Think of it more as currently in the shape of a data warehouse (which it really is). Most data feeds into data warehouses aren't that great - they need to be massaged into something useful and Google are finding out over time what the problems are.
If you can't find something in a database, it significantly decreases the usefulness of having all the materials there in the first place.
That's true but not to the point where you'd consider not making any of it available until it was perfect (or most of the way there). It's not perfect and it probably never will be - given time as they find more systemic problems in their metadata feeds and address them things will get better. They may be at 90% but for most people it's going to be good enough as it's more than likely going to be used like a library browsing sections for interesting things.
It's like saying that Slashdot is obnoxious because it is "written with a smug sense of self-entitlement as though he and other 'geeks' are the only legitimate users of the Internet".
They're really not the same. Personally I'd mod someone down for saying that someone didn't have the right to use the internet (if I had mod points). My problem mainly rested with the (smug and it's all about "me") tone of the comments inlined into the google response to him.
The inline replies are written with a smug sense of self-entitlement as though he and other "scholars" are the only legitimate users of Google Books. It's NOT about you - you are not going to create enough adsense hits to make this whole thing worthwhile (or turn a profit).
And don't get me started on the Aussies, who would probably say some crap like...
I don't think anyone here would say anything like that here. It doesn't make sense to contract April Fools in any way. And now to go completely off topic onto underpants.
Someone will know what you mean if you said underpants or underwear in Australia but pants would be what it is the USA. More likely we'd call underpants undies (pronounced like dundee (without the d but with a trailing s as in that really bad movie with Crocodile in the title)). Women however can wear panties as well as undies. Of course, if they're white undies depending on your age you might call them bog catchas (named for the brown streak that can sometimes be seen).
As a general rule we're more likely to contract a word (sometimes) and stick an o or some kind of e ending on it (sometimes even an a). Examples like arvo (afternoon), undies (underwear/underpants) and sanga (sandwitch).
I think you meant Frisian not Finnish. English is a Germanic language whose most direct influence was Frisian, since then it's absorbed a lot of other influences. Finnish has completely different origins further back in history.
For a good read about the history of English try to find "The Adventure of English" by Melvyn Bragg (ISBN 0-340-82991-5). It's a surprising interesting and informative book. It's also been turned into a television series for those who are reading challenged (the book is more in depth). It also covers the many dialects of English now in use (including American, Australian, Singlish and others).
The SD industry has previously used Microsoft's FAT filesystem due to it's uniquity.
While uniquity may be a word (see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/uniquity) I think you may have meant ubiquity (b and n are next to each other on the keyboard). It's slightly humorous in your version though.
Even if they do introduce region locking for more games there are only 3 regions (if they use blu-ray regions) and both you and the UK are in region B (along with Australia and New Zealand for some reason).
Like I'd take that request seriously. Throw out the incompetents (Labour) for the crazies (the Greens) - your post should be modded funny not interesting.
It's not the number of console's that important in terms of saying who is winning, it's the attach rate that determines profitability (especially for 3rd party games developers) as that's where the money is made. The higher the attach rate the more you can afford to make a loss on the console and make it up in income from software sales.
His statement isn't necessarily true or false (and might be both). Your assertions are however misleading.
Performance has shades of grey and can be subjective. The cell processor is potentially must faster (note the potentially) if the SPEs are used to good effect. With 3 symmetric cores on the 360 vs the cell processors single full core if someone doesn't put in the extra effort (for a smaller market) the PS3 version of a game will lag behind the 360 version.
Performance isn't always about the speed of the bare metal it's also about what you do with it. There are games where the PS3 version is well optimised and performs better (especially in first party titles) however there a lots of games where the opposite is true.
It's disingenuous to say that a first party PS3 title can't run well on an 360, it's a first party title so it will never be available on a 360. You can't make comparisons by hand waving and saying something isn't fast enough to handle something when it's never going to be available on that platform. Next you know we'll have someone saying that the PS3 isn't good enough to run Halo 3 (never mind the fact that it can't run it as it's never going to be available for it).
