Jack Valenti: I wasn't opposed to the VCR. The MPAA tried to establish by law that the VCR was infringing on copyright. Then we would go to the Congress and get a copyright royalty fee put on all blank videocassettes and that would go back to the creators [to compensate for videocassette piracy].
I predicted great piracy. We now lose $3.5 billion a year in videocassette analog piracy. It was a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that determined VCRs were not infringing, which I regret. As a result, we never got the copyright royalty fee, but everything I predicted came true.
How does anyone with any functioning brain cells come up with this? The VCR is the sine qua non of the immensely profitable home video industry. Many modern films don't even become profitable until they are released on video, and yet, he ignores the giant profits the video industry has created for him and his cronies while harping on a few dollars they don't get.
According to this ass, the film industry, which is rolling in more money because the VCR exists than they would without it, is still grousing because the SCOTUS decided to allow me to videotape my niece's birthday party without forking money over to his fat-cat cartel.
Claiming that cannabis is more dangerous than tobacco, especially in terms of cancer rates, is ridiculous.
The anti-marijuana crusade is a joke. It was started to eliminate competition, greased through a corrupt Congress with equal parts bribery and anti-Mexican racism, and has no scientific basis whatsoever. The organizations that carry out the War on American Citizens (a.k.a. the War on Drugs) have taken on a life of their own, and issue whatever lies they feel are necessary to protect their funding.
Simple test - if an anti-drug agency tells you something, it's probably a lie.
While there are many reasons to attempt smoking (mostly peer influences/pressure), the fact is that smoking is generally unpleasant initially, except for the nicotine buzz a new smoker gets. As the smoker becomes adjusted to smoking, the "buzz" effect reduces to a much subtler effect, and the smoker is now hooked. At this point, the nicotine makes them calm and alert, and when they are craving it, they are nervous and tired.
All these effects are a direct result of the nicotine, and a nicotine-free cigarette would give a new smoker the bad breath, the smelly clothes, and the initial coughing fit of a real cigarette, but without the reward of the nicotine.
To be fair, I think making it legal for minors to purchase the nicotine-free cigarettes could reduce teen smoking rates, and anyone who got psychologically hooked on the ritual would still have an easier time quitting than he would with a nicotine monkey on his back.
My girlfriend is a smoker, currently suffering massive coughing fits when she smokes, and she thought Ultra Lights would help. Nope, she has to inhale more smoke to get the nicotine she craves, which induces more couging than the harsher, but more potent, regular cigarettes she ordinarily smokes.
I'm a "'tard" because I believe that bounds checking (and general idiot proofing) should be performed as a matter of course, and that repeated patching is kludgy and ugly, not to mention inefficient? What happened to the principle of not assuming anything about external inputs into a program?
sheesh!... 'cause it's so complicated to use strncpy() instead of strcpy(), you know...
If you were a malicious hacker, you might put a corrupt ID3 tag in an otherwise valid mp3.
It's a moot point anyway - the very act of listening to the file in the first place to verify the quality of the mp3 would cause the corrupt ID3 tag to be loaded, and that's all the file needs to do the damage.
Why hasn't Microsoft just changed the way it handles buffers to eliminate the weekly discovery of yet another buffer overflow exploit that compromises security? It's obvious to just about everyone else that any buffer that doesn't ignore excessive input will be a problem in the future - why does Microsoft insist on treating each one of these issues as though it was a totally new problem instead of making a global change to secure the OS from this kind of hack?
it would be easy enough to to what you suggest and distribute the.iso for a bootable CD-ROM.
In theory, it would be possible to have a tiny OS to boot from CD-ROM that could read NTFS (because of the proliferation of WinXP), so you could store the ROM image on the HD, and the CD would be reuseable for all firmware upgrades for that piece of hardware.
To Spider-Man? I respectfully disagree. The best case for Stan taking credit for creating a character he didn't actually create is the Silver Surfer, but Spidey, the FF, the Hulk, Iron Man, and the X-Men were all the result of Stan saying, "Let's make a comic about a character [or team] that has this power and these kinds of problems.
I do think that Kirby and Ditko contributed immensely to the character development, and deserve co-creator credit, and that the artist/plotters are probably more responsible than Stan for the overall popularity of the characters, but the seeds of the characters came from Stan's head. (and I'm sure they germinated quickly with all the self-congratulatory B.S. that also is in his head)
Not to mention the fact that most tech support services tell you while you're on hold that this call may (or will) be recorded - so the tech should have already known that he's being recorded.
He just wasn't aware how many people had copies...
----- Obligatory IANAL: I have no idea what the legality of recording a conversation would be where both parties were aware they were being recorded, but one thought he was the only one doing the recording.
I'm almost convinced that the DRM on this unit would only be an issue when using the DV (Firewire) input.
