Perhaps I'm simply spoiled by the FreeBSD ports collection (any good package manager really) where I run cvsup to get the ports collection current, then I can either build from source or pkg_add -r pkgname and install the binary quickly across a network.
Don't take this a knock though, SuSE was the *nix that I learned on, and it's still awesome. Just seems somewhat unwieldy to bundle so much software in that is going to go out of date so quickly.
and I have the current versions of everything -- just like using the ports tree in FreeBSD. Check it out, you might find it interesting. And it respects the RPM database, so you can still use YaST or install/remove RPMs manually if you want.
Alien invasions, abductions, etc. are great topics for movies, comic books, video games, and other forms of entertainment -- and the domain of the Sci-Fi Channel is, in fact, entertainment. But it saddens me to know that people are going to see stunts like this and begin to confuse fact with fiction -- you know, the "Fi" in Sci-Fi.:-)
People of the world, I beg you: please, please, don't take anything as fact without bothering to examine it rationally and critically.
Region-coding is all about market control, not some silly thing about keeping people from importing the DVD before the movie is in theaters. They don't want you importing the DVD because they can get away with charging you more money that way.
In the spirit of "The only dumb question it the one not asked," I'm going to do just that. How, exactly, doesthe DVD region encoding "control the market"?? This is something I've never understood. I had assumed that it was to prevent imports from coming into a given country before the film was in theatres -- in that situation, I can see how the DVD could cut into the box-office profits. But you say this is not the case?
Could someone enlighten me about region encoding as relates to market control?
what the hell is that!! A blantend flame gets put up there. come on.
Seriously. Better tell all those neophytes at
Virginia Tech that they need to get with the program and start using machines more suited to serious users.
Some of my favorite gaming sound clips come from the Dungeon Keeper series. The voiceovers at the level intros were great, as were the comments after you'd turned a happy, peaceful village into a festering pit full of your minions.
Plus, the sequel had sound events timed to the PC's clock. A while back I was working in a town some 6 hours away from my fiancee where I didn't know anybody. Spent a lot of time reading and gaming, often late into the night. I'll always remember the shock of DK2 saying, "Don't you have a lair of your own to go to?" at three in the morning. I didn't know whether to laugh, or be indignant that a bloody video game was telling me it was past my bedtime.:-)
True, but do you think once they had his desciption they went out and strip-searched Saudi's? JAV
You're making the assumption that you know what all current terrorists look like -- in fact, I think you're going so far as to say they are all Arab. It is that assumption which I disagree with. In fact, I remember that the media floated the suspicion early on that those who bombed the Oaklahoma Federal Building were "Arab terrorists", and then had to quickly change tunes when that turned out to be baseless speculation.
My point is that overly broad profiling is not a good idea -- at best it's simply stereotyping, at worst it is outright prejudice. One cannot assume that all Arab people are terrorists any more than one can assume that everyone else is not. It's like assuming that all black men are dealing crack, or that all CEOs are cooking the books to misrepresent their profits. Sure, there are members of both groups who do just that -- stereotypes are there for a reason. But we must be careful not to confuse stereotypes with facts.
We know what the predominance of the terrorists look like and what they will likely look like should another attack occur. Therefore, only an idiot (Democrat? Liberal?) would hold PC over security...and they do...daily.
I seem to remember a shocking act of terrorism in the United States that killed 168 people, committed by someone I doubt would fit into your description of what the "predominance of the terrorists look like" -- his name was Timothy McVeigh.
If you can judge a wise man (or a terrorist) by the color of their skin, then mister, you're a better man than I.
The only way for there to be a "changing tide" is if they are seriously affected monetarily, as in a major drop in sales . . .
Of course, a major drop in sales will be used as evidence that the pirates (Drink up, me harties, yo ho!) are the cause, thus providing the motivation for still more litigation, legislation, and copy protection measures that are most certainly not in the consumer's best interest.
That said, I agree with your post. This is not the beginning of a revolution, nor a "changing tide". This is one extremely small victory for an individual.
Would anyone be interested the creation of a web site/community/forum that specifically focused on non-RIAA member label artists?
Or is there such a thing and I should be contributing reviews to it already?