Disclaimer: I own both consoles - I do prefer the 360 gameplay over the PS3 however.
Exactly, this whole issue probably should have stopped being a legal issue a fair while ago. It should now be a social issue.
I have no idea what should be done but rightly or wrongly when a sizable percentage of the population of a country is engaged in something that is (most likely) illegal it becomes a social issue. Prohibition doesn't work unless most of society accepts it.
In all likelyhood there will have to be reform of the way copyrights are licensed so it's possible to have blanket licensing without the myriad of bodies responsible for collecting fees for different things in different countries. This isn't a situation where the market can solve things as there is no competition allowed when it comes to copyright (excluding things like CC licensing).
I don't think copyright owners, collection societies etc want this seen as a social issue however as that means government intervention and actions being taken they won't have too much say in.
The RIAA need to stop wasting limited court resources on these frivolous lawsuits, and embrace the power of the internet to make sure their artists' concerts are filled, at $200+ per ticket. After all, you'll only fork out that much for a concert ticket if you have HEARD the music and actually LIKE it.
There's one ever so small problem there. In most cases the record companies are not engaged in 360 degree deals that get them part of the artist ticket sales (as much as they're trying to do that these days). If you're already a large artist - why would you?. The companies that make up the RIAA (and others) want to maximise their part of the pie, not give their part away so someone else can make all the money.
Having said that I haven't much sympathy for their situation either.
Terrible does not do justice to the American version of the "The Office". Utterly and profoundly terrible as well as completely unfunny come to mind as a equally valid descriptions of the US version (based on the 3 episodes I forced myself to watch).
There are multiple alternatives here are some suggestions (and there are lots more than this out there).
If you just want to listen try http://last.fm/ for streaming music of artists that you like (if you scrobble it's easier to find artists that sound like artists you like as last.fm will make recommendations - you can also subscribe to a postcast and get free songs). For some free songs try the shop at http://www.sellaband.com/ (the non free songs are 50 cents each - there's usually 3 free songs per artist). Amie street can also be a cheap place to find indie or older mainstream music http://www.amiestreet.com/ (the more popular songs are more expensive but the less popular songs are cheap). I didn't like it so much but there's always we7 http://www.we7.com/ - it used to be ad supported (not sure about now) but after some amount of time you can download a set number of ad free songs per month.
As with all things YMMV compared to what I've liked and found useful. As with all of these sorts of sites registration is required. None have been particularly onerous with excessive emails and they usually have ways of opting out of getting email from them.
Where the internet is a communications channel between computers, the grid goes beyond this by not just using the internet for communications but also as a means of sharing computing resources. Every computer and user can access and make use of the combined resources of the grid.
And just how long will it be before someone decides to create a WWG application that uses it as one vast storage pool of copyrighted material with distributed indexing of the contents and the RIAA, MPAA,... of the world sue the whole thing into non-existance or buy laws to make it a criminal offence to run it?
Structured correctly you wouldn't know who was adding to it or downloading data from it. After all a download would be just be a request to replicate a bit more data making a vastly distributed virtual filesystem a bit more redundant. You may not even be able to tell if it was someone making a request to make a local copy or the software automatically increasing storage redundancy of static data (assuming that there's no logging).
Yes. To the point where I'm not sure you read the article or many/any of the posts.
Does Apple pays the content owners just 9 cents out of the 99 cents it charges for a song? i.e. Does Apple get to keep 90% of the selling price?
Read more of the posts here, it's almost impossible not to know that about 70% of the money goes to the label (or someone else) and they need to (if required) pay the royalties.
Do brick & mortar stores also operate on a similiar basis. i.e. if I pay 15$ for a CD, does the shop just give $1.50 to the content owners?
No. The royalties have already been paid and included into the wholesale price of the CD.
