart, smart person out there developed a piece of software called "uncook" (uncook.exe) that fixes it.
And ya know what? It works for this Real Video file, too! Kick ass, eh? Where do you get this uncook.exe? Right here:
Slashdot Mirror
I'm excited to see a product which may spur sales (and availability!) of 77mm CD-R media...
I'm sorry, but imho, 77mm CD-R media doesn't hold a candle to Minidiscs in coolness factor. 7mm discs are small, shiney and light, but they lack the slight rattle - the sign of quality - in any light geeky item when you shake it. Not to mention that there is both dark plastic, transparent and shiney parts to a minidisc. Plus, they're already widely available. The only problem is getting them into your computer.
I hate to make a trite post, but with a little perl scripting and everybody's friend Mr. Wakeup, one could do an awful lot of damaging mischief with this sort of thing.
I was reading a Newsweek article (linked off the wego Gnutella site) that claims it's "pronounced New-tella." Is it?
I always pronounced it like the spread, with the G being silent: nuh-TEL-uh.
Another friend claimed that he pronounced it like other Gnu software projects, giving the G sound: guh-new-TEL-uh.
Thoughts?
Anyways, is Akira available on DVD? I've been keeping an eye out for it for a while, so if anyone can tell me if it is available I'd really appreciate it.
Not in the US (not yet, anyway). If you're really itching for one, though you could always check Ebay. Like this auction, or this one
.Yes, it's a cartoon, and the kids have eyes like saucers, but it belongs on any list of the greatest war films ever made. - Roger Ebert's review of Grave of the Fireflies
Enough said. Rob, don't you dare pass this one up.Who was it that suggested that members of Public Enemy should be speaking in defense of MP3 and file sharing via Napster? I'm not famaliar with how these hearing typically play out, so I have no clue who's in charge or who to talk to.
What I do know, however, is that I've read a couple of Public Enemy's rants regarding MP3 technology. Call me crazy, but I think at least 1/3 of (non-troll) slashdot posters would be better suited to speak in MP3's defense. When I read the comments here, I see a lot of good, debatable points. Are the decision-makers ever going to see them? Not unless someone prints them out, goes to their little hearing pow-wow and sets them down in the courtroom.
Or is the person running this whole shebang more interested in sensationalism over substance?
Which is the exact key with the username? I keep deleting hte entire registry entry to no avail.
Someone, in another feedback article, in a thread moderated far far higher than the one in which we speak, posted the exact process one goes through in order to work around the ban. Give it a shot - it worked for me.
Thank you, good day.
Once more, for the hopelessly dense - only people that made Metallica songs available for download are on the list.
That's what they say. I know for a fact that I haven't shared any Metallica songs; I don't share any songs! I leech! The only thing I've done on Napster with regards to Metallica as of late was search for them right after I heard about this whole banning issue. Lo and behold, I found people still sharing them. I didn't download any!
I just want to see the proof. Show me the logs that say when I did this, and what song I was sharing! That's all. I'm not signing or filling out any legally binding forms or agreements until I see evidence that I even did something wrong!
Napster user "Neuracnu_Coyote"
I am (Napster username: Neuracnu_Coyote) one of the over 300,000 users who have been banned from Napster's network for supposedly propagating pirated MP3s of Metallica songs. As mentioned in a previous feedback article, Metallica and NetPD claim that the list they have produced is 99% accurate, admitting that they inadvertently included some 3000 innocent users in their list of offenders. I am also one of these 3000 users.
I don't have the bandwidth to handle all the requests I would get from Napster, so I do what most people do - I make my shared directory an empty directory and, when a file gets downloaded, I move it out of there and refresh my file library to make sure there's nothing in there for people to download. I NEVER SERVE FILES.
How, then, can Napster and Metallica claim that I have, and say that they have caught me in the act? Where is this proof? May I see it? Is a federal judge just goint to take NetPD's word for it that I pirated music?