Since there's no program guide, and it's not an HD based unit, the only way it could know if a program was restricted to a single recording is if such data were stored in the analog TV signal (perhaps the VBI?).
I don't think that such a signal is currently in use with analog TV, so it shouldn't be an issue unless the machine defaults to only permitting a single recording unless that bit is overridden in the digital source. THAT would be a dealbreaker for a lot of folks.
I've got several concert DVD's and video collections that have 48/16 PCM, and one DVD Video (Sara K) that has 96/24 PCM.
Some of my older (and cheaper) Simitar DVD's also use PCM, probably because they were too cheap to pay for AC-3 encoding.
It's not terribly common, but it's not that rare.
Re:What's the difference between it and Mozilla?
on
Netscape 7.0 is Out
·
· Score: 1
I'd agree with that - the last version of Netscape I used regularly was 4.72, and it crashed all the time under various flavors of Windows and Linux. At least in Linux, I could just kill the x-server and restart it - I didn't have to constantly reboot.
I don't like Microsoft's business practices, but IE was several orders of magnitude more stable than Netscape, and usually faster, too.
I have been using Mozilla since the 1.0 launch, and it seems much more stable. The only problem I have is when going to websites that have a lot of animated gifs. There's a couple of PC hardware review sites that drag Mozilla down to a crawl, but I still don't need to reboot.
You seem to be under the impression that the existence of deities is to be assumed. I don't agree - if you want be to believe that any deities exist, you must prove it to me. Your failure to do so satisfactorily is not my problem.
It does not even require a "choice", as you state. If I claim that there's an invisible purple elf sitting on everyone's head, it doesn't require any kind of faith to say that you don't believe it and require proof. Not believing in the elf doesn't mean that you have "chosen" not to believe, it just means that you haen't been convinced to believe
You want faith? I'll give you something I believe in without any real proof. There are very few real agnostics. Most of them fall into 2 categories: 1- Atheists who aren't willing to totally own up their total lack of belief, and 2- Theists who have rejected organized religion, but are reluctant to abandon the idea of having importance to the universe.
Yes, Solipsism is the only true religion, but feel obliged to point out that I am, in fact, the person for whom the universe exists.
I'd feel bad about raining on your parade, but seeing as you (and all of Slashdot, for that matter) are all figments of my imagination, it's pointless.
Since almost all of the AC posts I've seen in this sub-thread are pro-Christianity, I'' say those ACs are:
50%- Trolls 20%- people who want to secretly bolster their own opinions (either through comments or moderation) 30%- Christians who sort-of believe, but are afraid of being ridiculed for their beliefs - maybe if they hurry, they can get 3 AC comments before the cock crows!
Specifically, the museum carries the Dr. Pepper made at the bottling plant in Dublin, TX (south of Fort Worth), which is the only plant in the US that still uses 100% Imperial Cane Sugar instead of corn syrup to make Dr. Pepper.
As I recall (and I could be wrong - I am getting old), it was Falcon 4.0 that was the big 486-seller.
Wing Commander (the first one) moved 386's, and Quake sold Pentiums by the truckload.
I'm currently buliding an Athlon XP1800+ system just for Doom 3, so I definitely understand the two driving forces in the article - customization and performance tuning.
Bummer. They used to have all sorts of cool t-shirts featuring Marty in various costumes and situations. I had one with him on a pitcher's mound in a Cubs uniform before the washing machine ate it.
Hmm... now I'm craving an Mangia stuffed pie for lunch - damn you, Loligo!
"Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars - The Motion Picture" is available on DVD - I've had it for at least 2 years, and I just rewatched it this last weekend. The picture quality sucks, but the music is great.
Let's be fair - 1: DVD wasn't invented by the MPAA, it was invented by a consortium of hardware and software vendors.
2: The recording industry could benefit from a new audio format that would get people to buy all their favorites again, too.
3: Except, the recording industry can't seem to get their crap together and avoid the no-win quagmire of a format war - both DVD-Audio and SACD are meritable contenders, but there are few vendors of the players, and miniscule libraries of recordings available in each format, while players that can read both remain prohibitively expensive. Apex has announced a cheaper player, but it hasn't hit the market yet, and Apex isn't exactly known for audiophile quality.
I got one word to prove you're wrong - "recoupment".
What that means is that every single penny the record company pays out to promote an act - videos, ads, indie recerd promoters (read: payola) is recoupable against the artist's share of the recording's revenue. Every single penny of promotional expenses, as well as from those wonderfully big advances, needs to be paid back to the record company before the artist earns a cent in royalties.
Most acts never show a profit, but unless the album really tanks, the record companies always come out ahead. Worst case scenario? The failed record makes for a big tax write-off to offset the profits the companies make off the marginal and better-selling acts.