I think it has more to do with piracy fears except noone seems willing to come out and say that.
PC owners rejoice, you can look forward to spending less money on games as they either don't get ported or come out 6 months after the consoles have the games.
On the plus side M$S must realise that fewer games for PCs means less requirement for running windows (for games at least) and that has to be somewhat worrying.
The extension to Oblivion (assuming you had the original version and not the game of year edition) needs to be installed on the hard drive to use it as well.
LOL, can I suggest a style that doesn't allow full contact?
I do Karate (Orange belt now) once a week for 2.5 hours (some times with an extra class for 4.0 hours total). In terms of at home I sometimes practice Kata for a total of about another hour. I've been doing it for a bit under a year and at 41 I'm probably more fit than I've ever been before.
If someone out there is considering taking up a martial art try several out and choose one where you feel comfortable with the environment and the Sensei. If you're doing it for fitness find a Dojo where you can have some fun (start out with the kids lessons that also take beginner adults as you'll get to play some games as well). Don't worry about how good or bad you are (you'll always be learning). If you've got an injury or physical limitation find somewhere that will take it into account when training and grading.
There should always be some fun involved unless you're doing something like training seriously for competition, if there is some fun rather than just only hard work you're more likely to keep going (even if there is some fun it will probably be hard work as well).
Slashdot Mirror
Think of it more as currently in the shape of a data warehouse (which it really is). Most data feeds into data warehouses aren't that great - they need to be massaged into something useful and Google are finding out over time what the problems are.
If you can't find something in a database, it significantly decreases the usefulness of having all the materials there in the first place.
That's true but not to the point where you'd consider not making any of it available until it was perfect (or most of the way there). It's not perfect and it probably never will be - given time as they find more systemic problems in their metadata feeds and address them things will get better. They may be at 90% but for most people it's going to be good enough as it's more than likely going to be used like a library browsing sections for interesting things.
It's like saying that Slashdot is obnoxious because it is "written with a smug sense of self-entitlement as though he and other 'geeks' are the only legitimate users of the Internet".
They're really not the same. Personally I'd mod someone down for saying that someone didn't have the right to use the internet (if I had mod points). My problem mainly rested with the (smug and it's all about "me") tone of the comments inlined into the google response to him.
The inline replies are written with a smug sense of self-entitlement as though he and other "scholars" are the only legitimate users of Google Books. It's NOT about you - you are not going to create enough adsense hits to make this whole thing worthwhile (or turn a profit).
...
Extending the use of it is what it was designed to do in the fist place.
I find your comment intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter but only if you will let me know where this "fist" place is.
And don't get me started on the Aussies, who would probably say some crap like ...
I don't think anyone here would say anything like that here. It doesn't make sense to contract April Fools in any way. And now to go completely off topic onto underpants.
Someone will know what you mean if you said underpants or underwear in Australia but pants would be what it is the USA. More likely we'd call underpants undies (pronounced like dundee (without the d but with a trailing s as in that really bad movie with Crocodile in the title)). Women however can wear panties as well as undies. Of course, if they're white undies depending on your age you might call them bog catchas (named for the brown streak that can sometimes be seen).
As a general rule we're more likely to contract a word (sometimes) and stick an o or some kind of e ending on it (sometimes even an a). Examples like arvo (afternoon), undies (underwear/underpants) and sanga (sandwitch).
I think you meant Frisian not Finnish. English is a Germanic language whose most direct influence was Frisian, since then it's absorbed a lot of other influences. Finnish has completely different origins further back in history.
For a good read about the history of English try to find "The Adventure of English" by Melvyn Bragg (ISBN 0-340-82991-5). It's a surprising interesting and informative book. It's also been turned into a television series for those who are reading challenged (the book is more in depth). It also covers the many dialects of English now in use (including American, Australian, Singlish and others).
The SD industry has previously used Microsoft's FAT filesystem due to it's uniquity.