And that reminds me, when exactly did this ban go into effect? I read about it on Slashdot, then immediately started up Napster to see if people were still trading Metallica songs. I was able to log in and found that, yes, they were. I got a good chuckle out of this and shut down the client. Last night, I started the client to find that I had been banned! It also said that I should visit their Counter Notification page (http://infringe.napster.com/metallica.html) in order to protest my ban. I'm having a lawyer friend of mine go over this to make sure that my signing it will not set into motion a whole set of legal shenanigans only to end with me getting spanked with a charge of perjury.
But now, I should get back to the subject of the message. I went into the registry and removed my user information before uninstalling and reinstalling the software. I tried to get it to create a new user, but after going through the signup process, I got the same message that my account, for the new username, had been banned - they must be doing it by IP address as well as usernames.
In the meantime, banned (windows) Napster users can download Napigator, a client that allows you to navigate through official Napster servers as well as OpenNap and other unofficial Napster servers and connect to those without bother from Metallica's musical meddling. Either that, or Gnutella, IRC, ICQ or any of the other genies that have popped out of the bottle.
Great, it's got the looks. But will it jump over cliffs at the drop of a hat? Can you leap out of it, and have a camera do a Matrix-like freeze-pan 90 degrees around the car with you doing a dashing, dynamic pose? Is it equipt with oil slick rigs and hermetically-sealed for when you suddenly find yourself driving off a bridge and into a lake?
And does the trunk have room for an overweight annoying kid and his pet monkey?
It's all about the features, ladies and gentlemen.
Right. I can see the string of nucleotides now: A-T-G-C-G-Y-H-W-H-G-A-T-C-T-A...
You bring up some great ideas there, but the only problem that I can foresee is a possible karma gap emerging. With more and more folks browsing comments at +3, what's a lowly guy like me, with (at last count) 8 karma points, who spends most of his time lurking through the comments on /. but occasionally have something interesting to say?
Now, I admit, I would at least be able to post at +1 status, thanks to my status as a registered user for over 6 months (I think). But regardless, there has to be a better way than to hold the tongues of new users for the first three months. And that's what a -1 does to most comments - who here routinely goes through all the -1 messages, looking for the diamonds in the rough? Doubtful that you'll find enough who are willing to pick through the boobies and naked Jackie Chan ASCII.
One could ask /. to instate a kill-file system specific to the whims of each user, but keeping up on it would be a royal pain for it to do any good. I honestly don't know.
--
Neuracnu Coyote
First of all, let's first state exactly what we want. There's very little chance of us ever achieving a goal if we never clearly set it, now is there? The goal I see Jon aiming for is the following: a 100% open flameless discussion group, being maintained flameless by the choice of each poster, rather than moderators (may they be few or many).
Let's say a short-minded flamer, whom we'll simply call "FOOL", posts a message on a random slashdot tech piece saying, "That's crap. You're stupid. Natalie Portman sits on my face." This is the sort of thing that I will be considering a flame. The key feature being that it lacks any wit or perceivable intelligence. Extreme opposing rebuttals that are explained and semi-logically worked out need not apply here.
What, exactly, are we, the timid yet ever-important under-appreciated lurkers, supposed to do about it?
it's the responsibility of the single biggest group of online users - the lurkers - to speak up.
Very well, then. Then we, the lurkers, can do three things to make our opinions known or "speak up":
1) We can flame back in mass quantities. However, this sort of thing is completely contrary to the logic of our goals. [Let's flame those who flame to show that flaming people is wrong.]
2) We can use slashdot's nifty moderating system to add or take away a particular user's discussion brownie points. This may be a little off of our goal, but seems like a reasonable enough way of doing things. The problem I see with this system is that one assumes that these moderator points will be used for good and not evil. If you give everyone moderator rights, then you may get malicious users taking away brownie points from good messages simply to be disruptive. You may say, "Oh, your average flamer doesn't have the gall to do such a thing!", but I should direct you to a fellow by the online name of "Random" (sphynx@crl.com, look him up on deja.com if you like). This guy seems to delight in feeding flamewars. I won't say for sure, because I have not read every one of his messages, nor have I never met him or so much as exchanged email with him. But I think, if you'll have a look at his types of posts, it's the folks like him (or how I assume he is) who make discussion forums such nasty places. He appears to have both the time and the energy to devote to making discussions hectic and feeding the flames.