This may not be exactly what you're looking for, but CDBaby is a good Web-based independant music store. Perhaps you could contact them about setting up a forum of some kind? Seems like it would add value for them (indie music fans giving each other recommendations which can then be easily purchased from CDBaby) and you (a place to find out about indie-music and vent about the evils of the RIAA).
BTW, in case you were wondering where you had heard of CDBaby before, it was discussed recently on Slashdot regarding iTMS and indie artists.
This idea has sparked my interest, but the streams are most definately Slashdotted. Would it be possible for someone who has the stream to use Peercast to help take some of the burden off the server?
If theres no WiFi, what good is a PDA? I want to be able to get online, for free.
Offhand, I would say keeping a calendar, address book, to-do lists, note-taking, e-books, calculator, playing Audible.com content, viewing street maps, playing chess . . . you get the idea.
And besides, what are you complaining about? If you want a Palm w/ Wifi, go get a Tungsten|C.
Different people have different needs in a PDA. You (and I, actually) want WiFi in a handheld. Other people don't. The new Tungsten|T2 is targeted at the latter.
The store does not accept so much cash; I had to buy the two on two separate trips.
Is this legal? On the $20 note in my billfold it states, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." Given this, how can a store refuse cash? Perhaps some exceptions can be made if you can't give change or are ordering through the mail/online so cash can't be processed, but other than that I can't see a reason for a store being able to refuse cash for a purchase. I mean, if I wanted to buy a $1400 laptop at CompUSA and gave them 70 $20 bills, 14 Benjamins, or 1.4 x 10^5 pennies, that's legal according to the US Treasury, right? (They being the ones issuing the legal tender I'm using.)
Schools and Libraries are government funded, so there shouldn't be any reason why they aren't filtering this stuff.
The companies producing the filtering software are not government funded. I have had no say in what they block, or why -- indeed, since the blacklists and filtering algorithms are considered "trade secrets" often I've no way to even access these to find out what is being kept from me. Google should turn up some links relating to this -- sorry, I don't have any sources right in front of me. (The Censorware Project used to have lots of great info, but has since been discontinued and removed.)
If people really want to look at their porn, they can do it at home. The internet is a great medium, but with it comes the bad, and a good deal of it is senseless porn popups and redirects that people have no control over. I would not want any kid to have to see something like goatse pop up on them and literally scar them for life. It's just not worth it.
I would say that government imposed morality and censorship is not worth the illusion of "protecting" children from information. It sets what I consider to be a very dangerous precident.
Yes, legit sites do get blocked, but that can be taken care of on a site to site basis.
Why should "legit" sites have to be taken care of? Why not the other way 'round? And why are these "legit" sites being blocked in the first place? Poor algorithm in the filter? Typo? An individual or company with a political or social agenda?
In summary, I think that limiting the people's (children and adults alike) access to information for the sake of an arbitrary morality imposed in secret by corporations with unknown agendas is a far more dangerous thing than the possibility a child might see or read something offensive and be forced to think and make a decision about it.
So, other than a cover for long range (ICBM) weapons testing, why is China revisiting the manned trip to the moon?
Why did the United States and the USSR go to the Moon in the first place? For the science? Because the world needed velcro and Tang? Well, I like Tang, and velcro is really handy, and the science that was done was extremely enlightening. That being said, I think most people would agree that the Space Race between the US and USSR was all about political posturing and bragging rights.
China wants to be accepted by the world community as a 1st world power. As a columnist in Wired suggested last month, think of the political impact of the entire world watching as a Chinese astronaut steps foot on the moon, respectfully folds the American flag there, and replaces it with a Chinese flag.
I used a PalmIII through most of college to keep track of all the normal calendar/addresses/quick notes PDA stuff, but also found several good programs that kept track of assignments quite well. But, of course, not everyone likes to use PDAs or finds them useful.