While uniquity may be a word (see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/uniquity) I think you may have meant ubiquity (b and n are next to each other on the keyboard). It's slightly humorous in your version though.
Even if they do introduce region locking for more games there are only 3 regions (if they use blu-ray regions) and both you and the UK are in region B (along with Australia and New Zealand for some reason).
Like I'd take that request seriously. Throw out the incompetents (Labour) for the crazies (the Greens) - your post should be modded funny not interesting.
It's not the number of console's that important in terms of saying who is winning, it's the attach rate that determines profitability (especially for 3rd party games developers) as that's where the money is made. The higher the attach rate the more you can afford to make a loss on the console and make it up in income from software sales.
There's an article here from last year with attach rates listed: http://playstation.joystiq.com/2008/04/25/npd-releases-home-console-attach-rate-ratios-ps3-not-so-hot/
The 360 has a significantly higher attach rate. I'll let you do the math to work out the number of games sold
Unfortunately I do believe attach rates include bundled games.
His statement isn't necessarily true or false (and might be both). Your assertions are however misleading.
Performance has shades of grey and can be subjective. The cell processor is potentially must faster (note the potentially) if the SPEs are used to good effect. With 3 symmetric cores on the 360 vs the cell processors single full core if someone doesn't put in the extra effort (for a smaller market) the PS3 version of a game will lag behind the 360 version.
Performance isn't always about the speed of the bare metal it's also about what you do with it. There are games where the PS3 version is well optimised and performs better (especially in first party titles) however there a lots of games where the opposite is true.
It's disingenuous to say that a first party PS3 title can't run well on an 360, it's a first party title so it will never be available on a 360. You can't make comparisons by hand waving and saying something isn't fast enough to handle something when it's never going to be available on that platform. Next you know we'll have someone saying that the PS3 isn't good enough to run Halo 3 (never mind the fact that it can't run it as it's never going to be available for it).
Disclaimer: I own both consoles - I do prefer the 360 gameplay over the PS3 however.
This is a massive cultural shift.
Exactly, this whole issue probably should have stopped being a legal issue a fair while ago. It should now be a social issue.
I have no idea what should be done but rightly or wrongly when a sizable percentage of the population of a country is engaged in something that is (most likely) illegal it becomes a social issue. Prohibition doesn't work unless most of society accepts it.
In all likelyhood there will have to be reform of the way copyrights are licensed so it's possible to have blanket licensing without the myriad of bodies responsible for collecting fees for different things in different countries. This isn't a situation where the market can solve things as there is no competition allowed when it comes to copyright (excluding things like CC licensing).
I don't think copyright owners, collection societies etc want this seen as a social issue however as that means government intervention and actions being taken they won't have too much say in.
Some how "Australia Australia Australia Oi Oi Oi" just doesn't have the same ring to it as "Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi".
Just how is an algorithm by itself a TPM (Technological Prevention Measure) which is what the DCMA (amongst other things) protects?
The RIAA need to stop wasting limited court resources on these frivolous lawsuits, and embrace the power of the internet to make sure their artists' concerts are filled, at $200+ per ticket. After all, you'll only fork out that much for a concert ticket if you have HEARD the music and actually LIKE it.
There's one ever so small problem there. In most cases the record companies are not engaged in 360 degree deals that get them part of the artist ticket sales (as much as they're trying to do that these days). If you're already a large artist - why would you?. The companies that make up the RIAA (and others) want to maximise their part of the pie, not give their part away so someone else can make all the money.
Having said that I haven't much sympathy for their situation either.
On what basis?
Errm, on the basis of personal opinion? How else are you going to quantify if something is funny? It is subjective and in the eye of the beholder.
The American "The Office" is terrible?
Terrible does not do justice to the American version of the "The Office". Utterly and profoundly terrible as well as completely unfunny come to mind as a equally valid descriptions of the US version (based on the 3 episodes I forced myself to watch).
There are multiple alternatives here are some suggestions (and there are lots more than this out there).