3) For every person that flames, we write an original, articulate rebuttal as to why FOOL shouldn't flame. The problem with this is obvious. It's taken me around 20 minutes to write this post so far. How long and how much mental effort does it take to respond with "HAHA YOU MISSPELLED DISRUPTIVE - YOU ARE DUMB!" Most lurkers are lurkers because they simply don't have the time or the energy to be involved in online discussions. The time that I spend reading slashdot is time that I'm taking away from doing something else; like most people, I don't have time to sit and respond to flames. Not even just one or two. I've got better things to do, and I do resent anyone who would call me lazy or irresponsible with regards to the budding issues of 21st century free speech. (If you're not calling lurkers that, don't worry about it, I still love you.)
So Jon, or anybody else for that matter, tell us what we are supposed to do?
I want radio broadcasts of Hemos doing amazing and awe-inspiring things like juggling external SCSI hard drives and setting up a debian machine with only his tongue.
Click on the link for the ~371k jpg.
As a resident of a 3-room cardboard box suite, I am glad to hear that the box-living population is finally getting recognized and represented in the media. Kudos, Slashdot.
The two sure things in life are death (the slashdot effect) and taxes...
So, does anyone out there have some mirrors for the Jedi Academy videos?
Keep up the good work!
However, a couple of nitpics and suggestions.
1) Keep the 3 of you on the show, but post sticky-notes all over the place that remind you that only 2 can talk at a time. It works.
2) Ditch the guitar rifs and sound effects. Geek funny is a good thing, but try your best not to turn it into a morning zoo.
3) If you're going to take phonecalls, avoid playing tech support. It just aint entertainment.
Nice show..
Alight kids, you download the thing from Netscape and it saves the file to the disk as a bunch of text, right? Right..
Hmm.. that sure sounds like a famaliar problem. Oh yeah! Some MP3s do the same thing when downloaded by a browser. Some smart, smart person out there developed a piece of software called "uncook" (uncook.exe) that fixes it.
And ya know what? It works for this Real Video file, too! Kick ass, eh? Where do you get this uncook.exe? Right here:
http://www.inlink.com/~neuracnu/tem p/uncook.exePS: usage of it is: uncook.exe badal.rm goodal.rm
Jeez.. I've gotta do something to weed out all the non-eleet people, don't I?
*bleeeeeding scarcasm*Everybody hates how starwars.com embeds the movs into their pages. Well, here's direct links to all 16 of 'em. Fetch.
8 0_qt4/amidala_480_qt4.mov 4 0_qt4/amidala_240_qt4.mov 8 0_qt3/amidala_480_qt3.mov 4 0_qt3/amidala_240_qt3.mov
8 0_qt4/qui-gon_480_qt4.mov 4 0_qt4/qui-gon_240_qt4.mov 8 0_qt3/qui-gon_480_qt3.mov 4 0_qt3/qui-gon_240_qt3.mov
8 0_qt4/anakin_480_qt4.mov 4 0_qt4/anakin_240_qt4.mov 8 0_qt3/anakin_480_qt3.mov 4 0_qt3/anakin_240_qt3.mov
8 0_qt4/shmi_480_qt4.mov 4 0_qt4/shmi_240_qt4.mov 8 0_qt3/shmi_480_qt3.mov 4 0_qt3/shmi_240_qt3.mov
Queen Amidala: One Will
QT4, 480x260, stereo - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/4
QT4, 240x132, stereo - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/2
QT3, 480x260, stereo - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/4
QT4, 240x132, mono - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/2
Qui-Gon Jinn: One Destiny
QT4, 480x260, stereo - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/4
QT4, 240x132, stereo - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/2
QT3, 480x260, stereo - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/4
QT4, 240x132, mono - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/2
Anakin Skywalker: One Dream
QT4, 480x260, stereo - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/4
QT4, 240x132, stereo - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/2
QT3, 480x260, stereo - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/4
QT4, 240x132, mono - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/2
Shmi Skywalker: One Love
QT4, 480x260, stereo - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/4
QT4, 240x132, stereo - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/2
QT3, 480x260, stereo - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/4
QT4, 240x132, mono - http://www.apple.com/main/media/lucasfilm/poems/2