As far as taking notes in class, nothing beats loose-leaf graph paper and 3-ring binders. Taking notes on a PDA is all but impossible (especially for profs that blast through information in lecture). Laptop PCs are annoying for notetaking as well -- if not for you, than for other students. But depending on the class, that option may work. But I've yet to see an electonic solution to getting diagrams, graphs, equations, etc. down well. Maybe a Tablet PC, would work for this, but I've never used one, so I can't say. Also, remember that binders fit nicely on shelves later -- good for archiving notes from classes which will come in handy later in advanced coursework.
In summary, I'd recommend the following:
Apple iBook or PowerBook, depending on budget. Both will give you excellent productivity and are great portables -- important for working with groups, working away from annoying roommates, etc. Plus, my laptop PC did double duty as my stereo in college, so you might think about getting some good speakers. And with the built-in video out, you can hook your laptop to a TV and have a decent DVD player as well.
Palm m125 or similar PDA, if you're the type that will actually find them useful. You can go less or more, depending on how many bells and whistles you want.
One 3-ring binder for every class, and filler paper. Plus a good hole-punch for handouts and such.
iPod or other portable music for long walks between buildings, bus rides, etc. if you're going to be on a large campus.
More to the point, is there anyone, ANYONE at all who thinks this is a good idea besides the peeps at the top who stand to get more money?
Not even all the people at the top agree with this. In particular, Ted Turner (founder of Turner Broadcasting) and Barry Diller (the former head of Paramount and Universal) have stated publicly that media consolidation is unwise.
An interesting article on Ted Turner and media consolidation can be found here: "The media is too concentrated... Too few people control too much."
Re:Time shifting radio?
on
TiVo For Radio?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I can only imagine this would be useful for talk radio... I mean... what would be the point of using this for a top 40 station?
Talk radio would be a possible use, but I also see devices such as these would be good for NPR junkies like myself who love the specialty music programs such as Hearts of Space, Echoes, or Thistle and Shamrock. Just like TV programs, these aren't always aired at convenient times, and it would be nice to record them for later listening or to take to work the following day. Same is true of other specialty music programs, such as many rock stations' local band show.
I've been lusting after an iPod for a while now, but one of my reservations was a lack of an FM tuner. However, it seems that may be solved with the iFM. Griffin products have been favorably reviewed at iPod Web sites, so with luck the iFM will be of good quality.
Does it wheelslip? Bails-out? Puts-it in the 8? Allows you to put 5 pounds of brakes only? Isolate a traction motor? Has a ground relay?
Wow. That was a heck of a lot better than the, "Does it run Linux?" that I expected from the subject. Now, if only I knew what any of those questions meant . . .:-)
"Companies that run rich-media ads that ignore user needs can delude themselves into thinking that they're "promoting the brand"; in reality, they're simply being ignored because they don't connect with people's needs."
This is a good point, and a fact to which I think advertisers are becoming increasingly aware. The ads that have worked for me are those that satisify needs. At the same time, however, I can see that brand recognition is also important. For example, I wouldn't have my current ISP if I hadn't seen Speakeasy's banner ad on Slashdot. The name stuck in the back of my mind, and a year later when I moved and started shopping for broadband I looked them up.
But I think there is a difference between advertising your wares in a unobtrusive manner to people likely to need/want your product (Thinkgeek banners on tech sites, for example) and idiotic Brand Ambassadors.
The point? Advertising should be a way of unobtrusively letting people likely to need/want your product know that you have such a product. If text-ads let me know about products or services relevent to what I'm thinking about, fine. But the second they -- or any other form of advertising -- begin to interfere with what I'm doing, I filter them out of my perception.
Considering that one of Gene Spafford's complaints was that Usenet has become a place where so many people "blatantly violate copyrights", I think that the MP3 trading you're praising may be part of the problem as he sees it . . .
That being said, I still think there is a great deal of value in Usenet. Like everywhere else, though, one has to seperate the wheat from the chaff -- or, in this case, the insightful and useful information from the trolls, flames, and warez traders.
For years I've read music articles on/. and seen the comments with the sentiment, "If only there was a easy way to buy songs online, I'd stop using Kazaa and go legit." Or statements similar to, "The RIAA needs to get their heads out of their collective asses and realize that people want easy access to music online. If they did that, people would flock to it in droves!" (Take a stroll through past stories in the Music Topic if you'd like actual quotes.)