Slashdot Mirror
According to this ass, the film industry, which is rolling in more money because the VCR exists than they would without it, is still grousing because the SCOTUS decided to allow me to videotape my niece's birthday party without forking money over to his fat-cat cartel.
Let's see...
m p ://www.gozarks.com/frontpagenotes/cancercure.h tm
http://www.ardpark.org/research/shrinktumors.ht
http://www.cerebral.org/Maps/msg03724.html
htt
Claiming that cannabis is more dangerous than tobacco, especially in terms of cancer rates, is ridiculous.
The anti-marijuana crusade is a joke. It was started to eliminate competition, greased through a corrupt Congress with equal parts bribery and anti-Mexican racism, and has no scientific basis whatsoever. The organizations that carry out the War on American Citizens (a.k.a. the War on Drugs) have taken on a life of their own, and issue whatever lies they feel are necessary to protect their funding.
Simple test - if an anti-drug agency tells you something, it's probably a lie.
Highly unlikely.
While there are many reasons to attempt smoking (mostly peer influences/pressure), the fact is that smoking is generally unpleasant initially, except for the nicotine buzz a new smoker gets. As the smoker becomes adjusted to smoking, the "buzz" effect reduces to a much subtler effect, and the smoker is now hooked. At this point, the nicotine makes them calm and alert, and when they are craving it, they are nervous and tired.
All these effects are a direct result of the nicotine, and a nicotine-free cigarette would give a new smoker the bad breath, the smelly clothes, and the initial coughing fit of a real cigarette, but without the reward of the nicotine.
To be fair, I think making it legal for minors to purchase the nicotine-free cigarettes could reduce teen smoking rates, and anyone who got psychologically hooked on the ritual would still have an easier time quitting than he would with a nicotine monkey on his back.
All my mod points are gone, or I'd mod that up.
My girlfriend is a smoker, currently suffering massive coughing fits when she smokes, and she thought Ultra Lights would help. Nope, she has to inhale more smoke to get the nicotine she craves, which induces more couging than the harsher, but more potent, regular cigarettes she ordinarily smokes.
--Begin Obligatory ST Reference--
I don't know, man...
I mean teleporter-based problem episodes were of uneven quality, but Spock's Brain was just awful!
Maybe if they could put our brains into clones of Kahless?
--End Obligatory ST Reference--
I'm a "'tard" because I believe that bounds checking (and general idiot proofing) should be performed as a matter of course, and that repeated patching is kludgy and ugly, not to mention inefficient? What happened to the principle of not assuming anything about external inputs into a program?
... 'cause it's so complicated to use strncpy() instead of strcpy(), you know...
sheesh!
If you were a malicious hacker, you might put a corrupt ID3 tag in an otherwise valid mp3.
It's a moot point anyway - the very act of listening to the file in the first place to verify the quality of the mp3 would cause the corrupt ID3 tag to be loaded, and that's all the file needs to do the damage.
Why hasn't Microsoft just changed the way it handles buffers to eliminate the weekly discovery of yet another buffer overflow exploit that compromises security? It's obvious to just about everyone else that any buffer that doesn't ignore excessive input will be a problem in the future - why does Microsoft insist on treating each one of these issues as though it was a totally new problem instead of making a global change to secure the OS from this kind of hack?
it would be easy enough to to what you suggest and distribute the .iso for a bootable CD-ROM.
In theory, it would be possible to have a tiny OS to boot from CD-ROM that could read NTFS (because of the proliferation of WinXP), so you could store the ROM image on the HD, and the CD would be reuseable for all firmware upgrades for that piece of hardware.
To Spider-Man? I respectfully disagree. The best case for Stan taking credit for creating a character he didn't actually create is the Silver Surfer, but Spidey, the FF, the Hulk, Iron Man, and the X-Men were all the result of Stan saying, "Let's make a comic about a character [or team] that has this power and these kinds of problems.
I do think that Kirby and Ditko contributed immensely to the character development, and deserve co-creator credit, and that the artist/plotters are probably more responsible than Stan for the overall popularity of the characters, but the seeds of the characters came from Stan's head. (and I'm sure they germinated quickly with all the self-congratulatory B.S. that also is in his head)
Not to mention the fact that most tech support services tell you while you're on hold that this call may (or will) be recorded - so the tech should have already known that he's being recorded.
He just wasn't aware how many people had copies...
-----
Obligatory IANAL: I have no idea what the legality of recording a conversation would be where both parties were aware they were being recorded, but one thought he was the only one doing the recording.
I'm almost convinced that the DRM on this unit would only be an issue when using the DV (Firewire) input.
Since there's no program guide, and it's not an HD based unit, the only way it could know if a program was restricted to a single recording is if such data were stored in the analog TV signal (perhaps the VBI?).