If you just want to listen try http://last.fm/ for streaming music of artists that you like (if you scrobble it's easier to find artists that sound like artists you like as last.fm will make recommendations - you can also subscribe to a postcast and get free songs). For some free songs try the shop at http://www.sellaband.com/ (the non free songs are 50 cents each - there's usually 3 free songs per artist). Amie street can also be a cheap place to find indie or older mainstream music http://www.amiestreet.com/ (the more popular songs are more expensive but the less popular songs are cheap). I didn't like it so much but there's always we7 http://www.we7.com/ - it used to be ad supported (not sure about now) but after some amount of time you can download a set number of ad free songs per month.
As with all things YMMV compared to what I've liked and found useful. As with all of these sorts of sites registration is required. None have been particularly onerous with excessive emails and they usually have ways of opting out of getting email from them.
From the article:
Where the internet is a communications channel between computers, the grid goes beyond this by not just using the internet for communications but also as a means of sharing computing resources. Every computer and user can access and make use of the combined resources of the grid.
And just how long will it be before someone decides to create a WWG application that uses it as one vast storage pool of copyrighted material with distributed indexing of the contents and the RIAA, MPAA, ... of the world sue the whole thing into non-existance or buy laws to make it a criminal offence to run it?
Structured correctly you wouldn't know who was adding to it or downloading data from it. After all a download would be just be a request to replicate a bit more data making a vastly distributed virtual filesystem a bit more redundant. You may not even be able to tell if it was someone making a request to make a local copy or the software automatically increasing storage redundancy of static data (assuming that there's no logging).
Am I misunderstanding something?
Yes. To the point where I'm not sure you read the article or many/any of the posts.
Does Apple pays the content owners just 9 cents out of the 99 cents it charges for a song? i.e. Does Apple get to keep 90% of the selling price?
Read more of the posts here, it's almost impossible not to know that about 70% of the money goes to the label (or someone else) and they need to (if required) pay the royalties.
Do brick & mortar stores also operate on a similiar basis. i.e. if I pay 15$ for a CD, does the shop just give $1.50 to the content owners?
No. The royalties have already been paid and included into the wholesale price of the CD.
I think it has more to do with piracy fears except noone seems willing to come out and say that.
PC owners rejoice, you can look forward to spending less money on games as they either don't get ported or come out 6 months after the consoles have the games.
On the plus side M$S must realise that fewer games for PCs means less requirement for running windows (for games at least) and that has to be somewhat worrying.
The extension to Oblivion (assuming you had the original version and not the game of year edition) needs to be installed on the hard drive to use it as well.
Haha, loser, you don't have a girlfriend like all the other /.ers!
LOL, I can feel quite content in the fact that you are a fellow loser who doesn't either.
Or perhaps SLASHDOT-READER:
OVERWEIGHT
GEEK
SPENDS-TO-MUCH-TIME-USING-COMPUTERS
ALL-OF-THE-ABOVE
I fit into the category ALL-OF-THE-ABOVE. The only generalisation that is missing about slashdotters is the one about girlfriends.
LOL, can I suggest a style that doesn't allow full contact?
I do Karate (Orange belt now) once a week for 2.5 hours (some times with an extra class for 4.0 hours total). In terms of at home I sometimes practice Kata for a total of about another hour. I've been doing it for a bit under a year and at 41 I'm probably more fit than I've ever been before.
If someone out there is considering taking up a martial art try several out and choose one where you feel comfortable with the environment and the Sensei. If you're doing it for fitness find a Dojo where you can have some fun (start out with the kids lessons that also take beginner adults as you'll get to play some games as well). Don't worry about how good or bad you are (you'll always be learning). If you've got an injury or physical limitation find somewhere that will take it into account when training and grading.
There should always be some fun involved unless you're doing something like training seriously for competition, if there is some fun rather than just only hard work you're more likely to keep going (even if there is some fun it will probably be hard work as well).