So today we get the big announcement from Apple that they have done just that -- negotiated an agreement to sell music online, on a per-song basis, with an easy-to-use interface, which allows you to share your tunes, burn CDs, or drop them into a portable player. To me, this sounds pretty bloody close to what the Slashdot crowd has been saying should happen for quite a while.
And what happens?
"I can pay an average of a buck a song at Best Buy and not be saddled with a crippled and lesser quality copy."
"0.50 per song and under and I'd say its good but thats too expensive."
"Also why no wireless features? If I have to go online to get my music why shouldnt I juse use Kazaa?"
$0.99 USD Is too pricy.
Now, I know that whining is often a staple of Slashdot, and I also know that the opinions of a few are not neccessarily the views of the many. And maybe the complaints have merit. Perhaps the new service Apple announced is too expensive. Perhaps it would be better to have non-lossy formats, or the ability to use software other than iTunes, or whatever else is on the wish list. But it looks to me like Apple made a good effort to create what was asked for, and now all people can seem to do is complain about it.
Or perhaps the problem is that recent CS degrees are getting as devorced from the actual running of computers as mechanical engeneers are from the running of automobiles? Perhaps the field should split so there is a relatively large group of people with highly technical skills to do most of the labor, and another, smaller, group of the cream of the crop to do the actual computer science. This is instead of calling everyone who takes programming classes in college computer scientists.
I think the split you describe already exists. First, many colleges and universities have different degree programs within a department that serve different ends. Computer Science usually deals with more of the underlying theory and the science bits, whereas Computer Information Systems deals more with the applications of computer technology, often to business. As an example of the differences, CS requires some physics courses, and often more math. CIS requires business and accounting classes. Though, I wouldn't call either the "cream of the crop" -- people have different skills and interests.
At least, this is how it worked at my alma mater. Perhaps other schools are different.
Slashdot Mirror
This is why I love APT for SuSE. A simple
sudo 'apt-get update; apt-get upgrade'
and I have the current versions of everything -- just like using the ports tree in FreeBSD. Check it out, you might find it interesting. And it respects the RPM database, so you can still use YaST or install/remove RPMs manually if you want.
http://www.skeptics.com.au/journal/baloney.htm
And if this interests you, read Sagan's book, A Demon-Haunted World.
Alien invasions, abductions, etc. are great topics for movies, comic books, video games, and other forms of entertainment -- and the domain of the Sci-Fi Channel is, in fact, entertainment. But it saddens me to know that people are going to see stunts like this and begin to confuse fact with fiction -- you know, the "Fi" in Sci-Fi. :-)
People of the world, I beg you: please, please, don't take anything as fact without bothering to examine it rationally and critically.
In the spirit of "The only dumb question it the one not asked," I'm going to do just that. How, exactly, doesthe DVD region encoding "control the market"?? This is something I've never understood. I had assumed that it was to prevent imports from coming into a given country before the film was in theatres -- in that situation, I can see how the DVD could cut into the box-office profits. But you say this is not the case?
Could someone enlighten me about region encoding as relates to market control?
Seriously. Better tell all those neophytes at Virginia Tech that they need to get with the program and start using machines more suited to serious users.
Some of my favorite gaming sound clips come from the Dungeon Keeper series. The voiceovers at the level intros were great, as were the comments after you'd turned a happy, peaceful village into a festering pit full of your minions.
:-)
Plus, the sequel had sound events timed to the PC's clock. A while back I was working in a town some 6 hours away from my fiancee where I didn't know anybody. Spent a lot of time reading and gaming, often late into the night. I'll always remember the shock of DK2 saying, "Don't you have a lair of your own to go to?" at three in the morning. I didn't know whether to laugh, or be indignant that a bloody video game was telling me it was past my bedtime.
You're making the assumption that you know what all current terrorists look like -- in fact, I think you're going so far as to say they are all Arab. It is that assumption which I disagree with. In fact, I remember that the media floated the suspicion early on that those who bombed the Oaklahoma Federal Building were "Arab terrorists", and then had to quickly change tunes when that turned out to be baseless speculation.