I don't think that such a signal is currently in use with analog TV, so it shouldn't be an issue unless the machine defaults to only permitting a single recording unless that bit is overridden in the digital source. THAT would be a dealbreaker for a lot of folks.
I've got several concert DVD's and video collections that have 48/16 PCM, and one DVD Video (Sara K) that has 96/24 PCM.
Some of my older (and cheaper) Simitar DVD's also use PCM, probably because they were too cheap to pay for AC-3 encoding.
It's not terribly common, but it's not that rare.
I'd agree with that - the last version of Netscape I used regularly was 4.72, and it crashed all the time under various flavors of Windows and Linux. At least in Linux, I could just kill the x-server and restart it - I didn't have to constantly reboot.
I don't like Microsoft's business practices, but IE was several orders of magnitude more stable than Netscape, and usually faster, too.
I have been using Mozilla since the 1.0 launch, and it seems much more stable. The only problem I have is when going to websites that have a lot of animated gifs. There's a couple of PC hardware review sites that drag Mozilla down to a crawl, but I still don't need to reboot.
What's funny, Anonymous Coward, is that most people who believe in religion do believe that all religions are fictions... except their own, of course.
The day I see the Pope acknowledge the divinity of the Norse pantheon, I will gladly eat my words.
Nonsense. Quantification does not imply faith.
You seem to be under the impression that the existence of deities is to be assumed. I don't agree - if you want be to believe that any deities exist, you must prove it to me. Your failure to do so satisfactorily is not my problem.
It does not even require a "choice", as you state. If I claim that there's an invisible purple elf sitting on everyone's head, it doesn't require any kind of faith to say that you don't believe it and require proof. Not believing in the elf doesn't mean that you have "chosen" not to believe, it just means that you haen't been convinced to believe
You want faith? I'll give you something I believe in without any real proof. There are very few real agnostics. Most of them fall into 2 categories: 1- Atheists who aren't willing to totally own up their total lack of belief, and 2- Theists who have rejected organized religion, but are reluctant to abandon the idea of having importance to the universe.
Yes, Solipsism is the only true religion, but feel obliged to point out that I am, in fact, the person for whom the universe exists.
I'd feel bad about raining on your parade, but seeing as you (and all of Slashdot, for that matter) are all figments of my imagination, it's pointless.
My guess?
Since almost all of the AC posts I've seen in this sub-thread are pro-Christianity, I'' say those ACs are:
50%- Trolls
20%- people who want to secretly bolster their own opinions (either through comments or moderation)
30%- Christians who sort-of believe, but are afraid of being ridiculed for their beliefs - maybe if they hurry, they can get 3 AC comments before the cock crows!
Correct.
Specifically, the museum carries the Dr. Pepper made at the bottling plant in Dublin, TX (south of Fort Worth), which is the only plant in the US that still uses 100% Imperial Cane Sugar instead of corn syrup to make Dr. Pepper.
Good stuff.
As I recall (and I could be wrong - I am getting old), it was Falcon 4.0 that was the big 486-seller.
Wing Commander (the first one) moved 386's, and Quake sold Pentiums by the truckload.
I'm currently buliding an Athlon XP1800+ system just for Doom 3, so I definitely understand the two driving forces in the article - customization and performance tuning.
Bummer. They used to have all sorts of cool t-shirts featuring Marty in various costumes and situations. I had one with him on a pitcher's mound in a Cubs uniform before the washing machine ate it.
Hmm... now I'm craving an Mangia stuffed pie for lunch - damn you, Loligo!
and Peter Cetera was the bass player for Chicago. See, it all comes back to music!
"Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars - The Motion Picture" is available on DVD - I've had it for at least 2 years, and I just rewatched it this last weekend. The picture quality sucks, but the music is great.
The DVD for sale on Amazon
Let's be fair -
1: DVD wasn't invented by the MPAA, it was invented by a consortium of hardware and software vendors.
2: The recording industry could benefit from a new audio format that would get people to buy all their favorites again, too.
3: Except, the recording industry can't seem to get their crap together and avoid the no-win quagmire of a format war - both DVD-Audio and SACD are meritable contenders, but there are few vendors of the players, and miniscule libraries of recordings available in each format, while players that can read both remain prohibitively expensive. Apex has announced a cheaper player, but it hasn't hit the market yet, and Apex isn't exactly known for audiophile quality.
I got one word to prove you're wrong - "recoupment".
What that means is that every single penny the record company pays out to promote an act - videos, ads, indie recerd promoters (read: payola) is recoupable against the artist's share of the recording's revenue. Every single penny of promotional expenses, as well as from those wonderfully big advances, needs to be paid back to the record company before the artist earns a cent in royalties.
Most acts never show a profit, but unless the album really tanks, the record companies always come out ahead. Worst case scenario? The failed record makes for a big tax write-off to offset the profits the companies make off the marginal and better-selling acts.