My point is that overly broad profiling is not a good idea -- at best it's simply stereotyping, at worst it is outright prejudice. One cannot assume that all Arab people are terrorists any more than one can assume that everyone else is not. It's like assuming that all black men are dealing crack, or that all CEOs are cooking the books to misrepresent their profits. Sure, there are members of both groups who do just that -- stereotypes are there for a reason. But we must be careful not to confuse stereotypes with facts.
I seem to remember a shocking act of terrorism in the United States that killed 168 people, committed by someone I doubt would fit into your description of what the "predominance of the terrorists look like" -- his name was Timothy McVeigh.
If you can judge a wise man (or a terrorist) by the color of their skin, then mister, you're a better man than I.
Of course, a major drop in sales will be used as evidence that the pirates (Drink up, me harties, yo ho!) are the cause, thus providing the motivation for still more litigation, legislation, and copy protection measures that are most certainly not in the consumer's best interest.
That said, I agree with your post. This is not the beginning of a revolution, nor a "changing tide". This is one extremely small victory for an individual.
--
This may not be exactly what you're looking for, but CDBaby is a good Web-based independant music store. Perhaps you could contact them about setting up a forum of some kind? Seems like it would add value for them (indie music fans giving each other recommendations which can then be easily purchased from CDBaby) and you (a place to find out about indie-music and vent about the evils of the RIAA).
BTW, in case you were wondering where you had heard of CDBaby before, it was discussed recently on Slashdot regarding iTMS and indie artists.
--
This idea has sparked my interest, but the streams are most definately Slashdotted. Would it be possible for someone who has the stream to use Peercast to help take some of the burden off the server?
Offhand, I would say keeping a calendar, address book, to-do lists, note-taking, e-books, calculator, playing Audible.com content, viewing street maps, playing chess . . . you get the idea.
And besides, what are you complaining about? If you want a Palm w/ Wifi, go get a Tungsten|C.
Or a PocketPC w/ WiFi.
Or an SDIO or CF WiFi card.
Different people have different needs in a PDA. You (and I, actually) want WiFi in a handheld. Other people don't. The new Tungsten|T2 is targeted at the latter.
Also, if you want the MPAA's message stright from the source, it's at http://www.respectcopyrights.org.
Is this legal? On the $20 note in my billfold it states, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." Given this, how can a store refuse cash? Perhaps some exceptions can be made if you can't give change or are ordering through the mail/online so cash can't be processed, but other than that I can't see a reason for a store being able to refuse cash for a purchase. I mean, if I wanted to buy a $1400 laptop at CompUSA and gave them 70 $20 bills, 14 Benjamins, or 1.4 x 10^5 pennies, that's legal according to the US Treasury, right? (They being the ones issuing the legal tender I'm using.)
Anyone have an answer?
The companies producing the filtering software are not government funded. I have had no say in what they block, or why -- indeed, since the blacklists and filtering algorithms are considered "trade secrets" often I've no way to even access these to find out what is being kept from me. Google should turn up some links relating to this -- sorry, I don't have any sources right in front of me. (The Censorware Project used to have lots of great info, but has since been discontinued and removed.)
I would say that government imposed morality and censorship is not worth the illusion of "protecting" children from information. It sets what I consider to be a very dangerous precident.
Why should "legit" sites have to be taken care of? Why not the other way 'round? And why are these "legit" sites being blocked in the first place? Poor algorithm in the filter? Typo? An individual or company with a political or social agenda?
In summary, I think that limiting the people's (children and adults alike) access to information for the sake of an arbitrary morality imposed in secret by corporations with unknown agendas is a far more dangerous thing than the possibility a child might see or read something offensive and be forced to think and make a decision about it.
Why did the United States and the USSR go to the Moon in the first place? For the science? Because the world needed velcro and Tang? Well, I like Tang, and velcro is really handy, and the science that was done was extremely enlightening. That being said, I think most people would agree that the Space Race between the US and USSR was all about political posturing and bragging rights.
China wants to be accepted by the world community as a 1st world power. As a columnist in Wired suggested last month, think of the political impact of the entire world watching as a Chinese astronaut steps foot on the moon, respectfully folds the American flag there, and replaces it with a Chinese flag.
As far as taking notes in class, nothing beats loose-leaf graph paper and 3-ring binders. Taking notes on a PDA is all but impossible (especially for profs that blast through information in lecture). Laptop PCs are annoying for notetaking as well -- if not for you, than for other students. But depending on the class, that option may work. But I've yet to see an electonic solution to getting diagrams, graphs, equations, etc. down well. Maybe a Tablet PC, would work for this, but I've never used one, so I can't say. Also, remember that binders fit nicely on shelves later -- good for archiving notes from classes which will come in handy later in advanced coursework.
In summary, I'd recommend the following:
Not even all the people at the top agree with this. In particular, Ted Turner (founder of Turner Broadcasting) and Barry Diller (the former head of Paramount and Universal) have stated publicly that media consolidation is unwise.
An interesting article on Ted Turner and media consolidation can be found here: "The media is too concentrated... Too few people control too much."
Talk radio would be a possible use, but I also see devices such as these would be good for NPR junkies like myself who love the specialty music programs such as Hearts of Space, Echoes, or Thistle and Shamrock. Just like TV programs, these aren't always aired at convenient times, and it would be nice to record them for later listening or to take to work the following day. Same is true of other specialty music programs, such as many rock stations' local band show.
Of course, I can already do that with the many radio stations that provide streams, StreamRipper, and a cron job.
I've been lusting after an iPod for a while now, but one of my reservations was a lack of an FM tuner. However, it seems that may be solved with the iFM. Griffin products have been favorably reviewed at iPod Web sites, so with luck the iFM will be of good quality.
SuSE has a utility called YaST Online Update (YOU), which has similar functionality to Windows Update. Works great for me.
I'm sure other distros have similar features. Do some looking around on Google or Distrowatch.
This is a good point, and a fact to which I think advertisers are becoming increasingly aware. The ads that have worked for me are those that satisify needs. At the same time, however, I can see that brand recognition is also important. For example, I wouldn't have my current ISP if I hadn't seen Speakeasy's banner ad on Slashdot. The name stuck in the back of my mind, and a year later when I moved and started shopping for broadband I looked them up.
But I think there is a difference between advertising your wares in a unobtrusive manner to people likely to need/want your product (Thinkgeek banners on tech sites, for example) and idiotic Brand Ambassadors.
The point? Advertising should be a way of unobtrusively letting people likely to need/want your product know that you have such a product. If text-ads let me know about products or services relevent to what I'm thinking about, fine. But the second they -- or any other form of advertising -- begin to interfere with what I'm doing, I filter them out of my perception.
Considering that one of Gene Spafford's complaints was that Usenet has become a place where so many people "blatantly violate copyrights", I think that the MP3 trading you're praising may be part of the problem as he sees it . . .
That being said, I still think there is a great deal of value in Usenet. Like everywhere else, though, one has to seperate the wheat from the chaff -- or, in this case, the insightful and useful information from the trolls, flames, and warez traders.
So today we get the big announcement from Apple that they have done just that -- negotiated an agreement to sell music online, on a per-song basis, with an easy-to-use interface, which allows you to share your tunes, burn CDs, or drop them into a portable player. To me, this sounds pretty bloody close to what the Slashdot crowd has been saying should happen for quite a while.
And what happens?
Now, I know that whining is often a staple of Slashdot, and I also know that the opinions of a few are not neccessarily the views of the many. And maybe the complaints have merit. Perhaps the new service Apple announced is too expensive. Perhaps it would be better to have non-lossy formats, or the ability to use software other than iTunes, or whatever else is on the wish list. But it looks to me like Apple made a good effort to create what was asked for, and now all people can seem to do is complain about it.
I think the split you describe already exists. First, many colleges and universities have different degree programs within a department that serve different ends. Computer Science usually deals with more of the underlying theory and the science bits, whereas Computer Information Systems deals more with the applications of computer technology, often to business. As an example of the differences, CS requires some physics courses, and often more math. CIS requires business and accounting classes. Though, I wouldn't call either the "cream of the crop" -- people have different skills and interests.
At least, this is how it worked at my alma mater. Perhaps other schools are different.